Witchcraft in 17th-century Denmark, with something for almost everyone, the moralist, the feminist, the occultist, the cinephile -- especially him. It's not at all for the dogmatist, of whatever persuasion. Carl Dreyer starts out leading your sympathies where they will go most readily. A hoary old Lutheran pastor oversees the torture and immolation of a harmless grandmotherly dabbler in white magic. He has a new young wife who doesn't love him, and who has connections to witchery herself, and he has a grown son who soon returns home and immediately strikes sparks with his same-aged stepmother. You can see where things are heading, but Dreyer, without peer among moviemakers as a true believer in the occult, doesn't make things easy for you. The pastor isn't a tyrant and isn't a sadist and isn't evil, and he very much loves his wife. The latter isn't evil either, but she does some bad things, and she really is a witch (the editing tells you so). Few will be willing to go the whole way with Dreyer -- slow and uncompromising as he is -- but the rewards are larger the further you do. (1943) — Duncan Shepherd
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