Tommaso wrote:Even if you qualify your statement by saying "by Dreyer's standards", I still cannot quite see why you would call that film a comedy, unless you have Dante in mind. The religious intolerance has rather painful effects on the youngest son and his beloved, for instance; and I wouldn't connect Johannes' madness with cruelty at all; but neither is he a light or comical figure in my view.
Yes, if I felt like being cheered up I wouldn't exactly throw myself at Ordet. (Although I did think Medea was an absolute scream, so who knows...) And it's by far the most harrowing of all Dreyer's films (that I've seen), really the only one that can bring tears to my eyes. And the scenes of Inger's labour, which are not in Kaj Munk's play, are almost unwatchable. Generally, as with Gertrud, the reduction of the script to its bare essentials gives the whole thing a very spare, bleak tone: in the play, for instance, Johannes is much more chatty, and his initial encounter with the parson seems intended to be more funny and absurd than chilling, as it is in the film. And it isn't saying much to point out that Ordet is cheerier than Day of Wrath and Gertrud...
Still, I do think it's a sort of tragicomedy - similar to The Winter's Tale in at least one really obvious way. The story about Anders and Anne is absolutely the stuff of comedy, not just because it ends happily but because the scenes concerned with it - Inger and Morten having coffee, Morten's sudden change of mind when Peter has rejected Anders, Morten and Peter having coffee and smoking together while the young lovers sit in the kitchen being watched over by Anne's mother - are consistently played, if not for laughs exactly, then for a certain gentle humour. There's something really touching about how courteous everyone is when Morten and Anders interrupt the prayer meeting, and even when the dispute becomes heated you can't help but feel that these people all mean well, and that things will turn out okay in the end. I think the religious dispute between the two patriarchs is something we're supposed to shake our heads over, rather than regard as some portentous clash of the titans, or Montague/Capulet situation. The futility of their disagreement is not tragic, nor even very dramatic - it just seems silly, and as Tommaso suggests, it isn't really their faith that divides them, just their mutual absorption in lesser things, points of dogma. I don't think the repentance and forgiveness comes
because of Inger's death; rather, Inger's death reveals that Peter did not really mean what he said, and that Morten doesn't really hold it against him. Their dispute is trivial, and when serious misfortune occurs they both acknowledge that triviality to focus on important things and do right by each other.
The cruelty I mentioned was that inflicted upon Inger and Johannes - and the other Borgens, through these two - by nature, or by God. Human evil often sends a person running to faith and transcendence, which is essentially what Gertrud is about, but it's the random pain of existence that has visited suffering on the characters in Ordet, and this is why Mikkel and Borgen have lost or are losing their faith. But just as the dispute with Peter turns out to be trivial, and a distraction from life's blessings and all that, so Johannes' 'madness' and Inger's suffering have simply to be seen from a different perspective for them to take their places in the divinely ordered comedy of existence (maybe comparison with Dante isn't too misguided!) The ending isn't happy simply because Inger comes back to life - it would still be happy if she died again, which of course she will - but because she
can be brought back to life, and because of the affirmation this gives to the characters' faith. In some of Dreyer's films, the suffering, torture, death, betrayal, etc conclude by transfiguring the protagonist into a higher plane of existence; in others, as Itfontaine said above, the suffering ennobles the character in a more mundane way, and they learn to re-adjust their values, recognise the blessings they had all along, and so on. In Ordet, the harrowing pain we see is meant, ultimately, to make us smile through our tears. It's very much a quiet Dreyer-smile, which must quickly sink back into an expression of stoic gloom - but a smile all the same.
Maybe that's why it's one of my least favourite Dreyers. Essentially it's an optimistic film, and that's a tone he only really pulled off, I think, in The Parson's Widow. Otherwise his style - especially in the late films, with their obsessively long takes and prowling camera moves and menacing shadows - just doesn't seem suited to material that
should, I think, be played with a light touch. I'd love to see the 1940s version with Victor Sjostrom as old Borgen. I imagine he must have hammed it up a bit more, whereas Dreyer's actors are all so bloody authentic, and you feel so immersed in the harsh reality of their lives, that there's no chance of ordinary entertainment - you either get shaken to your core or you switch off. Tommaso, I'm fully with your reading of the film, and with the idea that Dreyer makes it transcend its apparent religiosity, but by the same token I think this can obscure the often light-hearted tone of the underlying material. I don't exactly mean to criticise the film, by the way - on its own terms it's perfect - just explaining what I meant by calling it a 'comedy'.
It's not like I hear a laughter track while I'm watching it. Though come to think of it, Johannes is a bit like Kramer...