Dec 9, 2015

Day of Wrath (1943)

Saw Day of Wrath, a black and white Danish film set during the witch hunts. It open with an old woman being hunted and caught. She is questioned by one of the more major characters: an aging priest who has recently re-married to a woman who is even young than his handsome, adult son from the previous marriage. He has spared his wife's mother, who was also accused of witchery, but now condemns this old woman. With her dying breath, she curses him.

This is very ominous, but only if you accept the idea that she is, in fact, possessed of magical powers. The film contains a few other instances of witches (or people who claim to be witches) and often they seem to have magical powers. There's enough trouble brewing what with the young wife and hot son, never mind magical curses and so on. The idea that these vulnerable, old, hunted women do actually have some means of revenge is appealing, but it makes the witch-hunters, well, right. There's a very grim scene early on where a panel of dudes in black cloaks and ridiculous white ruffs torture a "confession" out of the old woman. She just dazedly answers yes to all of their prompts and they soberly and seriously note it down as "a fine confession." The hypocrisy is palpable, but then again her curse seems to have an effect.

Well, on the other hand, the magic in this film is all magical realism so the evil priest's life does become hell, but only by the prosaic means of his wife and son inevitably canoodling. (There's a scene, by the way, where the wife is embroidering an image of a young woman. She pauses in her work to gaze at the hot son, through the mesh of the fabric, and it appears that the embroidered woman is holding the pin and piercing the son's heart. I noticed, film. I noticed.)

Overall The film is a claustrophobic, airless drama, full of stuffy christian attitudes versus sexily lax morals. The film is a morality play from top to bottom, using the witchery to only denote who is seductively bad and who is uprightly moral. It's very dramatic, but it's values, woof.

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