Gertrud (1964)

Gertrud

This next movie on the List, Gertrud, is a Danish movie and it is not a special entry on the Danish version, but a real bona fide official List entry. I should be excited.

Well, the reason this movie is on the list is not because is absolutely awesome, but because it was made by Carl Th. Dreyer, one of those directors the List editors are nuts about. He did make both “Jeanne d’Arc” and “Ordet”, but sadly “Gertrud” is not in the same league.

The titular character Gertrud (Nina Pens Rode) is married to the successful lawyer Gustav Kanning (Bendt Rothe) around the turn of the century. Gertrud is unhappy in her marriage and wants to leave her husband. This comes as a surprise to him, just before he is to be named a member of the prime minister’s government. He, correctly, suspects there is another man in Gertrud’s life.

Gertrud wants to leave her husband because she requires 100% commitment in love. Love for her cannot be shared with love for work and as her husband cares about his work Gertrud is disappointed. She has found a young lover, a composer (Baard Owe) with whom she imagines she has found love. Except Erland, as is his name, does not take it anywhere as serious as she does and is taken aback when she declares she has left her husband for him. Needless to say this is not good enough for Gertrud.

Then Gertrud meets up with an old flame Gabriel Lidman (Ebbe Rode, Nina Pens real life husband), a famous poet, who wants to mend things and get back with her, but Gertrud is refusing. Back when they where together she had found a frustrated note from him that seemed to prove that he could not commit 100% to her, so, too bad, that train has gone. Instead Gertrud grows old alone.

There are a number of issues with this movie. The most immediate one is the style of acting (and filming for that matter). In a typical scene you would have two people talking to each other but looking away in opposite directions. The speak would be slow, cold and artificial as if they were robots. It is actually funny, at least in the beginning, because the topics and the words are very honest and intimate and so at odds with the delivery. I found myself laughing a number of times, especially in a priceless scene in the beginning where Gertrud and Gustav are having one of these cold and stilted conversation only to be broken by a doorbell and Gustav breaking the style by exclaiming “Årh for pokker, det er mamy!” (“Dammit, that’s my mother!). I was in tears.

No, as the movie wears on, this style gets very old. Gertrud is the carrier of the style, whenever she speaks she turns into a robot and being the main character, she is in almost every scene.

A second issue is the theme. I believe we are supposed to sympathize with Gertrud in her search for 100% commitment to love, but I cannot help being annoyed. Who does she think she is to monopolize the attention of her men. If it was only that they should not have other women I could well understand that, but Gertrud do not want to share her men’s passion with anything, work, hobbies anything. She demands complete attention and commitment. To me that sounds like a prison, an impossible romantic dream far removed from reality.

Add to this that Gertrud is about as unattractive as possible. Her cold demeanor, her rejective attitude and ghost like appearance, but most of all her complete lack of understanding of her men and it becomes almost comical that they should desire her so much.

Alas, despite, or maybe because, of all this I smiled and laughed a lot more than I had anticipated. When Axel Strøbye appears as Axel Nygren I am all smiles. He is (together with Ole Thestrup) my favorite Danish Actor and not even Dreyer can curb this wonderful actor.

I cannot honestly say I liked this movie. I understand what it is trying to do, but I do not sympathize with the idea. I could not care less about Gertrud, the woman, but this is also a case of art going so far in being arty that it becomes comedy. At least for a fellow Dane.