Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker

Chapter 10. The word that crushes cliffs

The two or three days little Gerda Nielsen had envisioned stretched out for weeks. We drank lots of Fru Kristensen’s strong coffee. One morning during a downpour, “Vicar” Ove Rud and I took refuge in a shed at Borgensgaard. He mentioned the Stanislavsky method of directing, then turned to the Dreyer method. “He has in his head every exact movement or shade he wants,” Ove told me. “The swing of the shoulders, the pauses. Everything is explained.” So there was no need to refer to a script during the actual shooting. We lightened the conversation when a flock of hens found shelter with us. I enjoyed the sight of Ove Rud in his Vicar’s robe, surrounded, saint-like, by fluttering chickens. We amused ourselves by discussing the psychology of the The word that crushes cliffs 10 Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet 76 birds that pecked near our boots, searching for invisible food. We decided they were pretty dim-witted. The geese, however, were different. Somehow, Dreyer was able to enchant them by the power of his personality, perhaps connecting at an unknown level. He stared at them until he and the geese found a harmonious solution. During one shot, he wanted a black goose to wend its way in and out among white geese crossing the road. Ultimately, he was victorious. Often, in the privacy of the hotel, Dreyer continued to explore biblical topics. To my relief, every now and then, out of nowhere, he shifted gears. Once, he mentioned that it was “impossible” to render an automobile satisfactorily in a painting. “But maybe the machinist Léger might try it!” he chuckled. Obviously, Dreyer revered Henrik Malberg. The old fellow took more and more to his bed on chilly days. Dreyer admitted that he loved working with older actors “because they give themselves up to you more easily.” Often, on the location shoots, reporters and photographers intruded. Dreyer was always polite to them—winning them over by his lack of temperament, by his quiet demeanor, much as he had enchanted those geese. The sort of photo nonsense they wished for had little to do with the work at hand. One photo was of me, examining the clapper upon which Herr Gottschalch had written, as the journalists suggested : “ORDET, Scene I.” It seemed to please them. I took a tumble one afternoon while Gerda Nielsen practiced a scene; in fact, I fell three times into a low drainage ditch, lying there bleeding until Bendtsen’s wife (who was The word that crushes cliffs 77 again picking blackberries) improvised a bandage. That night I kept falling, even in my sleep. By July’s end, Ove Rud left for a vacation in Germany until he was required at the studio. Hass Christensen returned to Copenhagen. Dreyer insisted it was imperative to get perfect the key scene of the sermon by the mad Johannes. And he said he realized how he might improve the previous ruined scene. Johannes had been too far back from the camera; therefore , Preben Lerdorff’s expressions were not clear enough. So Dreyer set out with Bendtsen in the old Dodge, searching for a different spot for that scene. The scene, to which I was not privy, was the crucial one in which Johannes’s sanity totally returns during his “camping out” as he prays to God. The scene is notable, as well, because of the physical change that occurs in Johannes. Here, he abandons the appearance of the Christ. In shots directly preceding this one (though, in reality, shot afterward), Lerdorff isn’t wearing a wig; it is his own hair parted in the center and combed straight to the sides. Since these shots are not in close-up, the difference cannot be detected. I stayed in the sound truck as Lerdorff stood at the edge of a clearing in the evergreen forest. From a distance, I saw the crew holding the reflectors ready. In long shot, the picture is of Johannes, greatcoat over his arm, walking toward a pine tree. He sits. The close-up with dialogue lasts two minutes. In earnest, he prays: “Jesus Christ. It pains me to see my brother like this, here where two people really loved one another and then Death broke the cord between them. Tell me, Jesus Christ, if it is possible to give her a return to life. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet 78...