Gertrud
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
Gertrud, a former opera singer in Stockholm in the early 20th century, is married to the lawyer and politician Gustav Kanning. Gertrud tells her husband that he has become more in love with his career and status than with her. She also tells him that she has met another man who loves her more than anything else, and that she therefore prefers him to her husband and wants a divorce.
Gertrud meets her lover, the promising young pianist Erland Jansson, in a park. The two go to Jansson's house. Gertrud tells him how devoted she is to him. In the evening Gustav goes to pick Gertrud up at the opera where she had said she would be, but can't find her. The next evening the Kannings attend a dinner party at the house of the poet Gabriel Lidman, with whom Gertrud has had a relationship in the past. Gertrud greets her friend Axel Nygren who attends the same party. Gustav confronts Gertrud about the opera, and demands one last night with her before the separation. Lidman tells Gertrud that he had met Jansson at a party where he had bragged about Gertrud as his latest conquest.
When Gertrud meets with Jansson the next day she tells him that she wants to go away with him and leave everything else behind. He tells her that he cannot, because he is expecting a child with another woman. Lidman makes an attempt to persuade Gertrud to leave with him instead, but without success; when Lidman and Gertrud were a couple, just like Kanning, he had valued his career above her. Kanning makes a last attempt to persuade Gertrud to stay with him, even allowing her to keep her lover at the same time. The attempt fails and Gertrud moves alone to Paris to study psychology.
Thirty years later, Gertrud, together with Nygren, looks back at her life. She says that love is the only thing that means anything in life. She is now alone because of her refusal to compromise on that position, but does not regret anything.

Review: Now, of course, all three films are considered masterpieces but while "Vertigo" and "The Searchers" were commercial films aimed at a mass audience, "Gertrud" was strictly art-house, the kind of film critics were expected to like.
It was a time for young film-makers and Dreyer was an old man.
Of course, hindsight is a great thing and today "Gertrud" seems more 'modern' than many of the fashionable 'flash-in-the-pan' movies that hit us in the sixties and which now seem like time-capsules from a by-gone age.
"Gertrud's" almost somnambulist pace and Dreyer's insistence on long takes, keeping his actors mostly static while allowing his camera to move, however slowly and deliberately, instead now seems almost revolutionary at a time when movies were chiefly about movement and movement in a pell-mell style.
At the beginning of the film Gertrud leaves her stuffed-shirt of a husband because he's not prepared to love her unconditionally and attaches herself to a younger man who showers with romantic affection.
It is a cold movie, it moves at a snail's pace and it is a film of ideas almost devoid of emotion if not feeling, (there is so little happening on screen it often seems like it could just as easily have been done on the radio).
Whiteness has overcome her and it is as lethal as the powder in the mill of Dreyer's Vampyr.This is a film that must be watched several times in order for all its qualities to be revealed.
Most of Gertrud consists of two people at a time sitting on couches and facing opposite directions - no character in this film can bring themselves to look at someone else.
Although Gertrud is ostensibly a heroine - with the title as it is, we're almost required to believe that she is correct in her thoughts and actions and identify with her - as the film progresses it becomes more and more obvious that she is as much or more of the problem as the men whom she tends to blame.
Cinema Great Carl Dreyer's final film is said to be his masterpiece as well.
The viewer quickly learns that Gertrud is about to end what appeared to be years of boredom as the "attache" of a man who lives mainly for his secular accomplishments.
Despite his protests and assurances that he couldn't live without her, she leaves to see a lover.Drawn to men of the arts, Gertrud herself was once a celebrated opera singer.
Gertrud's extreme sense of pride, as noticed by a young musical genius who sees her as a convenient fling, leaves no wavering of the determined mind.If this film appeared to be scandalous in 1964, how would society view this kind of real activity in the early 1900s?
A critically acclaimed film, "Gertrud" nonetheless lacks entertainment value due to its fatalistic story telling.
Seeing Gertrud some fifty years after its initial release - Carl Dreyer's last film by the way, and one wonders if he knew it would be the last - I can understand why: this is very, very understated filmmaking and acting.
Dreyer is much more experimental; characters only every once in a while will even *look* at one another in a scene as they talk - and you'll find out if you watch, there is a lot of talking, it's based on a play and it feels every moment of it.
It's certainly not exactly a "fun" time at the movies, but that doesn't mean anything - so many movies out there bring with it the expectation that you'll get some kind of emotional or intellectual catharsis or consciousness-expansion out of it (Dreyer's previous Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath are hard to watch at times, but the thrill of filmmaking is there in spades).
This is, after all, the world of the upper class that we're seeing as Gertrud is in this loveless marriage, and yet even leaving is such a difficult task - women so rarely left their husbands then that's how you got plays that were so groundbreaking as A Doll;s House - so you have to look deeper to see what's there.The takes on these actors last quite a while as well; why have unnecessary cuts when a long take will do just fine?
It's easy to see people feeling antsy watching it, and it's a difficult film to defend in the sense of 'Well, the movie's really entertaining, it is!' It's not an easy sit.
