MASTER OF THE HOUSE (1925) B/W "silent" 96m dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer

w/Johannes Meyer, Astrid Holm, Karin Nellemose, Mathilde Nielsen, , Aage Hoffman, Byril Harvig, Clara Schonfeld, Patrine Sonne, Johannes Nielsen

From Cinema: A Critical Dictionary: The Major Film-makers, edited by Richard Roud, where Tom Milne writes about MASTER OF THE HOUSE in "Carl Theodor Dreyer: The Early Works": "... Master of the House is a film of exquisite and deceptive simplicity, paring away all frills of setting and behaviour to a domestic tragi-comedy which, if it were not so rigidly and formally controlled, one might be tempted to describe as the Zavattini masterpiece which Italian neo-realism never quite managed to produce. Ida Frandsen (a superb performance by the enchanting Astrid Holm), married some fifteen years, is a perfect wife and mother, but her tetchy husband Victor manages to find fault with everything she does. She bears the humiliation patiently until Victor's equally tetchy old nanny, unable to stand the injustice any longer, persuades her to hit back by leaving him, at least temporarily. During her absence, prolonged by a nervous breakdown, Nanny takes charge and deliberately plays havoc with Victor's creature comforts until he finally realizes, not only how hard Ida worked but how much he misses her, and they are reconciled.

"Filming in an exact replica of a rear two-roomed flat, Dreyer uses the presence of the flat and its constricting limitations to add a dimension of reality, often shooting through an empty room to the action glimpsed beyond it in order to grasp the three-dimensional continuity of life in the flat. The opening sequence, for instance, shows Ida doing the early morning chores helped by her daughter Karen. As they move quietly about their work, setting the fire, filling the kettle, sewing on a button, sweeping and dusting, putting out clean socks, laying breakfast, one gradually becomes aware not only of the geography of the flat and the immense amount of work to be done before the day even begins, but of the fact that both Ida and Karen are terrified that they might waken Victor, still comfortably asleep in bed. In one sense, this whole sequence is perfect neo-realism, the detailed observation of everyday routine of an Umberto D; so is the following sequence, in which Victor wakes and starts on his series of nagging complaints about noise, money and food (she scrapes the butter off her biscuits on to his). The difference is that many neo-realists placed the blame for their unhappy poor on economic circumstances, whereas Dreyer's family accept the responsibility for their own failures. Dreyer, in other words, is more interested in interior conflicts than in making the patronizing assumption that happiness will necessarily follow on economic betterment. The Frandsens are reconciled at the end of the film, but their economic plight remains unsolved.

"Dreyer's control of mood here is masterly. The whole film is illuminated, like The Parson's Widow, by a rich vein of humour which centers chiefly on the ferociously devoted old nanny who, after provoking Ida to rebellion, throws Victor's neatly ordered life into chaos by hiding his shoes, ostentatiously hanging washing all over the living space, and, when he at last seems to be learning his lesson, hastily changing her smile into a frown for his benefit. The same humour lightens the oppression of Victor's tantrums: when he stumbles over a stool expressly placed in his path by Nanny, his small son sniggers from the corner where he has been made to stand for misbehaving; when Victor becomes too overbearing, his mother slaps him roundly; and in the end, chastened by the two authoritarians of his childhood, Victor simply lapses meekly into obedience.

"Like the rest of the film, the process of reconciliation is so closely detailed that the ending never seems in the least arbitrary. Teased and hounded by the relentless nanny, Victor gradually grows more considerate, more withdrawn; when he finds the living-room festooned with laundry, he ducks under it instead of tearing it down; when he looks at Karen, he sees Ida and is tormented by a quiet, despairing longing for her. After this, Ida's return is not merely the conventional happy ending demanded by the comedy, but a richly satisfying emotional conclusion. Dreyer manages the reconciliation with a charming mixture of humour and sentiment, tinged with an unexpected note of lyricism ...."