Description
Book SynopsisCarl Theodor Dreyer's film "Gertrud" was covered by the Danish press as a national scandal at its Paris premier in 1964; it was lambasted on its release for its lugubrious pace, wooden acting, and old-fashioned, stuffy milieu. This title offers a novel approach to the legacy of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1964 film, "Gertrud".
Trade Review"A nimble monograph. Schamus is a true cosmopolite of the movies—- an Oscar-nominated producer and screenwriter, the CEO of Focus Features, a Columbia University film professor, and now, it turns out, a first-rate scholarly critic. Watch (Gertrude) with care, read Schamus's action-packed study, and your cinematic life will be genuinely, and permanently, enriched."
* Film Quarterly *
"Schamus, best known as Ang Lee’s regular screenwriter/producer (Brokeback Mountain, Lust Caution), pens a fascinating study of a single scene in Carl Dreyer’s late, Ibsenite masterpiece Gertrud (1964). Mainly for film wonks, but with passages of hypnotic perception."
* Financial Times *
Table of ContentsList of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Why a book about Gertrud?
If Gertrud is such a great failure, how is it so great?
What does the "Real" have to do with Gertrud's "talkiness"?
Why was Dreyer so fascinated with the "real" Gertrud?
Why can't images and words (and men and women) stay married in Gertrud?
Why are Dreyer's images, when they "quote," so obscene?
So what, after all, is the tapestry quoting?
Is Gertrud an ekphrastic film?
At last, here's Dreyer's probable source -- but does it matter that we found it?
Is Dreyer quoting Botticelli?
What is Dreyer teaching us about the history of perspective, and how is Gertrud so interesting a contributor to this topic?
What does perspective have to do with free will?
How is Gertrud a kind of remake of The Passion of Joan of Arc?
How did the Virgin Mary really get pregnant (and is that why Gertrud is childless)?
Why are Joan and Gertrud so "hysterical"?
How does the struggle between Dreyer's words and images open us up to the Real?
Credits
Cast
Bibliography
Index
