99- Gertrud - Director:Carl Theodor Dreyer - Cast:Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe, Ebbe Rode,Baard Owe,and Axel Strobye.


25 minute audio interview with Carl Th. Dreyer

---

"Gertrud is the kind of masterpiece that deepens with time because it has already aged in the heart of a great artist"

-Andrew Sarris-

----

"When we shot Ordet, Dreyer was very impressed with my tracking shots, with how long I could make them last. I think for Dreyer it was a very interesting technical development, the whole dolly track thing, because if you compare 'Ordet' or 'Gertrud' with for example 'Joan of Arc', you realize that that picture consists almost entirely of close ups.So in Gertrud, we used a lot of tracking shots. Because the script wasn't divided into scenes, but more like one unbroken string of action… In that respect, I remember very clearly how I often had to politely make him aware that we were running out of film, after shooting for 11 minutes which was the maximum reel length.But it was a very nice way of working… because it meant we would do fewer takes and as a result could usually finish earlier than expected. So we only did one take per day. We rehearsed in the morning, and then everybody took a lunch break, after which we could come back and finish shooting. Even the producer was happy because we used considerably less film than usual.While filming Gertrud, there was a big problem one time with a tracking shot. We had to do a long take, and because of all the various positions from which the actors were supposed to say their lines, I couldn't put the fill light anywhere. The fill light is your secondary light, the light you use to soften up the edges created by the key light. Now I'd been in France and remembered how they shot it down there, or maybe I could tell by watching French movies. They simply put this 2 kw light on top of the camera, which was possible because the camera was in a square case. Then the gaffer would have a resistance device to regulate the brightness of the light, depending on how far from the lens the actors would be. That was one hell of a job, because sometimes we would have as many as 20 or 30 camera positions in one take, so he would have to be very accurate."

-Henning Bendtsen-Dreyer's Cinematographer

----