It’s been ages since I’ve written anything here – too many distractions since early December.
Maybe I’ll find more time and motivation in the weeks to come…in the meantime, I thought I’d share something about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s last film, Gertrud. I saw it once, years ago – it was a film I could respect but it didn’t leave much of an impression.
Yesterday, I came across a brief review written by Andrew Sarris back in the day (1964 to be exact). His passionate defense makes it clear that Dreyer’s austere approach had become very polarizing…hardly a shock, given the emergence of the French New Wave and the way world cinema was evolving back then. More striking is Sarris’ observation in the opening paragraph:
“Gertrud is a sternly beautiful work of art with none of the fashionable flabbiness of second-chance sentimentality exemplified most vividly in Monica Vitti’s compassionate caress of Gabriele Ferzetti in the final, ultimate blank-wall composition of L’Avventura. Dreyer has lived long enough to know that you live only once and that all decisions are paid in full to eternity.”
The film focuses on a woman who abandons her marriage in hopes of idealized love (which Sarris describes as a “genuine idealism, however intolerant” rather than “foolish fantasizing”). Coming from Dreyer, it’s doubtful anyone could expect a great resolution to this story…
What the characters do find, according to Sarris, is that love is “the only consolation of memory,” a terrible realization to make when everything’s been lost and very little time is left…it’s enough to make one revisit Gertrud and see this for themselves.
