Gertrud is a film without precedent or parallel. It is unique not only in its thematic territory but in its style. Gertrud not only continues the stylistic features that distinguished Dreyer’s style from that of other filmmakers but also separates itself from Dreyer’s other work by refining the static quality of Dreyer’s brand of minimalism to a state of utter purity. You’ll either love this film or hate it but, either way, you’ll have plenty of company. This film invites controversy.

Historical Background: Gertrud was Dreyer’s final film. Despite the reverence in which Dreyer was held, in 1964, Gertrud was badly received. At Cannes, it was roundly booed and it later fared no better at the New York Film Festival. The sixties were alive with counterculture. In cinema, the French New Wave was exploding fast-paced images via jump-cuts and dynamic themes and the film world was in no mood for something as “old-fashioned” as Gertrud. In the long run, however, fashions in vogue at the time of a film’s release have little relevance to the film’s ultimate stature in the pantheon of great films. For this film, however, the heated disputes about its worth still rage. For some, it is unfathomable, boring, and unnatural while, for others, it is an unconventional masterpiece of unfathomable beauty and complexity. Note that the two viewpoints agree on one term: “unfathomable.” On the surface of the matter, Gertrud seems to be a departure, of sorts, for Dreyer from his preoccupation with the occult and theological subject matter, but, this is still a film about core issues of human existence: love and existential isolation.

The Story: The title character, Gertrud Kanning (Nina Pens Rode), probably in her forties, is married to a successful politician, Gustav Kanning (Bendt Rothe). Gustav is on the rise and is in line for appointment as a Minister in the government despite being in the opposition party. Gertrud is not your ordinary drink of water. She is highly intelligent and self-aware, but in a way that viewers quickly realize is highly peculiar. She almost never looks at the people to whom she is speaking. Her emotions are blunted as though she were perpetually sedated. She seems to be continuously watching the responses of her own mind rather than attending at all to the people around her. She is an extreme case of a person whose focus of attention in internalized. She could be called highly introverted except that she has no timidity in her interactions with others. Gertrud is preoccupied with the notion of love – her personal ideal of love (what that is and is not, exactly, will be discussed below in the “Themes” section). Gertrud is the hub of the story around which are arrayed four men in her life (highly reminiscent of the structure of Children of Paradise).

Gertrud had once been a professional singer, but had given that up when she married Gustav. Early on, Gertrud informs Gustav that she no longer wants to be his wife. She feels that he does not love her and is almost totally absorbed in his work. She reminds him that they agreed long ago that if either one of them wanted his or her freedom, the other would have to step aside. Despite Gertrud’s protestations that Gustav doesn’t love her, he clearly adores her, in a sense, and wants to repair the relationship. We learn that Gertrud has kept her bedroom door locked at night for the last month, so it’s not entirely clear who doesn’t love whom.

Gertrud believes herself passionately in love with a young pianist and composer, Erland Jansson (Karl Gustav Ahlefeldt). He is full of youthful exuberance but is terribly undisciplined, self-indulgent, and rather banal. Part of her motivation in breaking with Gustav is that she hopes to run away with Erland to a distant place where the two can be totally devoted to one another. After a tryst at the pond, they make their way over to his place where she erotically undresses (we see just the shadow on the wall for this strip-tease) while Erland plays one of his own romantic nocturnes. Gustav, meanwhile, goes to the opera house, where “Fidelio” (an ironic choice) is playing, to be with Gertrud (who had used the opera as the cover for her get together with Erland). Gustav discovers, of course, that she had not attended the opera.

A third man in Gertrud’s life – and, actually, the first to arrive there – is a poet and her former lover, Gabriel Lidman (Ebbe Rode). He has come into town, after gaining success and a considerable following of admirers, to be honored on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. We learn from the speeches honoring him that he, too, is preoccupied with the concept of passionate love, but that his notions about love center on fleshy passion. He is praised for his uncompromising insistence on pure truth (which could easily be understood as self-congratulatory praise on the part of Dreyer for himself). When Gabriel and Gertrud are alone together, we soon discover that he is still madly in love with her (in his way) and wants nothing more from life than to be with her. He says, “What I remember from my life is my love for you.” From his perspective, she left him. From her perspective, he drove her away by no longer loving her totally. She had discovered on his desk a scribbled note (among many) that read, “A woman’s love and a man’s work are mortal enemies.” His love was no longer “perfect” enough for her and their former love can never again be rekindled for her.

Adding to Gertrud’s pain is a revelation from Gabriel that he had been at a party the preceding night and had met the pianist, Erland. He had been pained to hear Erland boasting about his latest sexual conquest – Gertrud. Gabriel is nothing if not honest and the information is transmitted in such a way that there can be no doubt as to its authenticity. Gertrud realizes that she is not loved in the way she defines love by Erland, either. Later, back at the pond, she and Erland end their relationship. He has no intention of running off with her and is insulted by her offer to permit him to live off her resources. She has no intention of continuing with him in a relationship limited to a sordid affair.

