Day of Wrath (1943, Carl Th. Dreyer) (Patreon)

81/100

Second viewing, last seen 1999. Had it been fresher in my memory ca. 2015-16, I'd have felt even less conflicted about The Witch, as Eggers merely further sharpens the double-edged sword forged by Dreyer here. (Couldn't recall whether Eggers had cited Wrath as an influence at the time, and am relieved to find that yes he did, quite openly.) Is Anne actually a witch? Or just a victim of persecution? The film's power lies in the fundamental meaninglessness of such questions when applied to a world that treats women like chattel, making all of their options equally nightmarish. Opening with the plight of Herlof's Marte—her very name renders her a possession, though Herlof no longer seems to be around—creates a sense of desperation that we can subsequently ascribe to Anne, who faces no real danger until the final moments. Indeed, she initially comes across as a stereotypical "fallen woman," the implicit suggestion being that a superstitious populace will conflate her mundane, earthbound sins with imaginary supernatural ones, punishing her for the wrong crime. Instead, it gradually emerges that Anne is effectively a prisoner of her marriage to the elderly Rev. Absalon, putting her affair with Martin—and her desire for her husband's death—in an entirely different light. Eggers reconceived this scenario as a chilling empowerment tale, ditching the adultery angle in favor of a punishing family dynamic that pushes Thomasin toward the liberation of evil; Dreyer's approach is less literal and more ambiguous, employing the tools of cinema both to condemn Anne (while Absalon’s actual death could very well be triggered by shock at hearing her cruel confession, we'd already seen an accusatory direct cut from her wishing him dead to his feeling stricken from some distance away) and to exonerate her (the beatific pose and lighting of her final close-up functions in stark opposition to her defeated words and grim fate). There's an overpowering sense that no woman in this landscape—with the exception of Absalon's mother*, who dotes on the men in her life while relentlessly plotting against her own gender—ever had a chance.

* Played by an actor only a year older than Thorkild Roose—a typically laughable double standard that seems dispiritingly apropos in this context.