Mubi is exclusively streaming restored versions of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom I (1994) and The Kingdom II (1997), and will be premiering episodes of The Kingdom: Exodus (2022) beginning November 27, 2022.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Lars von Trier. Photo by Peter Hjorth.While many may proclaim the death of the author, and even more acknowledge that cinema is an art far more collaborative than the idea of a film's auteur suggests, there are nevertheless certain directors whose name on a film carries undeniable connotations. Among contemporary filmmakers, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier is one of the hardest to ignore. But this is not to say one knows exactly what one is getting with every von Trier picture. On the contrary, not only are his stylistic tendencies extensive and varied, but the stories he tells, even those ostensibly contained within thematic trilogies,...
- 12/1/2022
- MUBI
"The enjoyment of a work of art, the acceptance of an irresistible illusion, constituting, to my sense, our highest experience of "luxury," the luxury is not greatest, by my consequent measure, when the work asks for as little attention as possible. It is greatest, it is delightfully, divinely great, when we feel the surface, like the thick ice of the skater's pond, bear without cracking the strongest pressure we throw on it. The sound of the crack one may recognise, but never surely to call it a luxury." —Henry James, from The Preface to The Wings of the Dove (1909) "[The critic’s] choice of best salami is a picture backed by studio build-up, agreement amongst his colleagues, a layout in Life mag (which makes it officially reasonable for an American award), and a list of ingredients that anyone’s unsophisticated aunt in Oakland can spot as comprising a distinguished film. This prize picture,...
- 7/27/2015
- by Greg Gerke
- MUBI
Final paintings, final books, and final films are often read into because of their terminating chronology. Did the artist know they were close to death? How is that shown in the art? When he died in 1968, Carl Dreyer had many projects lined up, including Medea and Jesus of Nazareth, which he had been preparing and researching for years, to the point of learning Hebrew. His last films, Ordet in 1955 and Gertrud in 1964, embody the exacting visual style he forged during his fifty-five-year career—a style he explicated in short essays written ten and twenty years before Gertrud. Being a director who worked with and without sound, we should trust Dreyer when he says film “first and foremost directs itself to the eye, and that the picture far, far more easily than the spoken word penetrates deeply into a spectator’s consciousness.”1 Gerturd is as much about the eponymous character's face...
- 12/18/2014
- by Greg Gerke
- MUBI
The Passion of Carl Dreyer opens tomorrow at BFI Southbank in London and runs through March 23. The complete retrospective will not only feature rarely screened early works such as the newly restored melodrama The President (1919) but also an extended run of what many deem to be Dreyer's best, Ordet (The Word, 1955) — indeed, for Jonathan Rosenbaum, it remains "one of the greatest of all films," period.
The British Film Institute is kindly making a copy of its release of Ordet on DVD available to one of the lucky souls who can answer this question: What's the name of the cinema Dreyer ran in Copenhagen?
Even if the name's not on the tip of your tongue, it shouldn't be too hard to dig up, which is why we're going to have to choose a winner at random from all those who answer correctly. It'll be worth the dig: the BFI edition of...
The British Film Institute is kindly making a copy of its release of Ordet on DVD available to one of the lucky souls who can answer this question: What's the name of the cinema Dreyer ran in Copenhagen?
Even if the name's not on the tip of your tongue, it shouldn't be too hard to dig up, which is why we're going to have to choose a winner at random from all those who answer correctly. It'll be worth the dig: the BFI edition of...
- 2/29/2012
- MUBI
Cinematographer with a cool, austere style who linked the eras of Dreyer and Von Trier
If the Danish cinematographer Henning Bendtsen, who has died aged 85, had shot nothing else but Carl Dreyer's final masterpieces, Ordet (The Word, 1955) and Gertrud (1964), he would have been entitled to a place in the pantheon of cinema. Although he shot 57 features, it was his collaboration with the saintly Dreyer on these two films which conferred an enviable eminence on him.
"It turned out to be a very harmonious collaboration between Dreyer and me, which always will be the most valuable association I have experienced within my profession," Bendtsen recalled. "We quickly connected with each other, both as professionals and as humans."
As can be seen in Ordet and Gertrud, it is clear that Bendtsen understood what Dreyer meant by "realised mysticism". The contrasting tonality of lighting both reflects and creates the moods within the same frame,...
If the Danish cinematographer Henning Bendtsen, who has died aged 85, had shot nothing else but Carl Dreyer's final masterpieces, Ordet (The Word, 1955) and Gertrud (1964), he would have been entitled to a place in the pantheon of cinema. Although he shot 57 features, it was his collaboration with the saintly Dreyer on these two films which conferred an enviable eminence on him.
"It turned out to be a very harmonious collaboration between Dreyer and me, which always will be the most valuable association I have experienced within my profession," Bendtsen recalled. "We quickly connected with each other, both as professionals and as humans."
As can be seen in Ordet and Gertrud, it is clear that Bendtsen understood what Dreyer meant by "realised mysticism". The contrasting tonality of lighting both reflects and creates the moods within the same frame,...
- 2/18/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Bendtsen and Dreyer on the set of Gertrud (Dfi); Ordet
"Danish cinematographer Henning Bendtsen — whose career stretched from the 1940s to 1991, with his final film, Lars von Trier's Europa — has died at the age of 85," reports Criterion. "Bendtsen is best known, perhaps, for the transcendent images he created with director Carl Theodor Dreyer on the films Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964). For the former, he devised what we believe to be one of the greatest shots in cinema history: a late-film, almost three-minute pan around the possibly mad character Johannes and his niece, Marren, fearful of her mother's death." And Criterion posts the clip. Bendtsen, by the way, supervised the digital transfers you see in Criterion's editions of Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud.
"Forging a very direct link to Dreyer, von Trier hired Henning Bendtsen as Dp on parts of Epidemic, a collaboration that continued on Europa," writes Peter Scheperlern Carl Th Dreyer site.
"Danish cinematographer Henning Bendtsen — whose career stretched from the 1940s to 1991, with his final film, Lars von Trier's Europa — has died at the age of 85," reports Criterion. "Bendtsen is best known, perhaps, for the transcendent images he created with director Carl Theodor Dreyer on the films Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964). For the former, he devised what we believe to be one of the greatest shots in cinema history: a late-film, almost three-minute pan around the possibly mad character Johannes and his niece, Marren, fearful of her mother's death." And Criterion posts the clip. Bendtsen, by the way, supervised the digital transfers you see in Criterion's editions of Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud.
"Forging a very direct link to Dreyer, von Trier hired Henning Bendtsen as Dp on parts of Epidemic, a collaboration that continued on Europa," writes Peter Scheperlern Carl Th Dreyer site.
- 2/17/2011
- MUBI
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