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12 What does the “Real” have to do with the Gertrud’s “talkiness”? Failure, then, is of the essence when speaking of Gertrud, itself the story of a failed marriage, a failed adulterous affair, and a failed attempt to redeem and perhaps rekindle an earlier love. Or at least that’s how the men in Gertrud’s life see it. Part of the enduring seduction of the play, written hastily by Hjalmar Söderberg after he fled to Copenhagen from Stockholm following the dissolution of his affair with Maria von Platen, is Söderberg’s willingness, for all his anger at his truculent ex-lover, to grant, indeed to celebrate, her rejection not only of him but, seemingly, of any entanglement that might obstruct her quest for a love impossibly free of its object. The plot of Söderberg’s play is fairly simple, and Dreyer, in his adaptation, makes it even more so.The film commences in the parlor of Gertrud’s home, as Gertrud and her husband, the soon-to-be-named government minister Gustav Kanning, discuss their failing marriage, as well as the arrival in town of a former lover of Gertrud’s, the poet Gabriel Lidman, who is to be honored the following night at a banquet at which Kanning has been asked to give a toast. Kanning’s domineering mother visits. Gertrud begs leave to go to the opera (Beethoven’s Fidelio, of course). But instead of going to the opera, she meets her young lover, the handsome and gifted composer Erland Jansson. Kanning, on the spur of the moment, goes to the opera house to join Gertrud, whereupon he discovers that Gertrud never arrived there. At the banquet the following night, Gertrud takes ill and removes herself from the party to an adjoining salon, on whose wall is hung the tapestry of the woman and the hounds. She is joined in the salon by her old friend Axel Nygren, who has been away in Paris studying the newly fashionable field of psychiatry. He gives her a pill for her headache (“All the artists in Paris take it,” he says) and she feels somewhat better; the two W hat d oes t he “ Rea l” have to d o w it h G ert ru d ’s “ta l k i n e s s ” ? 13 of them discuss free will, make note of the tapestry, and Nygren tells her a bit about his psychiatric studies, which include hypnotizing a woman who has a “sixth sense.” As the banquet ends, Gertrud’s husband Kanning finds her. He tells her he knows she lied about going to the opera, and even though their marriage is a sham he demands she spend one last night with him. He goes off for a bit, and Gertrud is now joined by her ex-lover Lidman, who alternately implores her in anguish to tell him why she deserted him years ago, while also informing her of a party he attended the night before in the company of the Stockholm demimonde, where he heard young Jansson boasting of his mistresses, Gertrud among them. Jansson arrives, and Gertrud is prevailed upon to sing to the small after-party. Jansson accompanies her on the piano. In the middle of the song she collapses. The next day she meets Jansson in the park; she tells him her marriage is over, but he rejects her, admitting to another affair with a powerful woman who has helped along his career. Back at Gertud’s house, Kanning takes a phone call, leaving Lidman in the parlor as Gertrud enters. She and Lidman talk, and she explains why she left him years ago. (As she explains, we see, in flashback, what caused her rupture—her discovery of a note he had scribbled to himself denigrating women’s love as compared to man’s work). Lidman departs, dejected, and Kanning reenters the room, begging her to stay in their marriage. She tells him she’ll probably move to Paris, now that her lover has broken her heart. In despair, he tells her to go. She does, and he cries out after her. In a final scene, taking place fifty or so years later, Gertrud receives her old friend Axel Nygren at her country home, where he presents her with his latest book of criticism, an appraisal of Racine. He notes that she has not replied to his letters. They speak of their friendship, and of the importance of love...

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