ABSTRACT
In his book Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer, Raymond Carney notes that Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889–1968) is identified most often as a silent film director, 1 although his directorial career spanned both the silent and sound eras. While his last film, Gertrud, came out in 1964, his first film, The President, dates from 1919, and the film for which he is undoubtedly most famous is The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). As a result, his other work, from both the silent and sound eras, is often overlooked and even unknown to most filmgoers. According to Carney, another reason why Dreyer’s work is not well-known is what he calls the “Kierkegaard syndrome,” namely that Dreyer’s work like Kierkegaard’s was in Danish and, therefore, not easily accessible abroad until more recently. 2
