Carl Dreyer, one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema, as well as one of the greatest artists ever to work in the medium, is TCM’s featured director this month, September 04.
His masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc, will be shown midnight Eastern time this Sunday, doubling as part of TCM’s Silent Sunday Night. In all, twelve of his films will be shown–including one of the most eerily atmospheric films of all time, Vampyr.
Every single title featured is worthy of taping. I hope enough of you watch them to generate some discussion here.
Holy cow, thanks for the heads-up, lissener. If I was forced to choose only 5 films that I could watch for the rest of my life, **Ordet** would be one of them. There’s a terrific DVD box set out, but for those who can’t quite afford it, this’ll be a great opportunity.
Oh, and Vampyr is probably my favorite vampire movie (apologies to Murnau).
The first time I saw Vampyr… well, it’s a German-language film, and we saw a version that was subtitled in Swedish. Sigh. It actually didn’t matter, the visuals were so compelling that we didn’t need to understand the dialog.
Oh, there was the bit with the woman crying, “Blud! Blud!” We got that.
Heh. Reminds me of the time I was in Switzerland and saw a French film, La Marge. It was subtitled, but in German, so I had only a vague idea of what was going on.
Man leaves family to go on trip to Paris. Man utilizes services of a call girl. Man gets letter from housekeeper saying kid drowned in swimming pool and wife committed suicide. Man shoots self in car. The End.
I was thinking I might have missed some of the finer points, but judging from the comments on IMDB apparently not.
Oh, and to get this back on topic, here’s Carl’s entry in the IMDB. Impressive list.
The Passion of Joan of Arc is on TCM in about 6 hours! 12a Eastern, 9p Pacific. It’s preceded at 10/7 by a two hour documentary about Dreyer, and followed by Vampyr.
