News

Master of the House

Written by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Svend Rindom

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Denmark, 1925

It’s telling that the Criterion Collection touts Master of the House as a comedy. So regularly austere are the more popularly known works of Danish great Carl Theodor Dreyer, that perhaps in comparison, yes, this is at times funny. As a standard comedy, it’s admittedly weak; as a drama, however, it’s largely effective. Historian Casper Tybjerg, in an interview included on the new Criterion Blu-ray/DVD, makes a (only slightly convincing) case for the film as “basically” a comedy, noting that it was even made at a studio identified with comedic films. But more accurate is David Bordwell’s description of the film, which he mentions in a visual essay also included. In its employment of “silent film conventions of domestic drama,” it forms something more akin to a chamber play,...

While he’ll always be best known for his 1928 silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan Arc (or for his atmospheric 1932 horror film, Vampyr), Danish auteur Carl Theodor Dreyer had a rich and varied filmography that ranged from 1919-1964. Criterion has remastered a 1925 comedy from the director, Master of the House, the first of his films to be adapted from a play (Tyrant’s Fall by Sven Rindom) rather than a novel. A prescient treatise on domestic issues, the film was enormously popular upon release, but it would be the last comedic venture for Dreyer (the only other being 1920’s The Parson’s Widow). Known to enthusiasts of Dreyer, it’s a title that’s been overshadowed by the director’s notoriously somber works, therefore making it ripe for rediscovery.

A harried yet unquestionably doting wife, Ida Frandsen (Astrid Holm) waits hand and foot on her three children as she goes...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 22, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Release $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Johannes Meyer and Astrid Holm star in Carl Dreyer's 1925 silent drama Master of the House.

Before he got up close and personal with 1928’s Joan of Arc, the Danish cinema genius Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr) fashioned the 1925 silent drama Master of the House, a finely detailed, ahead-of-its-time examination of domestic life.

In this heartfelt story of a housewife (Astrid Holm) who, with the help of a wily nanny (Mathilde Nielsen), turns the tables on her tyrannical husband (Johannes Meyer), Dreyer finds lightness and humor; it’s a deft comedy of revenge that was an enormous box-office success and is considered an early example of feminism on-screen.

Constructed with the director’s customary meticulousness and stirring sense of justice, Master of the House is a jewel of silent cinema.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD combo edition of the film contains...