Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

bwhitwellb Imagine a world where you've been plucked from your home at a very young age, and married off to an ageing pastor whose environment in which he lives is toxic due to his strict Christian fundamentalist beliefs. The film is set in 17th century Denmark amidst the height of the witch hunting that swept europe as a means to wipe out the indigenous people in order to infect it with the middle eastern abrahamic religions.Anne, the protagonist of the film is surrounded by all the negative energies that feed on her innocent childlike soul, a loveless marriage, a mother in law that despises her, and in the background we see the horror and mad hysteria of a society where the church is handed total authority to torture and execute those who do not fit into their cult. It was a very successful tactic to convert and weed out any remaining pagans, heathens or believers in Norse mythology. We have different ways of controlling people through fear and prejudice in the 21st century with the war on terror and how ironic that sounds since war is terror. You could be forgiving in thinking that the priests and pastors who wielded power were actually possessed and worshipping a demon themselves rather than the people they denounced as witches and heretics, giving how blood thirsty and psychopathic they were in their actions.Dreyers "Day Of Wrath" is the perfect companion piece to his earlier masterpiece "The Passion Of Joan Of Arc". It conjures up the same sense of dread with judgmental eyes piercing your very soul and crushing your spirit. The tone is set right off the bat as an elderly woman is denounced as a witch, and although her morals are questionable due to her dabbling in witchcraft we understand that it was in a good cause to try and heal a villagers ailments. The scene is masterfully directed by Dreyer and puts us right into her anxieties, she is terrified to die, the pastor and his cronies are cold and without feeling or sympathy, and that sense of fear and dread is projected onto the audience. She is not a bad person and certainly does not deserve to die, especially in the name a religion that's suppose to practice love and light. All the characters share very human complexities which offer the viewer sympathy if somewhat very vague to some such as the mother in law, who seems to live her life consumed with hate and a mean spirit. The pastor who strict in his religion has succumbed to the reflections of his treatment towards Anne where guilt sinks it's teeth, he feel remorse for having taking her away from her family and married for his own selfish pleasure, and at that time Anne's mother was denounced herself and he gave her the stay of execution with the intentions of marrying her daughter, how very saintly of him. Anne now suffering the consequences has been denied of her youth, the chance to bear children, and her right to love. We still care for Anne even when she curses the pastor to die as her yearning to be set free is evident through the film and brings her to this level of hating a man who basically kidnaps and imprisons her with a life of strict control and misery.The scene where Anne and the pastors son Martin spend the day together allows the viewer to put his guard down, as everything up to that point was bleak and dispiriting. Here we see two people falling in love and Dreyer shows us the beauty in the landscapes, the slow camera movements hypnotic to the eye, our protagonist finally experiencing love for the first time even if it is like a forbidden fruit to eat given how the one she falls for is her step son. I like all the subtle biblical references that our characters have attached to them. When we least expect it the yo-yo is coiled right back from us to it's original state and Dreyer reminds us of the reality of the films tone as we see a horse carrying wood for the stake trotting past the young lovers. A truly sinister image that like the rest of the film is photographed with precision and expertise.The burning at the stake of the elderly woman and the villagers anticipation towards it is an irony within itself. Here we see a ritual masked as religion, sacrificing a human being at an alter for a deity they call god, children chanting "The burning of flesh", and the agonising death the woman they claim is satins little helper is questionable to say the least at being righteous and spiritual. Who are the real devils here? The influence this film has had over the years can be evident in the Ken Russell masterpiece "The Devils, and of course "The Wicker man". This is a true cinematic masterpiece that still holds the test of time.