The fourth man in Gertrud’s solar system is Axel Nygren (Axel Ströbye). He is a psychologist who lives in Paris and hobnobs with an elite circle of intellectuals, discussing the great issues of the day in psychology and philosophy. He is an old friend of Gertrud and helps her through an attack of migraine with “pills from Paris.” He urges her to come to Paris and study at the Sorbonne. Gertrud rejects Gustav’s last desperate attempt to keep her in his life (they’ll live together as friends and she can have her lover or lovers) and opts for life in Paris.

The story now jumps forward at least three decades. Gertrud, now white-haired and elderly, lives alone in a room decked out like a mausoleum. She receives a visit from Axel, whom she has not seen for many years. He has brought her a gift of his latest book. He has also come to ask her to return his old letters to her so that they can be destroyed. Apparently, their relationship was one of only strong friendship and they were never lovers. Gertrud reads a poem to Axel that she wrote when she was just sixteen:

Just look at me.
Am I beautiful?
No, but I have loved.

Just look at me.
Am I young?
No, but I have loved.

Just look at me.
Do I live?
No, but I have loved.

Gertrud obsesses, a bit, about impending death. She has already purchased a plot beneath a mulberry tree and a headstone, which will read, simply, “Amor Omnia”, which means “Love is All.” Not even her name. With a final wave of the hand, Axel exits via a heavy, formidable-looking door – an impenetrable boundary that seems to represent either the barrier between life and death or the barrier separating one soul from another across existential space.

Production Values: I usually discuss production values after “Themes” but for this film the cinematic techniques used in the film are integral to the delivery of the thematic substance, which, therefore, cannot be understood separate from the stylistic elements of the film.

It becomes impossible, after reviewing several Dreyer films, to do justice to the exceptional quality of the cinematography. The high contrast black-and-white frames are amazing in the nuances of lighting. Henning Bendtsen, the cinematographer, was an unparalleled master of back-lighting. The shadows and light patches on walls and curtains are sometimes more beauty than the eye can drink in – especially while also reading subtitles. Sometimes Bendtsen uses a white-hot backlighting technique to create an other worldliness of ethereal quality. Dreyer then complements this exceptional photography by careful control of the ornaments, wall-paintings, furnishings, and curtains. In the pond scenes, we see a statue of Aphrodite prominently in the background, adding symbolism to the on-going interaction. In another scene, we see the bottom of a dramatic and gorgeous painting showing a nude Venus-like woman being nipped at by a dozen or so hunting dogs. Gertrud turns to it near the end of a conversation and states that it depicts the dream that she had the previous night.

Most of the film consists of two people, Gertrud and one of the men, sitting near one another talking at oblique angles. The men sometimes look at Gertrud as they converse but Gertrud very rarely looks at the man. She stares blankly off into space, talks slowly and thoughtfully, and is muted in her emotional expression as though she were perpetually stoned on marihuana, opium, or a sedative like Valium. These are characters literally talking past one another.

There is no action, little movement. Furthermore, even Dreyer’s camera remains static through most scenes. Gertrud is composed almost entirely of long-takes. Almost all of the exposition in the film is by dialogue, none of it by action or collage editing. Consequently, the film feels more like theater than cinema.

How one assesses the performances in this film depends in large measure on whether you buy into Dreyer’s concept for the film. By the standard of any other film, one could only conclude that Nina Pens Rode’s performance as the title character was ridiculously flat and un-engaging. It is obvious, however, that her performance is exactly what Dreyer demanded of her. Measured against what was required of her, her performance is brilliant. She was deprived even of the actor’s last resort when denied physical gestures in their performance – expressive eye movements. She was required to perform her part with a glazed-over, vacant look in her eyes. Her facial expressions, when permitted, showed a magnificent range. Check out, for example, the second conversation at the pond with Erland, when she is unceremoniously dumped by him.

Dreyer was notorious for his unrelenting perfectionism. One example of this in relation to Gertrude is that Dreyer insisted that the pills offered to Gertrud by Axel for her migraine, with the statement that they came from Paris, had to be actually obtained from Paris!

Themes: Gertrud is the most difficult film I have ever encountered. After reading perhaps fifteen reviews and comments on the film and the “expert” liner notes that accompany the DVD, I’m convinced that no one has a clear understanding of what Dreyer was trying to communicate. That by itself can be viewed as something of a weakness of the film if one supposes that a film’s message should, in the end, be clear if one has diligently paid attention. Many reviewers praise the film, however, despite not truly grasping its intent, on the grounds that it is thought-provoking and challenging enough to stand up to multiple viewings. I agree with those reviewers who argue that it is clear that the difficulties of Gertrud were fully intentional on Dreyer’s part rather than unintentional flaws. Dreyer is nothing if not a master of cinematic technique and a notorious perfectionist. Let me say in all due modesty that my interpretation of this film is only my interpretation. The ambiguities of this film are such that it lends itself to several alternative views (or mere confusion). I’ll briefly mention other viewpoints at the end of this section.

