From the Chicago Reader (November 8, 2007). — J.R.
Most of Raul Ruiz’s films have some element of deadpan surreal farce; this one’s a farce through and through. When an ethereal Swiss lunatic (Elsa Zylberstein) comes in line to inherit the equivalent of several countries, her venal father (Michel Piccoli) schemes to have her bumped off by another nutcase. As corpses pile up, a couple of local cops indulge in some hilarious rationalizations for doing nothing. The sweetness of Zylberstein’s performance and the ambience in general are oddly old-fashioned — reminiscent of Harvey and Arsenic and Old Lace — while the gracefully meandering camera echoes the domestic thrillers of Claude Chabrol. Alas, this is second-best Ruiz and wears out its welcome before the end. Still, it has its share of wit and invention. In French with subtitles. 105 min. (JR)
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The following, a revision and substantial expansion of liner notes that I wrote for the Criterion DVD of Day of Wrath several years ago, was written for the Australian DVD, which came out in 2008 on the Madman label — as did my essay on Ordet. (One can order DVDs from Madman’s site, and by now they have quite a collection.) My thanks to Alexander Strang for giving me permission to reprint this. — J.R.
Figuring Out Day of Wrath by Jonathan Rosenbaum
I first encountered Carl Dreyer’s work in my teens, but it wasn’t until my 40s that I started to be ready for it. I mainly had to rely on lousy 16-millimeter prints, so ruinous to the sounds and images of Day of Wrath that I could look at that film only as a form of painterly academicism, a repressed view of repression. The film defeated me with its unalleviated Danish gloom and its dull pacing, which I associated with Dreyer’s strict Lutheran upbringing. Most of this was sheer nonsense, as I discovered once I had access to better prints, information, and reflexes. For one thing, contrary to many would-be reference works, Dreyer’s upbringing was neither strict nor Lutheran, and he was born a Swede, even if he grew up in Denmark. Read more
