“I do mean that the style he has worked out for this film has a severe, noble purity which very little else in movies or…in contemporary art can approach, or even tries to…. I don’t think there is a single excess in word, or lighting or motion…. Dreyer appears to know and to care more about faces than about anything else…. Dreyer goes against most of the “rules” that are laid down…but there is only one rule for movies that I finally care about: that the film interest the eyes, and do its job through the eyes…. Dreyer has never failed to do…that.”

Personally, I feel most at home with Dreyer’s exploration of romantic passion in his final film, Gertrud (1964), which was made with an obsessiveness mostly uncontaminated by anything otherworldly or smelling of blood, burning bodies, or brimstone. Yet the cinema is richer for having saintly, quasi-religious figures like Dreyer and Bresson. In spite of the medium’s carnival-like roots, let us not forget that several of the earliest “masterpieces” were versions of the Passion play, and the first long film, in 1909, was The Life of Moses.

Finally, a word on the poor quality of our screening print: In setting out on this venture two years ago, I decided to restrict myself to prints in the Museum’s collection. One of the intentions was to highlight instances where our archive contained only deficient copies of essential works, in the hope that the series will help to remedy this. Day of Wrath is a great film that deserves better than this “dupey” 16mm print. I welcome any thoughts you may have on this matter.