Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Allen H. Redmon

Repression and Revelation: Carl Theodor’s Day of Wrath (1943) and Levitical Law

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ABSTRACT

The world of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (1943) is, as Raymond Carney (1989) has stated, a world of “repression,” a world that precludes all creative expression and evocative relationship.  In Carney’s estimation, Day of Wrath shows that this repression is “not the result of any particular institution or social arrangement, [but] built into the codes of all life, all drama, all language, all art” (172).  As such, human existence ends in one of two tragedies: either “giving up our soul” by assuming the roles this repression assigns, or “giving up this world” in the way that Anne does at the end of the film (173).  

I propose that Dreyer offers a third, more positive alternative to these tragic outcomes in Day of Wrath, one that is based on an understanding of Levitical law that champions vulnerability over defiance and tolerance over radicalism.  The proposed paper demonstrates the ways in which Dreyer’s narrative and stylistic choices juxtapose repressive and the revelatory notions of Levitical law, exposing the sins of the repressive, and the possibilities of the revelatory.

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Allen Redmon is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Monticello , USA , where he teaches courses in Language, Film, Critical Theory, and World Literature.  His research focuses on issues of style and narration in film and the intersection of film and the Bible.  His two most recent publications are “’Come Out of Here, My People’: Pandemonium and Power in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc” in Studies in French Cinema (6:3, 2006) and “’And They Sang a New Song’: Reading John’s Revelation from the Position of the Lamb,” which appears in the upcoming volume of Contagion.

Address: UAM, School of Humanities, PO Box 3460, Monticello, Arkansas, 71656, USA  

Tel. 001 807-460-1778