The Great Movies III

These scenes are intercut with Inger going into labor back at the farm. The doctor, a tall, cool man, arrives to consult with the midwife. He intervenes to save Inger's life. His work, shielded by a sheet, is so difficult that he bares his teeth in a grimace. This is the most painful scene of medical procedure I have ever experienced in a film, even though it is only suggested, not seen.

Now I will not tell you the rest of the story, at least not in so many words. Up to this point, I have practiced more description than "criticism," because to closely observe this film is to criticize it, struggle with it, respond to it, understand it, and finally respect it. It is what it is, fearlessly, without compromise. Its characters lead their lives in their own ways, not for the convenience of the plot or the audience. They stand where they stand.

It turns out, after all, that some things are more important than others. That there are different kinds and depths of belief. That although all the adults except Johannes believe the Lord no longer works miracles, Morten may have been correct that a prayer must be believed to be successful. Dogma is meaningless without faith, but faith does not need dogma.

The lives of everyone in this film depend entirely on religion. It could be shown in any church in the world, with a few adjustments to the subtitles to supply words other than "Christian." Yet I find from Rosenbaum that Dreyer was not a particularly religious man, and this film is not intended to proselytize. It simply intends to see.

That it does astonishingly well. The rude, simple sets have the solidity of a universe. The outdoor shots, of searches for the runaway Johannes on the moors, or a buggy ride across the horizon, are almost abstractly beautiful. Much is offscreen: the Borgensfarm sow that has had piglets is much watched, never seen. Peter's house has only a sign and a doorway. The doctor's car is established only by its headlights. The grim reaper is seen only by Johannes.

The camera movements have an almost godlike quality. At several points, such as during the prayer meeting, they pan back and forth slowly, relentlessly, hypnotically. There are a few movements of astonishing complexity, beginning in the foreground, somehow arriving at the background, but they flow so naturally you may not even notice them. The lighting, in black and white, is celestial-not in a joyous but in a detached way. The climactic scene could have been handled in countless conventional ways, but the film has prepared us for it, and it has a grave, startling power.

When the film was over, I had plans. I could not carry them out. I went to bed. Not to sleep. To feel. To puzzle about what had happened to me. I had started by viewing a film that initially bored me. It had found its way into my soul. Even after the first half hour, I had little idea what power awaited me, but now I could see how those opening minutes had to be as they were.

I have books about Dreyer on the shelf. I did not take them down. I taught a class based on the Schrader book, although I did not include Ordet. I did not open it to see what he had to say. Rosenbaum has written often about Dreyer, but when I quote him here, it is only things he has said to me. I did not want secondary information, analysis, context. The film stands utterly and fearlessly alone. Many viewers will turn away from it. Persevere. Go to it. It will not come to you.

ost crime movies begin in the present and move forward, but film noir coils back into the past. The noir hero is doomed before the story beginsby fate, rotten luck, or his own flawed character. Crime movies sometimes show good men who go bad. The noir hero is never good, just kidding himself, living in ignorance of his dark side until events demonstrate it to him.

Out of the Past (1947) is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The movie stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.

Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, whose name was Jeff Markham when he was working as a private eye out of New York. In those days he was hired by a gangster named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas, electrifying in an early role) to track down a woman named Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer, irresistibly mixing sexiness and treachery). Kathie shot Sterling four times, hitting him once, and supposedly left with $40,000 of his money. Sterling wants Jeff to bring her back. It's not, he says, that he wants revenge: "I just want her back. When you see her, you'll understand better."