Review of Gertrud (1964) by Art S — 13 Jul 2010

I take back what I said about Gertrud being a hard film to love. Yes the style is completely and utterly uncompromising, it is a very cold and lonely film to watch, there are no "sympathetic characters we can easily identify with", and it has been deliberately photographed, written, directed and acted to carry out this mantra of harsh loneliness.

The story itself concerns Gertrud, a woman with an uncompromising ideal of love that will not bend for any man, whether he's a former flame and poet, an intellectual psychologist, a talented young musician or even her politician husband.

Impossible to fully unravel, extremely easy to admire, a supremely complex study on the contradictions of love, a woman's place in society, how free will and fate affect our lives, the balance of power within a relationship and whether or not one can be truly free if one is in love.

To think the true tragedy of the words in the script aren't even fully articulated makes the whole story that much more devastating. More of a film that requires analysis from the viewer instead of entertaining them, Gertrud has a serious claim to be the best film ever made, for Dreyer utilises every cinematic tool to create his harsh worldview that always remains objective on the conflicted woman at the cold heart of the film, it's so complex that one film scholar wrote an entire book on just a single scene from "Gertrud".