Denmark, 1964
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
With Nina Pens Rode (Gertrud Kanning), Bendt Rothe (Gustav Kanning), Baard Owe (Erland Jansson), Ebbe Rode (Gabriel Lidman), Axel Strøbye (Axel Nygen)
Between conventional scenes of family routine, with their small talks and fussy gestures to sort out the mail or to serve port, so expressive of the bourgeois’s stilted and self-conscious manners, the tension bubbles up on the surface of the supposedly loving relationship and then bursts out, though in the quiet manner fitting the bourgeois. Still, how biting truth can be is made plain. Gustav Kanning may first pretend to be happy even if Gertrud Kanning displays a far more demure and reluctant attitude, but he cannot hide how peeved his dear wife’s behavior makes him. The appearance of his mother is simply an awkward intermission in the drama bound to unfold, though it underlines the propriety and the demands of their bourgeois life, which a few candid words eventually unravel. Even as Gustav Kanning is on the verge of becoming an even more important figure by getting named in the Danish government, he learns that Gertrud Kanning no longer loves him. Her odd, contrarian attitude becomes more understandable: that ordinary afternoon in their nice and vast apartment is the moment she has chosen to make the crucial and upsetting confession.
This first part has been long, heavy with dialogues, with a mainly static camera documenting how it can be hard for the titular lead character to look in the eyes of others, fully aware of the unbearable pain she is to inflict. Indeed, the boldest move of the camera and biggest upset in the montage comes when the amazed and angry husband asks why this befalls on him: he is shot on a high angle and not from the distant point set against the wall opposite the characters and the sofa and desk they use but clearly from the viewpoint of his wife’s gaze. But whatever he may feel and say, he is part of a stern bourgeois world whose products decorating the apartment have taken on a stifling quality: as Gertrud bravely, with an odd mix of wistfulness and radiance in her face, demands to get her freedom back, her speech poignantly resonates in a void.
The second part of “Gertrud” basks gracefully in the sunny light of a late afternoon in a park, in the starkest contrast possible to the previous images. Gertrud is reunited, again, and again too briefly, with her lover, the young man she intends to follow, composer and pianist Erland Jansson. Romanticism throbs through the image’s texture as lovers chat and pace along a basin or around a bench. Still, worry runs through the words of Gertrud while Erland Jansson cuts a curt and selfish figure. The idyll is set to sail on choppier waters than the part’s first images and the enthusiasm of Gertrud hinted.
But what looks like the chronicle of a woman in her 40s redefining her life and rediscovering her desire by replacing an old romance by a fresh one takes a rather unexpected turn in the third part. The story shifts to a highly public space and context as it takes place in a palace, during an evening of celebration. No more intimacy and yet even more drama, for, contrary to what the careful record of the pomp and circumstances implies, this part’s pace is to be set by Gertrud’s emotions and the shocks inflicted on her, with powerful physical expressions, from migraine to collapse, highlighting her existential malaise.
Tension gets raw and Gertrud looks alienated and dissatisfied, cut off from those seeking her attention. Save for one chat, held with old friend Alex Nygen, who has traveled back to Denmark from France where he pursues psychological and philosophical research, Gertrud would never meet the gaze of the men talking to her: the frontal camera bears witness of the gap between her and an aggrieved husband but also a former lover who dares to question why she left him and to hint at her new lover’s boorish and arrogant nature. The ceremony was celebrating poet Gabriel Lidman, a staunch defender of the value and import of love, but the film displayed how much love was an ordeal to him owing to Gertrud’s behaviors, past and also present. A stunning bitterness underpins the section and reveals Gertrude may be in a sentimental dead end.
The last part of this adaptation of a play of Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg by the director of “Vampyr” (1932) brings the audience back to the Kanning apartment. Gabriel Lidman has called to bid farewell, once again choosing to travel, but Gustav Kanning cuts short his conversation, eager to negotiate a political deal over the phone. Faced with Gertrud (first as a reflection in a mirror he once offered to her, the woman looking like an apparition from another world but in fact a very real and challenging presence soon to start another sad conversation) the poet once again harps on the brutal end of their affair. A melancholic nostalgia wraps the scenes, casting a fresh light on what have always been Gertrud’s expectations and desires and underlining the former lover’s everlasting sorrow. It is a dejected man who hastily leaves the apartment even as the lover who came after him can rejoice at becoming a cabinet minister. But Gustav Kanning’s smug satisfaction is readily dampened by Gertrud who also leaves the apartment: to her, their separation has always been unavoidable, even after she acknowledged she painfully mistook the brash Erland Jansson for a dream lover. She is set now to rejoin Axel Nygen, hoping that living in Paris and dabbling in scholarship will be better tools to make a fresh start.
Again basking in a delightful, warm and soft, light, the epilogue takes place decades later, at the time of the film’s production (the narrative, respecting the text, took place at the turn of the 20th century). Gertrud is now an old woman receiving Axel Nygen. They talks about the past, the importance of love, the coming of death. The friend then goes away and she closes the door: the film ends with this image of a close door, the camera lingering in the empty, quiet space, riveted on this threshold inaccessible to any other soul. A journey is ending, with the lead character satisfied with a life she views as shaped by love. Since the film has related no less than three failures to have long, happy relations, this epilogue sounds rather self-delusional.
In fact, her notion of love may have been a precious compass, allowing her to navigate as freely as her status and the social conventions made it possible, exploring various relationships but knowing how to put an end to them decisively. The failure, as far as her words are listened and believed, lies in the gap between the place she wanted to have in her lovers’ lives and what their ambitions and endless activity, in the arts or in politics, actually left to her. Gertrud clearly – as showed by her motherly attitude towards Erland Jansson – viewed her presence as an essential and vital element creating balance and harmony to her lovers. But these lovers would never grant her that power: even as she felt fully guided by the disinterested and burning force of love, she never had the chance to prevail fully or for a long time. The freedom she took so bluntly is just the assertion of a romantic vision she would hold to the last minute as a most generous and genuine one. Too bad men did not know how to meet her expectations, her gaze, and her soul.