It's also about how men look at a woman such as Gertrud, and as stubborn as she may be there is more complexity to her thinking and how her view of love and dependency changes.
And for as little as seems to be happening with the cuts or those precious moments where characters look at one another (or, for that matter, those gulfs of time spent looking off into nothingness, trying to find something to fill the void in themselves), everything that does happen matters.Ultimately, Dreyer made a film where we have to see these people.
The Carl Dreyer's film, Gertrud, is the last masterpiece of the great director.
A small gesture and sound effect at the very end of the coda epitomize the complexity of feeling that Dreyer creates about the worldly renunciations and imaginative substitutions in Gertrud.
Dreyer's final film views as a testament to idealism, the desire to put love above everything else in life and the cruel reality which thwarts this.
Carl Theodor Dreyer marked his place forever in the film canon for his terrific masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc. Back in film's most primitive stages, he managed to lift it out from its limitations and give us one of the greatest performances of all-time from Maria Falconetti.
In that limitation, Dreyer makes elegant use of camera movements with long takes that are constantly changing frame size, it's really magnificent to watch.
I was completely shocked when I first saw this masterpiece, and I still get shocked every time I see it again.Dreyer's long and austere takes will not, of course, be liked by many, easy-goers, because he achieved by them to tell the unspeakable, he reached true Art. But to appreciate this means to have previously developed and refined one's taste, a tough effort which unfortunately not everybody is willing to make.
For the chilly, statuesque wife in Carl Dreyer's last film Gertrud, love is not a living, breathing reality, but an ideal to be sought in its purest form.
With its long takes and static camera, it seems at odds with the French New Wave jump cuts and innovative techniques, yet it has much in common with those films of the 60s that depict the soulless fragmentation and alienation of modern life even though Gertrud takes place at the turn of the century.In Gertrud, love is something to strive for but is unattainable on Earth and each character (like perhaps Dreyer himself) is a figure living to one degree or another in loneliness.
Based on a 1906 play of the same name by Hjalmar Soderberg, Gertrud (Nina Pens Rode), a former professional singer, is an emotionally unfulfilled woman who finds something missing in the four primary relationships in her life.
She is married to Gustav (Bendt Rothe), an ambitious politician, but sees him as being more interested in his career than in her.She is in love with a young concert pianist, Erland Jannson (Baard Owe), but is repelled by his consorting with other women and using her name to brag to others about his conquests.
In the drive to the opera, we are privy to Gustav's thoughts, the only time during the film that we are allowed entry into the character's mind.
However, in one of the film's most telling moments, shown in flashback, she recalls finding a note on Gabriel's desk that says "A woman's love and a man's work are mortal enemies".
I was however very familiar with his other works like La passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Ordet and Vampyr which I have ranked among the best movies ever made - Jeanne d'Arc being the absolute early zenith of Dreyer's career as an incomparable artistic genius.
The emptiness of soul that follows almost every great film of this caliber and theme; catharsis if you will.Many critics have seen this film – that is by the way based on Swedish playwright's Hjalmar Söderberg's play – more like an ibsenian or strindbergian social commentary or a story about the difficulty of common understanding between the sexes.
I'm not saying this is wrong per se, but I also like to see that the film deals with subjects common to whole human condition.Amor omnia, says Gertrud near the end of the film.
That is also the lifeblood and essence of the film, even though life and love seldom seem to go the way we expect they would turn out.
It's all about the unbearable emotional distance of a married couple, distance that in life is sometimes irreconcilable – isn't the true tragedy of life becoming emotionally estranged from the ones we used to love and hold dear?In a way the character of Gertrud mirrors the whole spectrum of human condition.
Probably not, but still we all have the same qualities as Gertrud in the film – chasing her desires blindly and being constantly unhappy with our lot in life – a truly universal character I would dare to say!Cinematography is downplayed on purpose but mastered with sharp contrasts and is generally excellent.
The composition of images and scenes are like a textbook example of artistic control.There is also something little bit bergmanian in the whole story and film, which is also the reason I would like to recommend this film to people – were they young or old – who are in custom to hold on to these maybe little bit naïve (mis)conceptions of love and life.
When you first start watching it, the film feels like a bad SNL sketch where the host hasn't memorized his lines, constantly looking at cue cards.
The film is set up with long, hypnotic takes as a staged play, with the actors sometimes moving into new positions just to appear more stage-like.
It takes a few to get into the style and familiarize ourselves with the bareness; it's not so much that it's boring as that it's largely silent.The characters exist both as mouthpieces for Carl Dreyer and as people in real situations.
I actually watched the movie with the lights on, purposely, so I wouldn't get absorbed in the story, so I could always be aware of what was really going on.So it's about marriage and love and commitment on one simple level -- there's a joke about it, too: the opera Gertrud says she's going to is "Fidelio." Gertrud says she's leaving her husband; another man, Lidman, a celebrated poet, wants her; and she's having an affair with a young musician, Erland.
Sometimes you need someone like Gertrud (or Dreyer) to remind you of that simple truth.
Married woman has affair with younger man, falls in love, wants to leave husband.
