The great Dreyer's penultimate film, his most sublime testament to
human love and divine mercy. Based closely on Kaj Munk's play, the film
is beautifully acted by a superb cast led by Henrik Malberg. But its
prime virtues are cinematic. Dreyer's flexible, elegant camera
perfectly expresses the shifting emotions on view, while his
unobtrusive and extraordinarily concrete imagery anchors his
spiritual concerns in the world of the everyday. Consequently, the
final human reconciliation seems almost banal until interrupted -
unexpectedly but with full appropriateness - by one of the cinema's
most moving codas. Deeply affecting; a masterpiece.
