Du Skal Aere Din Hustru (aka Master Of The House) (1925)

A chauvinist husband (Johannes Meyer) is verbally and emotionally abusive to his wife (Astrid Holm). She leaves him but this causes a nervous breakdown and she is sent to recuperate at a country sanitarium. Meanwhile, the husband's old nanny (Mathilde Nielsen) decides to teach him a lesson. Directed by the great Carl Theodor Dreyer, this rather plodding lesson on how to treat our wives better makes for a rather arduous viewing. While I gather that this film is much admired in his own country, I can understand why its reputation outside Denmark is not as stellar. I'm hard put to connect this ho-hum dramedy to the genius who would shortly give us masterpieces like THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC or VAMPYR. While its intentions are honorable, Dreyer spends too much time on the rather mundane domestic scenes. We get how hard the life of a housewife is, we understand that the husband must go through this domestic ritual in order to appreciate his wife but there is a difference between showing us monotony and being monotonous. That being said, the film features a nice performance by Nielsen as spirited nanny turned feminist avenger. The transfer I saw had a dreadful tinkling piano score that I replaced with two scores, one by Alexandre Desplat and a second one by Ray Cook. With Clara Schonfeld and Karin Nellemose.