How do we understand faith and prayer, and what of miracles? August 1925 on a Danish farm. Widowed Patriarch Borgen, who's rather prominent in his community, has three sons: Mikkel, a good-hearted agnostic whose wife Inger is pregnant, Johannes, who believes he is Jesus, and Anders, young, slight, in love with the tailor's daughter. The fundamentalist sect of the girl's father is anathema to Borgen's traditional Lutheranism; he opposes the marriage until the tailor forbids it, then Borgen's pride demands that it happen. Unexpectedly, Inger, who is the family's sweetness and light, has problems with her pregnancy. The rational doctor arrives, and a long night brings sharp focus to at least four views of faith.

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Ordet (1955) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Henrik Malberg, Birgitte Federspiel, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Cay Kristiansen, Ejner Federspiel DIRECTOR: Carl Theodor Dreyer CINEMATOGRAPHY: Henning Bendtsen MUSIC: Poul Schierbeck PRODUCTION: Palladium

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Ordet (1955). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Pre-Production

After several years of financial problems stalled his film career, Dreyer was awarded a lifelong lease to the Dagmar Bio, an art-house movie theater in Copenhagen, in 1952 . The Danish government had often given such awards to older artists, and the profits from the theater allowed Dreyer to begin production on a new film through Palladium Studios. Around that time, Palladium president Tage Nielsen received a suggestion for Dreyer's next film from the government-run Dansk Kulturfilm; Dreyer had worked with them before. Kaj Munk's play I Begyndelsen var Ordet (In the Beginning was the Word) was written in 1925 and premiered in Copenhagen in 1932. Dreyer had attended the play's premiere in 1932 and had been writing notes for a film adaptation since 1933.

Dansk Kulturfilm suggested that Dreyer finally make the film and be retroactively paid for his years of work on the script. Munk had himself finished a script for a film version, which he tried and failed to sell to the production company Nordisk Film. The Swedish film adaptation, The Word, directed by Gustaf Molander and starring Victor Sjöström, was released In 1943. It couldn't premiere in Denmark until after World War II. omitting Johannes's previous love affair as a contributor to his mental illness and cutting two-thirds of Munk's original dialogue. Although Munk had died in 1944, he was careful to stay true to Munk's intention and the play's message. He cut dialogue down to the bare essentials, resulting in a minimalist film.

▸ Filming & Locations

Filming lasted for four months: two months on a studio set and two months in Vedersø, Ordet is best remembered for its cinematography. The film has a total of 114 individual shots, half of which occur in the first and last scenes of the film. Many shots lasted for up to seven minutes. Dreyer used mostly long takes and a slow moving camera, as his style had been gradually progressing towards for several years. He also paid close attention to every minute detail during filming and later said that he "made the film crew equip the kitchen with everything he considered right for a country kitchen. Then... he set about removing the objects. Finally, only ten to fifteen remained, but they were just what were wanted to create the right psychological illusion." Federspiel said that Dreyer never verbally told the actors when he was pleased with their performances and would simply smile when they were performing the way that he wanted them to. The blocking of the actor's movement was so precise and carefully planned out that many of them had to count out their steps while speaking their dialogue. Munk had written the original role of Morten Borgen specially for Malberg in 1925.

Twice in the film, as Morten and Anders drive to and from their meeting with Peter the Tailor, they pass the rough cross erected at the place where the body of Kaj Munk was found. Munk was assassinated in 1944 during the Nazi occupation of Denmark for openly preaching against collaboration with the Nazi regime.

Like her character, Federspiel was really pregnant during the film's production and went into labor towards the end of the shoot. She agreed to allow Dreyer to tape record her labor pains while she was giving birth and then later use the recording as a sound effect in the finished film. While waiting for Federspiel to return to the production after having the child Dreyer and Bendtsen planned out the final resurrection scene.