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The Dreyer Paratext

13. dec 2024. The filmmaker Carl Th. Dreyer believed that it was best for films to have no credit titles at all: they got in the way of the audience’s immersion in the story. This article discusses Dreyer’s claim…

Psilander, Dreyer, and Lydia

06. mar 2017. PEER REVIEWED. Of all the many films that Valdemar Psilander made, Carl Th. Dreyer made a credited contribution only to one: Lydia, a film directed by Holger-Madsen and released in 1918, for which he…

#289: Dreyer, Day of Wrath and Gertrud

01.10.2025. Two new articles on two very different films by Carl Th. Dreyer.

Deciphering Dreyer: Props and Symbols in Gertrud

01. oct 2025 | PEER REVIEWED. 'Gertrud' has been considered the most indecipherable of Dreyer’s films, reflected in a disastrous premier and scholarship that has largely focused on a formalist examination. In contrast, this essay…

Aesthetics and Politics in Carl Th. Dreyer’s Day of Wrath

01. oct 2025 | PEER REVIEWED. This essay highlights the singularity of Day of Wrath within Dreyer's œuvre in its focus on social critique. Stylisation elevates this critique beyond the much-referenced historicity of the depiction…

Carl Dreyer's "Michael" - Digitalization and the Rediscovery of a classic Kammerspiel-film

06. dec 2017. This brief article traces the popular and critical reception of Dreyer’s Michael (1924) from its theatrical release to its DVD editions. Michael was largely considered a lost and forgotten…

Maren’s smile: Miracles of the everyday in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet

07. jun 2022. The most miraculous moment in Danish film history, the resurrection scene in Carl Th. Dreyer’s 'Ordet', invites us to reconsider the sense of wonder which animates the director’s film making.

Kosmorama #270: Palladium, portrait docs and digitalization

In late summer 2017, one of Denmark’s oldest film companies, Palladium, closed and the backlist was acquired by the Danish Film Institute – both the rights and the actual film collection. This…

#288: Dreyer’s unwanted credits

13.12.2024 | Casper Tybjerg discusses Dreyer’s opposition to film credits and some of the theoretical issues raised by the use of paratexts.

Kosmorama #267: Valdemar Psilander

This issue of Kosmorama marks the centenary of the untimely death of the brightest international star of Danish silent cinema. If you are thinking: ’Ah, Asta Nielsen!’, think again. In the early…

History unmade: Dreyer's Unrealised Mary. Queen of Scots

03. jul 2015. PEER REVIEWED. One of Dreyer’s great unrealised films was an account of the life and loves of Maria Stuart, or Mary, Queen of Scots. Dreyer’s archive contains extensive research materials and notes…

A Common Film Culture? - Theme issue on Danish-German film relations during the silent era

15. jan 2020. The authors behind this issue of Kosmorama are all part of the three-year Danish-German research project: 'A Common Film Culture? Denmark and Germany in the Silent Movie Era, 1910-1930'. In this…