Præsidenten (1919)

Director:

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writers:

Carl Theodor Dreyer (writer)
Karl Emil Franzos (novel)

Release Date:

1 February 1919 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

The judge in a Danish town sees his illegitimate daughter facing a trial for the murder of her newborn child...

Plot Keywords:

Judge | Infanticide | Mother Kills Own Child | Based On Novel

Cast

Richard Christensen	...	Berger, defense layer
Christian Engelstoft	...	Journalist
Hallander Helleman	...	Franz
Halvard Hoff	...	Victor von Sendlingen
Jon Iversen	...	Weiden, Victorine's fiancé
Jacoba Jessen	...	Maika
Betty Kirkebye	...	Hermine Lippert
Axel Madsen	...	Werner
Carl Walther Meyer		(as Carl Meyer)
Peter Nielsen	...	Offentlig anklager
Fanny Petersen	...	Birgitta
Elith Pio	...	Franz Victors Vater
Olga Raphael-Linden	...	Victorine Lippert

Also Known As:

The President

Runtime:

75 min | 89 min (17 fps)

Country:

Denmark

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Nordisk Film

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Carl Th. Dreyer: Min metier (1995)

film about the mistakes in love repeated from one generation to another.

Praesidenten is a film about the crucial conflict between the (conservative) codes of society and individual moral.

It tells the story of a grandfather, father and son of a well respected family who all make the same mistake and fall in love with a common girl.

They all have to resolve the problem in a way acceptable to the society they live in but must consequently suffer the inner guilt that inevitably follows.

Finally, late in his life the son, whose a respected judge in a small town, gets a chance to redeem himself and his ancestors by doing the right thing morally but also severely breaking the law in doing so.

This highlights the conflict between the personal and the societal spheres of right and wrong in a spectacular way, especially as Dreyer depicts the other local men of power as only concerned with how the incident would affect their status in society.

Dreyer uses flashback- structure in a very efficient and economical way to build the comparisons between the different times portrayed in the film. Furthermore: in this our digital age of fast editing and overflow of image it is most gratifying to see a film that has a complex point to make and manages to do that almost effortlessly with a minimum of "hassle". The direction is so economic it almost hides the mastery of cinematic vision behind it to the untrained eye.