Ben Parker OK, forgive my little joke. This is certainly no action film, and another film of completely po-faced sincerity from Dreyer.You should know going in that this is a much slower work than Day of Wrath, and its charms are much subtler than something like Vampyr. People talk slow, the camera moves slow, if at all, the shots are long. Its also a more distant work than Day of Wrath, which I adored. The camera is kept always at a medium shot for most of the film. There are very few closeups.The production design is barren; interiors have the minimal amount of dressing to feel authentic, and not many details are added for personality or charm. This is the least showy film I've seen by Dreyer. If you're feeling unkind, it feels like a play. If you're willing to search a bit, its probably a well made and profound film. The point I'd like to make is that its not an easy film to enjoy, as I found Day of Wrath and Vampyr.Because its too slow, too distant, and I feel myself constantly straining to like it, I give it a 5/10, though obviously its well-made and probably better than that.

Michael Neumann The classic status of Carl Dreyer's Passion Play has weathered years of change in attitude and taste better than the film itself: a stiff, theatrical meditation on the fundamental conflict between religion and faith. The opposing creeds are represented by a pair of sturdy, rural Danish households engaged in a polite theological rivalry, the flames of which are fanned by a Romeo/Juliet romance between the youngest son of the more humanistic family and the daughter of the puritanical clan down the road. The point is well taken: a healthy appreciation of life is more important than a dogmatic pursuit of an afterlife. But in what many believe to be his finest film Dreyer approaches the story like an undertaker to a corpse, carefully arranging each scene in a static tableau and embalming the script in the formal delivery of each line of dialogue.

jacksflicks ***I see a couple of idiots don't like the review. Maybe it's because I misspelled Kierkergaard (corrected). Or maybe they just don't like what they can't comprehend.***I love Pauline Kael. As a film critic, she was the greatest. About Ordet, she said:"Some of us may find it difficult to accept the holy-madman protagonist (driven insane by too close study of Kierkegaard!), and even more difficult to accept Dreyer's use of the protagonist's home as a stage for numerous entrances and exits, and altogether impossible to get involved in the factionalist strife between bright, happy Christianity and dark, gloomy Christianity -- represented as they are by people sitting around drinking vast quantities of coffee."Yes, you could read it that way, if you were a cynic. But that begs the question of the film. (Anyway, they weren't drinking that much coffee.)The question for the current audience was the same for the audience of Kaj Munk's time: Are you going to "face reality" -- the reality of the New Order of the Nazis, or in Dreyer's 1955, the reality of materialism -- or are you going to reach beyond yourself, despite all the evidence, embracing even folly? (Erasmus was asking this centuries ago.)The lesson of Dreyer was the lesson of Kierkegaard. Whether your world view is bright or gloomy, stuff happens anyway. What matters is how you confront it, with faith or despair. I think Munk's and Dreyer's challenge still confronts us in the 21st century.As for Dreyer's success in getting the message across, at first I braced myself for a dour lecture. But I was surprised to find uplifting characters and even humor. Like all Dreyer's films, Ordet is mannered and stylized. But think of Eisenstein. Think of Bergman.Speaking of Bergman, I rather compare Ordet to The Virgin Spring. Both confront grief and end with a miracle.

Cosmoeticadotcom Denmark's Carl Theodor Dreyer was one of the great auteurs of early cinema, and such masterpieces as Vampyr and Day Of Wrath attest to that fact. Many critics, however, have hailed either his earlier silent film, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, or his later Ordet (The Word) as his greatest work, and while I've never seen the earlier film in a full restoration, having just watched Ordet I can say, uncategorically, that it is not in a league with Vampyr nor Day Of Wrath. This is not to say that the film is a bad one, but it is nowhere near a great one…. Ordet is not even a direct allegory on evil and complicity with it, as was the earlier Day Of Wrath, made during the occupation. In fact, it is not really an allegory at all, merely a simple tale of faith, and a none too original one, at that. Its ending is telegraphed all throughout the film. Its ultimate message, about the power of faith over strict rationality, is also not a new one, and its rendering here is not in the least powerful. Compared to, say, Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, made only a few years later, this film pales in every measure of comparison. That later film was loaded with vitality, even as it was a despairing film. Despite this film's seemingly upbeat ending (resurrection is a good thing, right?), it has none of the verve nor power Bergman's film has. Its characters never resonate with the viewer the way Bergman's tormented pastor and his scorned lover do, in their anomic faith and intellect, and their probing of it. Nor were Munk nor Dreyer the writers that Bergman is. And, compared to Day Of Wrath's ending, wherein that film's female protagonist's descent, into the insanity of feeling she has become a witch, haunts a viewer with regret, the resurrection of Inger seems too pat an ending, and not too challenging in terms of religion, nor science. To answer, though, that this is because this film is about faith and its necessity doubt, as framed by Kierkegaard, therefore one must suspend disbelief to 'get it', is to let Dreyer's own filmic and writing failures off the hook because those things he was in control of also fail, despite or because of that belief system. I'm sure that there are many critics who have been, and are, more than willing to grant the director such favor, as I read enough of them in my researching the critical reception this film got, but you'll have to look elsewhere for such poor critique. If the Internet bores you, try the books of Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert. I'll be rewatching Vampyr in the meantime. I need its fillip after Ordet.