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

Photo section

Original page of text with Dreyer’s notations. Coaching the little sister (deleted scene): Susanne Rud and Dreyer. Dreyer looks through the camera, with Karen Petersen (script girl) in the background. Identity photo of Jan Wahl, Copenhagen, 1954. Dorothy Lovell’s pencil portrait of Dreyer, 1954. Valdemar Kristensen (owner of the farm), Erik Aaes (set designer), Dreyer. Gerda Nielsen and Dreyer get acquainted. (Above) Lunch break (left to right): Dreyer, Emil Hass Christensen , Henrik Malberg, Karen Petersen, Jan Wahl (in black sweater), Cay Kristiansen, crew members. (Below) Kaj Munk’s widow comes to visit (left to right): her daughter, Dreyer, Emil Hass Christensen, Fru Munk, her son. (Above) Setting up a shot on the dunes (left to right): Jesper Gottschalch (Dreyer’s assistant), Dreyer, John Carlsen, Erik Willumsen. (Below) A child looks through the camera as Preben Lerdorff, Henning Bendtsen, Dreyer, an unknown man, and John Carlsen look on, while Erik Willumsen sets up a shot. Waiting for the sign: Johannes (Preben Lerdorff). Looking for Johannes: his brother Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen), his father Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg), and his brother Anders (Cay Kristiansen). Cay Kristiansen, Henrik Malberg, Birgitte Federspiel (Inger), Hass Christensen. Anne (Gerda Nielsen) takes leave of her father, Peter (Einar Federspiel). A shot maybe too beautiful to include. (Above) Meeting of the “sour-faced” ones. (Below) Coffee and lovers: Cay Kristiansen, Sylvia Eckhausen (Anne’s mother), Gerda Nielsen. “Come over to our side”: Henrik Malberg and Einar Federspiel. Cay Kristiansen, Henrik Malberg, Einar Federspiel, Gerda Nielsen, Sylvia Eckhausen. Blessed are the children: Preben Lerdorff and Elisabeth Groth (the older sister). Waiting for the news: Emil Hass Christensen, Henrik Malberg, Cay Kristiansen. The birth room: Birgitte Federspiel and Henrik Malberg. The funeral scene: Cay Kristiansen, Birgitte Federspiel, Henrik Malberg. The Vicar (Ove Rud) prays over Inger (Birgitte Federspiel). Johannes now clear of mind: Birgitte Federspiel, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff. A child can believe: Preben Lerdorff and Elisabeth Groth. Now the life begins: Cay Kristiansen resets the clock. Leaves from a journal 87 Jokingly, I tell Karen Petersen about the 1929 child’s book; she says yes, D. is aware of it, but unless a more correct book can be located, he likes the cover on that one. . . . Besides—she has spent most of a hectic day searching for a 1924 Jutland newspaper. (What happened to 1925 newspaper I delivered?) The woman from the studio’s canteen is placing silverware in the chest of the living room during a lull—strictly under the supervision of D. and Aaes the architect. D. also checking on prop books again—and pulling down the blinds of windows in the room of Johannes and Anders. D. decides Anders would own a camera—lays well-worn black box camera at the boy’s windowsill. He rearranges the altar book and tablet and pencil at Johannes ’s sill. This is one reason he’d never go to Hollywood. “If I move a flower pot, I must go to the florists’ union!” He notices the tapestry picture of Christ above old Borgen ’s bed has a “good likeness to Lerdorff.” That pleases him. At the desk in the living room sit samples of seeds and, at the window above, a rack of test tubes with seedlings. “A progressive farm!” he chuckles. The pair of doors in the festival room, as noted, lead nowhere. They are mounted “on fearsome feet.” There will be a clock on the wall, stopped—which Mikkel sets into motion at the film’s end when Inger sits up in the coffin. One cupboard. Otherwise, the room is quite bare, stripped of any festive air. It’s amazing how lighting brings a set to life: now arranging lamps outside the windows, Ove Hansen and other Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet 88 men are giving an effect of early-morning light—more correctly , “moonlight.” Earlier, D. and others made the beds—plumping them, making them look “slept in.” Rather chilly here in the studio, so Cay Kristiansen and Henrik Malberg remain fully dressed. Birgitte Federspiel has blanket wrapped about her...