Perception_de_Ambiguity 'Vredens Dag' or 'Day of Wrath' has a mysterious, unsettling atmosphere quite like Dreyer's previous film 'Vampyr', but it's very understated here. Unlike the Verfremdungseffekt in the previous effort the horror feel in this film is achieved through its setting (an extremely oppressive world) and by the way the plot is told, which is largely by means of suppressing the drama inherent in the situations. By not providing much release for the audience the film emphasizes that the real drama bubbles under the surface, namely it is within the characters, and the drama is a psychological one.That aforementioned extreme oppressiveness of the environment within the film is one of Christian dogma, it becomes oppressive because all the characters believe in it to a more or less great extent and as a consequence no desire will go unpunished and fear dominates everyone's lives. The guilty conscience that arises from thinking that one broke a Christian law is actually the least of it, with its witch burning premise the film provides a more specific threat. One gets the impression that a woman can be made to burn at the stake by being denounced as a witch by seemingly anyone who feels like it. Further, women can be made to believe themselves that they are witches, which is an even greater exertion of power as it keeps the sincere belief in the existence of witchcraft and the occult alive in people's minds.Dreyer cleverly maximizes the film's sense of an oppressive environment by presenting the Christian Weltanschauung of that time as unchallenged in people's minds and as essentially in direct control of the law when in reality surely not everyone held the same convictions in matters of faith in Denmark at the time, at the very least there were different branches of Christianity that disagreed with each other on even many of the fundamentals (an example of this can be seen in Dreyer's own 'Ordet'), and witch trials weren't at all conducted by clergymen alone, even THEIR power had limits.It took a third viewing for me just to realize that among other things 'Day of Wrath' also is a roundabout coming-of-age film, a film about sexual awakening, Anne never experienced sexual desire until she laid eyes on her stepson. In addition to the all-encompassing religious indoctrination of that time this explains her naivety about coming to believe that she has supernatural powers over men, when apparently, without even quite realizing it, she bats her eyelashes, swings her tush, etc. and THOSE obviously are the things that do the trick, it's not her wishing that her stepson falls in love with her that causes this wish to miraculously come true for her through witchcraft.'Vredens Dag' refuses to take sides, this results in an ambiguity about where the filmmaker stands on the issues at hand, which can easily be frustrating on a first viewing, but makes it all the more intriguing on further viewings and prevents it from becoming uninteresting for there will always remain a degree of mystery. The big ambiguity in this film is that although the Christian doctrine could hardly be shown less favorably Rev. Absalon is basically a kind-hearted and well-intentioned man and husband to Anne, but more significantly Anne's liberation from her life of oppression makes her happy, a happiness and joyfulness that not only has the side effect of turning her selfish (as she has no consideration anymore for anyone else's feelings and needs), but through Dreyer's compositions and lighting and by how the actress plays her, she comes off as evil, she is subtly made to look like the witch that she is believed to be by others, and whom even herself comes to believe to be.As we all know, women are quite a mystery to men, and in this story woman's sexuality poses the biggest mystery of all, implying that men can't bare such an enormous lack of control, therefore the woman's behavior and her power over people and over men especially can only be explained with witchcraft. By making Anne at times look evil and like she revels in her power over other people the viewer will find it easy to relate to that time and its people, understanding how the belief in the occult could have been so prevalent. Prevalent not only among men who could make sense of woman's inexplicable behavior only through the concept of witchcraft, but also among women who sometimes couldn't explain their own powers and who were so often told that this or that makes them witches that they started believing it themselves. Significantly it is Rev. Absalon's mother who finally denounces her a witch and it is Anne's own remorse that urges her to agree with the accusations against her.'Vredens Dag' is amazingly deliberately paced for 1943. Around 1960 such pacing in films like 'L'avventura', 'Marienbad' and 'The Naked Island' felt positively revolutionary. With Dreyer having already been an established silent movie director one is tempted to say that his sound pictures simply hark back to the silent era when especially up to the early-/mid-20's films just naturally were very slow-paced. Dreyer's silent movie roots maybe were what enabled his style on some level, but to equate those two vastly different types of slow pacing would certainly be a folly, not least because of how expertly Dreyer uses off-screen sound as a storytelling device, which is what often makes it possible for him to have so many continuous takes run for several minutes in the first place. It can hardly be a coincidence that Dreyer's 'Vampyr' (1932) already practiced something that I think otherwise hasn't really been seen in film until around 1960 in films like 'Vivre sa vie' and again 'L'avventura' and 'Marienbad', namely the back and forth shifting between subjective and objective mode, making it seem like the camera has its own will separate from the characters and the plot.

Michael_Elliott Day of Wrath (1943) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Carl Theodor Dreyer's dark tale about a Reverend (Thorkild Roose) who allows a woman to be burned at the stake for being a witch only to eventually lose his much younger wife (Lisbeth Movin) to his own son (Preben Lerdorff Rye). I've been quite critical of the director with some of his movies and I've always been honest in saying that there's just something about his style that doesn't always work for me but I found DAY OF WRATH to be a completely compelling picture that pretty much grabs you from the start and doesn't let go. I know a lot of people, myself included, has complained about the director's sometimes slow pacing and that slowness is here again but I think it really helps this picture. I really liked the slow start of the picture dealing with the elderly woman who feels that the reverend should spare her life. I thought this led to some interesting situations and in one of the best scenes in the film, the wife questions why or how anyone could be given so much power. I also really enjoyed the middle section of the film dealing with the relationship between the wife and son. At first I was really wondering how on Earth these two could have fallen in love so fast and especially since we didn't see it happen but I think this here pays off towards the end of the picture. The three lead actors all do a terrific job in their part and I was especially impressed with Movin as I found her to be incredibly touching in her role as well as highly seductive. The beautiful cinematography is another major plus for the film and I really loved the use of darkness and shadows. DAY OF WRATH is a very open and honest look at religion and love and I think it ranks as one of the director's best films.

jonathan-577 Talk about a haunting movie, and not just in the awful beauty of the compositions; I'm talking about the whole vision. I have spent days grappling with it. Holding out hope for humanity under the bleakest possible circumstances, this fifteenth-century witch hunt story doesn't just flip the good-evil paradigm. The victims of the witch hunt have their own superstitions, their own petty indulgences and murderous impulses; the perpetrators have their own moral agonies. This is a movie about the individual's struggle against a corrupt society where the individual loses: deadly grim, it shows exactly how f*cked-up things can get, and doesn't provide any easy answers about how to get out from under it, except crucially to assert that it can't be done alone. But the agonizingly tragic sense of loss and corruption - of youth, of love, of freedom - can only come, I think, from a deep belief that a better world is possible. If you hate Ingmar Bergman, you probably will not get this, yet another dour and glacial Scandinavian narrative of yet another dark night of the soul. But the mood is not just a mannerism, and the craft is so brilliant that I for one was able to overcome all my biases and get totally swept away in it, overwhelmed. Dreyer really, really knows what he's doing.