It’s said that men prefer blondes. Even the Protestant ascetic director couldn’t avoid their charm, employing Scandinavian marble blonde beauties in his films. We meet each of those women in different environments, once it’s a snug cottage, then a modest living room, a dark kitchen or a medieval chamber. But it’s not the place that’s supposed to enchant us. What magnetizes the spectator’s eyes and doesn’t allow to look away is the woman’s face. Dreyer is the master of close-ups, of great scenes unveiling the protagonist’s soul, mostly women’s souls. Everything is significant, even the tiniest movement of the lips and the quickest blink of the eye

Women in Dreyer’s films, in spite of their sensory, appealing beauty, remain personifications of innocence. Unfortunately they have to pay high price for their attractiveness and beauty especially when it occurs that in the male Puritan world they dare to have something to say. For unbidden words or the desire to be free they were severely punished, burnt at the stake or banished.

The first woman to be punished is Maria Falconetti (or actually Renée Jeanne Falconetti), one of the most important actresses in Dreyer’s films, the unforgettable Joan of Arc. The director had quite an intuition about choosing this boulevard actress to play the 19-year-old innocent Maid of Orléans. Thanks to the face of a serious 30-year–old woman he was able to add a new emotional load to portray the last moments in the saint’s life. The actress also showed a lot of courage appearing make-up less in the film. She moved even further in shocking the audience and shaved her head for the purpose of one of the scenes in the film. Through very suggestive and convincing performances- which ended up in numerous nervous breakdowns, Falconetti placed herself in the film Olympus and in its underground history (few years after the film she committed suicide).

In another of his films, ‘The Word’, a pregnant Inger (played by Brigitte Federspiel) has to bear patiently her father-in-law’s biting remarks and her husband’s rude comments. To portray authentically the unusual state of a pregnant woman’s body and mind, he employed an actress who was really expecting a baby. Her film daughter is a blonde cherub, a flawless child whose faith can move mountains. She is the only female character who is able to slip the harassment and oppression written in women’s life.


Gertrude (Nina Rode Penny) also doesn’t stand the chance of slipping the misfortune of being sentenced to solitude. From all Dreyer’s protagonists she is the one who learns the price of discovering her own femininity. By men she is perceived as a reincarnation of sinful Mary Magdalene or dangerous Judith, a woman that has to be oppressed and controlled. Even though she appears as a woman confident of herself and her needs, she can’t be successful in the world dominated by men. To our surprise, the director declares his support for Gertrude, showing traces of feminism.

J. Ch.