Synopsis
The power of Satan is highlighted in four historical tales: the betrayal and subsequent arrest of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette, and the Finnish War of Independence in 1918.
1920 ‘Blade af Satans Bog’ Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
The power of Satan is highlighted in four historical tales: the betrayal and subsequent arrest of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette, and the Finnish War of Independence in 1918.
Leaves From Satan's Book, Blätter aus dem Buche Satans, Leaves Out Of The Book Of Satan, Pagine Dal Libro Di Satana, Las páginas del libro de Satán, Pages arrachées au livre de Satan, Страницы из книги Сатаны
Action!: The Passion of Dreyer
Dreyer’s third feature sees the Danish director going for something more ambitious as he uses Satan as a tool to explore evilness, starting with Judas all the way to the Reign of Terror. Just like his previous work, the film does a good job of diving into this subject matter by examining all these events from both a religious and humanistic perspective. What moves all these individuals to commit these acts of treason and what not? There’s a little glimpse of hope in every story, as to say, even in the darkest periods of time, there’s a light at the tunnel.
Technically speaking, the production design is amped up, and we get some really great,…
Cinematic Time Capsule
1920 Marathon - Film #6
…the words of doom rang in his ears:
“Continue thy evil doings!”
Have you ever tried to save the woman you love from the Guillotine only to have her turn around and say, “Let’s just be friends”? That’s just the kind of thing that could lead a soul into temptation.
Speaking of which… Welcome to the adventures of Satan, where according to some bizarre math clause, he’s been given the ability to alter the duration of his damnation. For every soul he tempts, one-hundred years are added to his sentence, however, for every soul who’s strong enough to resist his temptation, his sentence will be reduced by a thousand years.
Let the…
For somebody whose favourite class at uni was about Scandinavian silent movies and who briefly considered writing her thesis on that topic I haven't seen a lot of Scandinavian movies from the 20s. I've seen my fair share of earlier films but otherwise my knowledge is pretty much limited to Dreyer and Christensen and considering I choose to watch yet another Dreyer movie this isn't going to change soon. To be fair I might have chosen a different film if this week's theme had come up later but I'm currently having a lecture on Dreyer and I thought I might as well watch one of the movies we don't have time to watch in class.
When I saw the runtime…
Part of 30 Countries 2022. Today: Denmark!
This anthology of Satan’s greatest hits was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s third film, and it’s essentially his version of Griffith’s Intolerance. That tells you something about his ambition, but it also reveals the film’s chief failing; this is Dreyer trying to be somebody else. The shots are functional, filling in what is needed to tell the story, some distance from the tender close-ups and chiaroscuro lighting that would be evident just four years later in Michael (his adaptation of the Franz Ferdinand song of the same name).
It doesn’t quite succeed as drama, but it’s interesting as theology. Dreyer’s cosmology is so forgiving that even Satan is offered the chance of redemption; however, for…
61/100
Dreyer's Intolerance. A really interesting look at how José Mourinho made humanity suffer over the years.
2018 Film School Drop Out Weekly Challenge
Week 3 - Scandinavian Silent Film in the 1920s
Progress - 3/52
In four episodic tales of human suffering, Satan attempts to win God's favor. The tales depicted are the temptation of Jesus Christ, the Spanish inquisition, the French Revolution, and the Russo-Finnish war of 1918.
The biggest problem for me was that each of these stories took entirely too long to unfold. Averaging 30 minutes per story shouldn't have been too much of a problem really but each story didn't really say enough to warrant the length. Perhaps it was because I was familiar with each of the general time periods but it just was too familiar and I couldn't really get…
Satan gets the "through the ages" treatment so popular during the silent era, but the episodic structure damns this from the start, as the vignettes are of varying quality.
The Jesus story is pure tedium — incessant, wordy intertitles interrupted by cliché tableaux of New Testament scenes. The Spanish Inquisition section picks up speed, as it's closer to Dreyer's heart, but it's not until we arrive at the French revolution, the film's longest chapter, that the director's artistry really shows — simultaneity, camera movement, dynamic compositions and his trademark use of close-ups — hinting that THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and VAMPYR are right around the corner. The final chapter, where Satan is a Red, shows that Dreyer was clearly on the wrong side of history.
To sum it up, Carl Theodor Dreyer, like Mel Brooks, makes an historical anthology film where the French revolution hogs all the attention.
Carl Theodor Dreyer - Leaves Out of the Book of Satan (1920)
This film is in many ways quite similar to Griffith’s Intolerance (1916). The script to Leaves Out of the Book of Satan is however from 1913 so it can't have been influenced by Intolerance. Most likely, both films were inspired by Satanas (dir. Luigi Maggi), an Italian film from 1912. Still, Dreyer did probably know about and see Griffith's film so it must have been there somewhere in his head when he was making this.
The film is in four chapters, four stories about how Satan temps people, the first in the last days of Jesus, the 2nd in the Spanish inquisition, the 3rd in the French Revolution…
Leaves From Satan's Book is a minor work from the Danish masterclass director Carl Theodor Dreyer. While knowing that in advance and not having large expectations, I still wanted to see this film for the interesting concept and story. It is a four part segmented story each taking place in a different major event in history all with Satan embodying a certain figure of that era and is from his perspective.
But the result I got even with lowered expectations was pretty much what many of the reviews I had read warned about. Overall I would say the major issue with this film is it is a non-visual silent film which is doomed to fail. Silent cinema relies on visual…
An early work from Dreyer, already displaying a great eye for realistic staging and stunning compositions. Narratively, however, it's tedious as hell. Sparse moments of visual splendour don't redeem one from the long-winded, repetitive plotting.
Not even Dreyer is immune to the curse of anthology movies: Ambitious, but also dated, fragmented, brutally overlong and quite frankly not very interesting to watch.