Cinema scholar Gideon Bachmann broadcast this recording of director Carl Dreyer reading an essay on film during a 1958 episode of “The Film Art,” Bachmann’s radio program on New York’s WBAI.

Jørgen Roos, one of Denmark’s preeminent documentarians, directed this account of the career of Carl Dreyer in 1966.

Director Carl Dreyer relied heavily on text that fills the frame in VAMPYR, and subtitles can be hard to see when overlaid on that text. Thus, Criterion, taking care to hew as closely to the look of the original as possible, prepared a version of the film in which the on-screen text has been digi...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1932 • France, West Germany
Starring Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel

With VAMPYR, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer channeled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into the horror genre. The result—a chilling film...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1964 • Denmark
Starring Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe, Ebbe Rode

Carl Dreyer’s last film neatly crowns his career: a meditation on tragedy, individual will and the refusal to compromise. A woman leaves her unfulfilling marriage and embarks on a search for ideal love—b...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1943 • Denmark

Filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens dag) is a harrowing account of individual helplessness in the face of growing social repression and paranoia. Anna, the young second wife of a well respected but much ol...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1955 • Denmark
Starring Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Cay Kristiansen

A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love—one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1928 • France
Starring Renée Falconetti, Eugène Silvain, André Berley

Spiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy come to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent masterpieces of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the hours leading up...

Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1925 • Denmark
Starring Johannes Meyer, Astrid Holm

Before he turned to the story of Joan of Arc, the Danish cinema genius Carl Theodor Dreyer fashioned this ahead-of-its-time examination of domestic life. A deft comedy of gentle revenge, it is the story of a housew...

This audio essay by Carl Th. Dreyer scholar Casper Tybjerg was recorded in August 1999.

Observations on Film Art No. 34

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s haunting 1932 masterpiece VAMPYR has long occupied a singular place in film history, resting somewhere at the intersection of horror, avant-garde cinema, and waking nightmare. In this episode of Observations on Film Art, Professor David Bordw...

In this 2008 program, Casper Tybjerg, a Carl Dreyer scholar and professor at the University of Copenhagen, shows the research and influences Dreyer drew upon to create VAMPYR. Using archival still images, clips, and scenes censored by the German authorities, Tybjerg elucidates the inner workings ...

Richard Einhorn composed the oratorio “Voices of Light,” inspired by Carl Th. Dreyer's THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, in 1994. In this 2017 interview, Einhorn discusses his extensive research into the life of Joan of Arc.