Much to the admiration and gratitude of New York cinephiles such as yours truly (that is, young and urban and eager), BAMcinématek in Brooklyn has been running a retrospective of Carl Theodor Dreyer films during the second half of March. Beginning with a sold-out screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc and continuing through what I’m told will be a sold-out run of Vampyr screenings tonight, the series has shown a good deal of the master filmmaker’s silent cinema as well as his later, sound masterpieces. The silent pictures before Joan are mostly unavailable on Region 1 DVD (and those that are do not come well recommended), but thanks to those helpful guides at The Criterion Collection we have fine, restored, digital versions of Joan and each successive masterpiece (one per decade) that followed.

This much is predictable: part of the fun of a retrospective for me is the pleasure of seeing cinema exhibited as it should be—large, loud, altogether impressive—since I have no plasma television, no surround sound, and more often than not I appreciate seeing such films as these in friendly company. However, this should not stop you from exploring these elegant sphinx films at home if you could not make it to the series. For starters, Dreyer’s cycle is as fertile an education in the cinema as one may find since each film deploys a singular approach to the medium’s capacities for storytelling. Add to that: together they build an image of film history that stands outside time stamps: none of the five appear dated in the way, say, Marnie may (made the same year as Gertrud), or, to pick a descendant, something like Time of the Wolf howls of its era. Part of this is due to Dreyer’s lack of interest, so to speak, in documenting anything “of the moment” since each film is, to some degree, a period piece. Therefore, it’s best to look at these films as lessons in looking. It’s just easier, sometimes, to pay attention when forced to by the dark of the auditorium.
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