Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Denmark, Drama 116’
A film that continues to cause controversy – Philip French once opined that if you could turn ‘Gertrud’ into a sleeping pill it would make the perfect tranquilliser – with a tiresome, self-centred heroine who spends an inordinate amount of time staring into space while seemingly oblivious to the blandishments of a succession of alpha males.
It’s too bad that veteran Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer failed to realise his original aim to make ‘Gertrud’ in colour, as what to prove his swan song (although he continued to furnish ambitions to make a life of Christ) limpidly photographed by Henning Bendtsen it would have looked even better than it already does. @RichardChatten