On the eve and as part of our special workshop on Von heute auf morgen by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet we are screening Danish director Theodor Dreyer’s domestic silent comedy.
Blustery and abusive, a petty tyrant of a husband embarks on a battle of wills with the women of ‘his’ house in Dreyer's ‘realist comedy’, which turns its attention to the dramas, passions, and furies found within an everyday worker's flat. Unable to film in an actual flat due to technical issues, Dreyer built an exact replica in the studio, complete with four walls and working gas, water, and electricity, to heighten the effect of contained space on character and narrative.
‘Straub-Huillet, like Eisler before them, read Schoenberg’s opera politically as a document of the death throes of the Weimar Republic, as what Eisler famously termed ‘an apocalypse on a domestic scale’. This is stylistically underscored by the film’s conspicuous debt – in terms of set-design, lighting, and performance even – to the silent films of Carl Theodor Dreyer, a particular favorite of Straub-Huillet, and specifically to his domestic comedy of 1925 The Master of the House, in which a female housekeeper cunningly and hilariously outwits a bullying husband.’ Martin Brady
Du skal ære din Hustru,
The Master of the House, Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1925, 35mm/DCP, 105 min, silent. (with recorded piano accompaniment)
By booking this event, you are entitled to a 50% discount on tickets for the related workshop "'Mama, what are modern people?' Straub-Huillet’s adaptation of Schoenberg’s comic opera Von heute auf morgen” on 23 March at 2pm. Just enter the promotional code MAMA50 when selecting your tickets here:
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