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Biographical Scandinavia Visual Artists

My Metier is a documentary about the life of Carl Theodore Dreyer. It's fairly definitive and strikes me as being an essential "film study" sort of document. Carl is one of those guys that was there from somewhere around the beginning of film. His first work was in the silents and nearly all of it has been influential as hell.

This movie deals with The Passion of Jeanne d' Arc, Dreyer's first truly major work, Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud in some depth. There's quite a bit of footage from the films and a lot of information about technique, style and philosophies as well as many quotes from Dreyer and a few other notables. They've even added a short biography of Maria Falconetti, the star of Jeanne d' Arc. This includes some really comprehensive biographical information; everything from Dreyer's hospitalization, due to the stress of making Vampyr, to the many difficult times in his life and the moves from country to country.

This film's makers have managed to make great use of the dissolve; putting together a really nifty, swirling, shifting, montage of translucent images that stops moving only for the interviews and for the actual footage from the films. They keep things fairly consistent with the look of Dreyer's films. The look of this is dark and dreary, stark and just a bit artsy and the interviews are shot with some fairly harsh, hard lighting. A few of them look as if they might work as a scene from a horror film. They definitely work well with the Dreyer footage. There are a few mild religious overtones as well. Most of that's due to the clips from the movies but, I suppose it's a little difficult not to discuss religion when discussing Dreyer's films.

In addition to the documentary, the disk comes with the out-takes from several of the interviews that are featured in the film.

I've added Dreyer to the director listing below because this is a nifty aid when it comes to learning about his films as well as the fact that he actually did direct the clips that make up most of this film.