Watch Day of Wrath For Free

People are voting emotionally.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

(BTW, I liked MisterWhiplash's 1/19/2006 comments.) Dreyer's "Day of Wrath" is a terrifying trip back to the early seventeenth century, only without modern conveniences like motor vehicles to get one the Heck out of a crazy community on a perpetual witch hunt. It is a brave film made under military occupation. It depicts life under totalitarianism. It is slowly paced, but not boring.The sequences up to and including the pyre scene are very moving; and certainly have inspired other films.The principal story revolves around a family of four. There's Anne as the young wife of the aging pastor; Absalon, the pastor; Merete, the pastor's mother and Martin the pastor's son. Anne is hated by Merete, one of the most unreasonable figures in the history of cinema. Unfortunately, Merete is well represented by the rest of the community, which is perpetually on the lookout for witches. So, Anne naturally fears she will be denounced.The pastor, psychopathic by today's standards, doesn't satisfy Anne in any way. So, Anne seeks it with Martin, at the risk of giving Merete some food for fodder. Dreyer depicts Anne's love very romantic. There's a scene on a rowboat, in a corn field, by the water. Each location is pleasant, hopeful, and a complete contrast to home life with Absalon.Dreyer's film achieves greatness as he opens the scant possibility that maybe Anne is really a witch after all. In so doing, he takes us emotionally back to the seventeenth century and has us judge her, just as we've seen the grim-faced clergy members do before. He is making us think like members of the Inquisition! This is a complex, brilliant movie made under Nazi occupation about totalitarianism in a parochial, seventeenth century community. It is a miracle it was made at all, and certainly inspires great interest during today's troubled times.

Day of Wrath (1943) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Carl Theodor Dreyer's dark tale about a Reverend (Thorkild Roose) who allows a woman to be burned at the stake for being a witch only to eventually lose his much younger wife (Lisbeth Movin) to his own son (Preben Lerdorff Rye). I've been quite critical of the director with some of his movies and I've always been honest in saying that there's just something about his style that doesn't always work for me but I found DAY OF WRATH to be a completely compelling picture that pretty much grabs you from the start and doesn't let go. I know a lot of people, myself included, has complained about the director's sometimes slow pacing and that slowness is here again but I think it really helps this picture. I really liked the slow start of the picture dealing with the elderly woman who feels that the reverend should spare her life. I thought this led to some interesting situations and in one of the best scenes in the film, the wife questions why or how anyone could be given so much power. I also really enjoyed the middle section of the film dealing with the relationship between the wife and son. At first I was really wondering how on Earth these two could have fallen in love so fast and especially since we didn't see it happen but I think this here pays off towards the end of the picture. The three lead actors all do a terrific job in their part and I was especially impressed with Movin as I found her to be incredibly touching in her role as well as highly seductive. The beautiful cinematography is another major plus for the film and I really loved the use of darkness and shadows. DAY OF WRATH is a very open and honest look at religion and love and I think it ranks as one of the director's best films.

Just borrowing a phrase with my summary, and not trying to trivialize "Day Of Wrath", an extraordinarily powerful film. I think we in the States are not used to films as masterfully done and as impactful as this one.In the 17th century - Europe as well as in the States - witchcraft and witch hunts were all the rage, an age of ignorance during the Age Of Enlightment. How quaint and simplistic a notion that someone could be a witch just by anothers accusation! Director Carl Dreyer brings this idea home to us in this methodical masterpiece in harrowing detail. His story centers on a young Danish woman who goes from mouse-wife to temptress to doomed heroine. She is surrounded throughout the picture by hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness and in the end she succumbs to Christian ideals, the same ones she had been struggling to suppress for most of the picture.You can watch until your eyes drop out and you won't find a scene not executed to perfection in all departments. I am not familiar with the actors but they were outstanding down to the smallest part. The pacing, like a Bergman film, is slow and deliberate, much the same way it would have been lived out in the 1600's. The Inquisition-type scene involving the old accused woman is even slower still, making the scene all the more horrifying, even though the torture is in the viewers mind and not on screen. Note how slowly the camera pans around the chamber of judges.There are so many scenes worth mentioning, but it's best to see the picture for yourself if you haven't. It is an unforgettable treatment of nasty, unsavory material.

I always say that movies should transport the viewer out of their own lives and into the film's. By the time Merthe exits her shack through the back way to escape the mob, and the scene shifts to the well-to-do Pastor's house, both very early in the film, one is so thoroughly inside late medieval Denmark that it's tough to get back to the Land of the Living when the film is over. Movie gets two points off for unnecessarily spacious editing and some redundant moments, but it's really killer stuff all the same. Merthe's character, a seemingly minor one, simply leaps off the screen and won't let you go. Similarly, other minor characters are amazingly well executed as well.