The one point most consistently made about this film by many reviewers is that it is about Gertrud’s unsuccessful search for a love that will meet her uncompromising ideal of love. Each of her men fail to match her ideal one way or another. That much, I think, we can all subscribe to about this film, yet this film tackles the issue of love on a much deeper level than the simple, ubiquitous construct “love.” The film explores two interrelated sets of issues: the nature of love and existential isolation. One cannot be truly understood separate from the other.

What is the nature of love? Each of us has our own ideas and hopes with respect to love but we’re all drawing those ideas from the same pool of concepts. To begin with, love can include elements of caring, knowing, and cherishing. Each of these pieces is different. One instance of love might be made up of mainly caring, another might be mainly knowing, while another instance might be a mix of two or all three of the ingredients. By “caring” I mean the impulse to aid and protect. Knowing is insight and familiarity with another person. Cherishing is a kind of artistic appreciation of the beauty (physical and/or internal) of that person. The second crucial issue in understanding the nature of love is to recognize that giving love (“loving” for short) and receiving love (“being loved” for short) are two entirely separate issues. Consider, for example, the average mother/son relationship when the son is a child or an adolescent. The mother usually functions to provide a nurturing kind of love. She gives love and the boy mainly receives love. The love of the boy for his mother is usually mainly the love of being loved. The boy might also give love to his mother, especially if she is glamorous or admirable, but that is not always the case.

For heterosexual romantic love between two adults, there is usually a distinct gender imbalance at work. The slowly increasing liberation of women in some Western societies has really only modified the imbalance in expectations in relation to love to a marginal extent. I’ve sometimes heard heterosexual professional women complain that they need a “wife” of their own, and it’s easy to understand why they might feel that way. In the conventional view of heterosexual love, the woman is expected to be nurturing and supportive of the man’s emotional needs. If she’s lucky and has picked a relatively “sensitive” guy for a husband, she might get a modicum of nurturance and support in return. It’s hard to know the time period in which the film Gertrud is set, but, since it came out in 1964, it certainly pertains to an era more than forty years ago when gender expectations were more fully disparate. A man’s focus of attention was his work and success and the woman was expected to be there to support him in that effort. Certainly that was Gustav’s view of the nature of love. He naively asks Gertrud how she will like being the wife of a Minister as though she is to derive her fulfillment in life from his success (for which she has provided due support).

Gertrud, however, is something of a liberated woman, before the concept was so commonplace. She is liberated, to an extent, with both the positive and negative implications consequent to that fact. All reviewers of this film agree that Gertrud has in her mind some idealized concept of love, but, in my opinion, that concept pertains almost exclusively to “being loved” rather than “giving love.” Gertrud wants a man for whom she is everything – a man who will adore her and have no regard for his own agendas in life, such as his work or success. On the other hand, she herself has a complete lack of capacity to look upon any man in that same way. We see Gertrud’s needs with respect to love manifested in her outward behavior. You can’t give love to another person without first gazing on them – observing not only their physical being but their needs and personal agenda. Gertrud’s gaze is entirely internal. She continuously observes her own internal feelings and thoughts, which, among other things, is how we monitor love received. In her absolute preference for being loved over giving love, she mirrors the men in her life.

Each of the men in Gertrud’s life wants love from her though each differs in what that love should entail. Gustav wants a wife who will support him as he marches toward power and success. Erland wants the satisfaction of adding another notch to his belt – an elite sexual conquest. Gabriel wants physical passion as well as emotional support as he pursues self-expression through poetry. Axel desires only an intellectual companion – someone to appreciate his brilliant ideas. It is true, as many reviewers say, that each of these men betrays Gertrud’s ideal in one way or another, but Gertrud is no less selfish in her concept of love than are they. She doesn’t ask, “What can I do to better love this person and aid him as he actualizes himself as a person?” Instead, she searches for someone who will give love to her that will enable her to actualize herself more completely.

People in need of receiving more love than they are getting are, unfortunately, a dime-a-dozen. Those in need of giving love (i.e., nurturers) are a rare commodity. There are never enough of them to go around. I’ve known a few classic nurturers (I’m blessed with one for a wife) and it’s fascinating to watch how emotionally needy people literally gather around them like flies on flypaper. I’m not a believer in the inviolability of gender expectations. I support equal opportunity for women and flexibility in gender expectations. If we’re honest, however, and recognizing that most nurturers historically have been women, we do need to understand that women’s liberation has the peripheral effect of reducing the pool of those skilled in giving love relative to the already largely unmet need among many people for receipt of love.