Younger man doesn't love married woman, married woman decides to leave husband anyway and live the rest of her life alone.
Conversations are carried out in a detached and deadpan manner and are rife with philosophical platitudes about love and male-female misunderstandings.Watching this film feels like sitting in the theatre watching a high brow, boring and pretentious stage play.
After viewing this film, I wondered if Gertrud still had a blank expression even during love making..
Although he had a very long career, the time between films was often very long-- sometimes a decade or so as is the case with "Gertrud".
Sadly, though, the movie is just dreadful--- the sort of pretentious and boring drivel some artsy folks might like but also the sort of film that most people would truly hate.The story is very simple.
Carl Theodor Dreyer has always been seen as one of cinema's greats and his movies have been praised everywhere and are still being watched by many movie fanatics now days.
It pretty much is a psychological movie, since it gives you a look into the mind of a woman, in search of love and true happiness, without having to make any compromises for it.Also visually, Carl Theodor Dreyer's last movie, is a wonderful looking one.
In the elegant world of artists and musicians, Gertrud ends her marriage to Gustav and takes a lover, the composer Erland Jansson.What we have here is a world of light and shadows and an ever-lingering camera.
I had to watch this movie because I'm a Cinema student, and for a final exam, I had to explore Carl Dreyer's filmography.
Even I enjoyed every film he's done, Gertrud and Ordet were the ones that I liked the most.
The Latin words Gertrud says at the end, "Amor omniae est" describe in a perfect way the message (in my opinion) Carl was trying to give in this film.
Compared to Andrei Rublev this one is easy watching.And yes, the actors look like robots but that's the film's style!.
Carl Theodore Dreyer was known for his perfectionism, so it's odd that his final film contains some slips - namely: (1) the mike boom is clearly visible in the upper center left of the frame during the first scene in the Kannings' living room; (2) in the same scene the husband looks out the window and comments on how early darkness is falling at this time of year (presumably autumn) and the wife tells him she plans to go to the opera; so we assume it's an autumn evening in a Scandinavian city.
Carl Theodor Dreyer's final movie focuses on a woman who decides that she no longer wants to be with her husband.
Such is what one will find if one reads the reviews for Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's final film Gertrud, made in 1964.
Like Saraband, Gertrud is a bad film primarily because of its atrocious screenplay.
All the characters in this film succumb to the idiotic strictures that Gertrud imposes upon herself, strictures designed to limit any real love, and to cast herself in the role of martyr, occupied by other female characters in the Dreyer canon- Joan of Arc, Anne from Day Of Wrath, and Inger from Ordet.
This bad use of symbolism, as well the indulgence of a cliché, and Dreyer's inexplicable inability to see it as such, is what dooms Gertrud as a work of art, yet make a viewer thankful that the man lived only four more years, and never had a chance to make another film.
Gertrud is a really bad film, and I always mean every word I say..
The film is about an upper class woman named Gertrud who attempts to find satisfaction through her relationships with men.
In other words, whether the viewer sees Gertrud as a protagonist or an antagonist will affect the way the film is understood.
This was the last film from director Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr, Ordet), and this Danish film was listed as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die in the book, so I was very keen.
Basically, set in the early 20th Century in Stockholm, former opera singer Gertrud (Nina Pens Rode) is married to lawyer and politician Gustav Kanning (Bendt Rothe), she tells him that she has become upset that he cares more about his career and status than her, and she confesses that she has met another man who loves her and vice versa, so she wants a divorce.
Gertrud decides to give her new lover the chance to redeem himself by telling him she wants to leave everything else behind and go away with him, but he reveals he cannot do this as he is expecting another woman to give birth to his child.
Thirty years pass, and Gertrud looks back at her life and says to Nygen that the only meaningful thing in life is love, but she has not compromised her position being alone and giving into the attention of any man, she does not regret this decision or anything else.
The story of a woman having an affair out of marriage with another man who is not really in love with her is a good concept, the film is full of clever and interesting to watch scenes, especially those with long takes, including a near ten minute talk between the poet and his former love, the costumes and sets in black and white were good too, it is was a very intriguing and likable drama.
Gertrud is unlike any other film or movie that I have EVER seen.
Dreyer's characters are restrained in emotion and rarely look at each other, since they usually face the camera in very low-action dialogues with very simple set designs.
I watch this in my film class, and this is one of the times that I wanted to skip the movie.
The only character I liked, was the first and second husband (as you got the felling that they still loved her).
While I loved The Passion of Joan of Arc and enjoyed Vampyr and Day of Wrath, this film - his last - left me cold.
The whole film feels artificial and robotic which is ironic considering the main themes are how people search for their idealized notion of love.
Stolid, deadly earnest, but still enjoyable Danish film which slowly reveals middle-aged Gertrud's emotional life with dull husband (politician), new lover (composer), former lover (poet), and future loving friend (art critic/writer).
(For all we know, maybe the original stage play by Söderberg =was= more subtle and humorous than Dreyer's movie version.) In conclusion here is a little question for my fellow armchair critics: if this story was adapted and directed by Ingmar Bergman (the amusing Bergman of the 1950's), how would the film have ended?