Big screen classics

Ordet

The Word

A supremely beautiful and profoundly moving portrait of a rural family riven by religious differences and illness.

Denmark 1955
Dir Carl Theodor Dreyer
With Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Birgitte Federspiel.
125min
Digital
English subtitles
Certificate PG

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s austere yet magnificent adaptation of Kaj Munk’s play is an examination of the tensions and allegiances within a family, the former arising from differences in temperament and faith (one of them even deludedly believes he is Christ), the latter through love. Meticulously paced, serenely beautiful and miraculously moving, it was felt by Truffaut – among others – to possess ‘a formal perfection that touches the sublime’.