Dreyer knew about unmet need for love. His mother died when he was an infant and he was brought up in a severe and rather uncaring household. Those who knew him say he never found love. What do people do when they are not loved, when there is no one who regards them, cherishes them, and supports them as they develop their capacity to pursue their life’s agenda? The feeling that one’s soul, one’s essence, is not in contact with any other soul in the world is what is often called existential isolation or “existential loneliness.” It is a rich subject that has served as thematic material in many films, such as Wings of Desire, Wild Strawberries, and L’Avventura, just to name a few. Two of the typical complications of existential loneliness are “hyperconsciousness” and “detachment.” Hyperconsciousness, a construct introduced by Dostoevsky, is the development of a second center of consciousness within a person’s mind – a watcher, in effect, of the ego. The ego is the “doer” who interacts with the world and the watcher observes, monitors, and supports. In the absence of a soul-mate, we invent our own internal soul-mate that acts as nurturer for the ego. Gertrud epitomizes an excess of hyperconsciousness. Gertrud is so fully immersed in her watcher-self (her hyperconsciousness) that one gets the sense, in the film, that the men in Gertrud’s life never actually converse directly with Gerturd’s ego. Her eyes are glazed over because her gaze is inward (the “Look at me” of her poem), watching her own frame of mind and then reporting it back to the people in her life. She has insulated her primary self and allows others access only to her supervisory hyperconsciousness. It is kind of like the situation where you want to discuss a problem directly with another party but you’re only allowed to talk to their agent.

Gertrud has discovered that there just isn’t anyone who’s going to give her the total devotion that she needs – other than herself. She has learned to love herself and, in a way, it’s the purest kind of love. Who else will be as totally supportive of your agendas, your needs, and your values as your own hyperconsciousness? On the other hand, Gertrud is as incapable of extending love in any significant measure to another person as are the men in her life. She is detached from those around her because her primary emotional link is between her hyperconsciousness and her conscious mind. In her conversation with Gabriel, in the drawing room, Gabriel says, “We shouldn’t be many, one needs to be two.” She later responds, “Yes, one should be two.” We all need that sense of love and support of another soul. In the absence of another person to provide that love, one consciousness becomes two: ego and hyperconsciousness or agent and watcher/supporter. In Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders argues that the cure for hyperconsciousness and detachment is finding love. Bergman makes a similar case in Wild Strawberries. Dreyer, after a loveless lifetime, has effectively thrown in the proverbial white towel. If no love is to be found, we are only left with the option of loving ourselves. The one must be two.

There are other viewpoints about the “meaning” of this film. Some writers view this film as a kind of perverse comedy – a satire on Bergman-like psychobabble and melodramatic self-absorption and angst. The severity of the behavior of the characters could be viewed as a mocking exaggeration of the famous Scandinavian reserve and introspection. The dialog, at times, seems stilted to the point of absurdity.

Another somewhat underdeveloped theme of Gertrud is the issue of determinism vs. free-will. It is revealed in a conversation that Gertrud’s father believed fully in destiny – that free-will is only an illusion. Gertrud believes herself to be exercising her capacity for self-determination (or free-will) by her insistence on perfect, uncompromising love. “There is nothing else in life but love. Nothing. Nothing else.”, she insists. For her, that means that every action she takes in life is true to herself and based on her love for her own being.

Bottom-Line: This is a film for which any star rating is really meaningless and arbitrary. I honestly have no quarrel with those who rate this film at one-star as boring drivel nor those who rate the film at five-stars as exceptionally thought-provoking and visually sumptuous cinema. Dreyer intentionally created a work of almost unfathomable depth, refusing compromise, much like the heroine of the story. Viewers have every right to walk away frustrated and dissatisfied. Many will! For me personally, I rate this as a great film – highly original in its conception and extremely challenging in dealing with profound issues through both its dialog and its style. The abnormal style forces you to ask why. Why does Gertrud not look at people when she converses with them? Why are her eyes glazed over as though in a constant reverie? I don’t find these elements annoying. In fact, they are what one must attend to since there is precious little movement of characters, movement of the camera, action, or plot.

Gertrud is part of a magnificent four disc set produced by Criterion that offers pristine digital transfers. The other items in the set are Day of Wrath, Ordet, and an extended documentary on the life of Dreyer called My Metier. Gertrud is in Danish with English subtitles and has a running time of 116 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Denmark:

Babette's Feast
Celebration
Dancer in the Dark
Day of Wrath
The Kingdom
The Kingdom II
Passion of Joan of Arc
Pelle The Conqueror
Vampyr

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age