Anniversary of The Word
On January 10, 1955, the premiere of Carl Theodor Dreyer's film "Ordet (The Word)" took place in Denmark.
The film is based on the play of the same name by a Danish playwright, poet, publicist and Lutheran pastor Kaj Munk, written in 1925. Kaj Munk was never a supporter of democracy and all his life dreamed of uniting all the Scandinavians under the auspices of the Nordic Dictator. In the early 30s, he openly admired Hitler, who, in his opinion, managed to unite the Germans. However, by the end of the 30s, in his sermons, he criticized the Nazi regime for persecuting Jews. After the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940, he not only did not go underground, as his friends advised him, but, on the contrary, in his poems, articles and sermons he continued to openly denounce Nazism. On January 4, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo, and the next day his body was found in a roadside ditch. A note was pinned to his body: "Swine, you worked for Germany just the same." The film "Ordet (The Word)" was shot in the same village where Munk preached.
In August of 1955, Dreyer’s film took part in the Venice Film Festival and was awarded the main prize of this festival - the Golden Lion. Moreover, the struggle for this prize was very intense, since among the nominees there were films by Fellini, Antonioni, Hitchcock, Mizoguchi and other fairly well-known filmmakers.
At the beginning of the following year, 1956, the film "Ordet (The Word)" received the Golden Globe in the USA in the nomination Best Foreign Film. And it is absolutely natural that a film that has achieved such wide international recognition obtained a national award as well. Dreyer's film won the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film. And Karl Theodor Dreyer himself after that was recognized in Denmark as a "living classic". For 66-year-old Dreyer, "Ordet (The Word)" became the 13th feature film, but "The Word" turned out to be Dreyer's only film that was enthusiastically received by all professional film critics. According to the website Rottentomatoes, there is not a single negative review from a professional film critic for this film, while there are many positive ones.
Roger Ebert, who rated the film 4 stars out of 4 and included in his list of "Great Movies", wrote in his 2008 review:
"For the ordinary filmgoer, and I include myself, "Ordet" is a difficult film to enter. But once you're inside, it is impossible to escape. Lean, quiet, deeply serious, populated with odd religious obsessives...The lives of everyone in this film depend entirely on religion. It could be shown in any church in the world, with a few adjustments to the subtitles to supply other words than "Christian." Yet I find from Rosenbaum that Dreyer was not a particularly religious man, and this film is not intended to proselytize. It simply intends to see."
But the film "The Word" was highly appreciated not only by the jury of several prestigious film festivals and not only by professional film critics, but also by ordinary moviegoers. 71% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this movie a rating of 8 to 10.
In the USSR, the film, of course, was not shown.
Given the success indicators listed, the rating of Carl Theodor Dreyer's film "Ordet (The Word)" according to FilmGourmand's version is 9.540, and this allows it to occupy 79th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
