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Dreyer's final film, adapted from a 1905 play by Hjalmar Soderberg, is the story of a woman's search for a romantic ideal of total and perfect love. A singer in her early forties leaves her politician husband for her young lover, a composer. Discovering that he cannot make a total commitment to her, she retreats into a serene isolation. With masterly restraint and understatement, concentrating on small nuances, Dreyer suggests that Gertrud's peace has been bought at the cost of much emotional pain.
Product Description
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Danish ( Mono ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.66:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Black & White, Booklet, Documentary, Interactive Menu, Making Of, Scene Access, Short Film, SYNOPSIS: Carl Dreyer's last film neatly crowns his career: a meditation on tragedy, individual will, and the refusal to compromise. A woman leaves her unfulfilling marriage and embarks on a search for ideal love - but neither a passionate affair with a younger man nor the return of an old romance can provide the answer she seeks. Always the stylistic innovator, Dreyer employs long takes and theatrical staging to concentrate on Nina Pens Rode's sublime portrayal of the proud and courageous Gertrud. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Venice Film Festival, ...Gertrud
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is the third Dreyer movie I've seen, and each film has had the same effect. For the first 10 minutes or so, I want to run away. There is a stillness about this film (as with all those I've seen) which is eerie; it's more than the lack of action, it's the feeling that the story is not going to develop, and the sense that not much will change. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I am hooked, and the same word comes to settle - haunting. The images stay in me (in me, not with me, if you udnerstand), and I know that in a few months I'll buy it because I will want to see it again. Not every day, but at intervals.
The story is one of a woman who chooses to live her life according to love. The men who want her are actually quite decent men; selfish, as most of we men are, but decent with that. Even the cad of the film has a decency about him, obscured by his youth, as is recognised by her. But it's not whether Gertrud is a tragic figure, ending alone, or whether she is a heroine, who has lived her life according to her own lights, which haunts me. It's the simplicity of the sets in the long scenes - mirrors, large-panelled doors, peaceful parks. It's the way the characters talk away from each other - they rarely look at one another when they talk, so that when they do you sit up and notice what they're saying. It's the sharp differentiation of characters (do all Dreyer's heroines have such strong, handsome features?), physically and psychologically; the black and white film reinforces that differentiation. It's the stillness - an eerie calm which becomes so intense that it seeps into you while you're watching.
So how to summarise the film? The same way that I would summarise the other films of his I've seen (Ordet, and Day of Wrath). Haunting. Just that. No more.
The story is one of a woman who chooses to live her life according to love. The men who want her are actually quite decent men; selfish, as most of we men are, but decent with that. Even the cad of the film has a decency about him, obscured by his youth, as is recognised by her. But it's not whether Gertrud is a tragic figure, ending alone, or whether she is a heroine, who has lived her life according to her own lights, which haunts me. It's the simplicity of the sets in the long scenes - mirrors, large-panelled doors, peaceful parks. It's the way the characters talk away from each other - they rarely look at one another when they talk, so that when they do you sit up and notice what they're saying. It's the sharp differentiation of characters (do all Dreyer's heroines have such strong, handsome features?), physically and psychologically; the black and white film reinforces that differentiation. It's the stillness - an eerie calm which becomes so intense that it seeps into you while you're watching.
So how to summarise the film? The same way that I would summarise the other films of his I've seen (Ordet, and Day of Wrath). Haunting. Just that. No more.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Mario
Format:DVD
You feel more so here than other Dreyers, that every movement of the arm or walk towards a mirror or touch of hand on face is composed and directed. Consequently, the acting appears mannered and rather static. There are about ten scenes, all in which talk (or song) are shared between two (rarely three) characters. All the men (with one exception perhaps) are seriously flawed and dislikeable. Gertrud herself is ambiguous in the extreme and ambiguous in her beauty too, so we're never in any doubt (!) that she is 'difficult'. The visceral charge of Jeanne d'Arc or Ordet is therefore, perhaps, absent but you are in no doubt that you are in the presence of something extraordinary right down to the lighting of the walls and the decor.
13 of 30 people found the following review helpful
By Jason
Format:DVD
An insufferable, self-obsessed woman is Gertrud: "I am the stars, I am the sky... I am a mouth seeking another mouth". Gertrud is not a character with whom one can identify, she irritates with a love that should remain silent. Gertrud is in love with Love. She is merciless with those who love her; she has no knowledge of real love and so never finds love. True love forgives all sins: Gertrud cannot forgive. For Gertrud Love is everything... on condition. This film far from extolling the virtues of an emancipated woman details the vacuousness of a life lived in the pursuit of pleasure. Gertrud true to self-Love to the very end remains alone and unfulfilled. Watching this film, I felt nothing but a desire for the increasingly sanctimonious Gertrud to shut up, go away and die. A martyrs death, of course.
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