Carl Theodor Dreyer鈥檚 Gertrud: The Moving Word
Three time Oscar-nominated screenwriter, James Schamus brings his knowledge of film to one of the art form’s masters, Carl S. Dreyer. In this work Schamus focuses on a single moment in the film, Gertrud, to illuminate what was at stake for Dreyer, and still for us, in his final work. The film’s Paris premier was covered by the Danish press as a national scandal. It was lambasted on its release for its lugubrious pace, wooden acting, and old-fashioned, stuffy milieu, but later, when a younger generation of critics came to its defense the method in what appeared to be Dreyer’s madness begin to become apparent. Throughout, Schamus pays particular attention to Dreyer’s lifelong obsession with the “real,” developed through his practice of “textual realism,” a realism grounded not in standard codes of verisimilitude but on the force of its rhetorical appeal to its written, documentary sources. In this work Schamus gives his studied account of the importance of Dreyer’s final film.
