Drucker, I like the sound of your alternate version of this film – as you say,
Michael is a much richer character study, and consistently ambiguous and complex where
Master of the House is preachy and simplistic. The original title,
Thou shalt honour thy wife, is sort of a giveaway, and shows that Dreyer was attempting something quite different in this film. It’s not one of my favourites either, and sometimes I just don’t enjoy it at all, but if I can get into the right mood I do find it very powerful. Like
Joan, it’s best watched silent. In that film, we’re supposed to experience the heroine’s ‘passion’ in real time, to feel the air vibrate as the men bellow abuse at her, and to hear the silence that seems to encase her in her moments of ecstasy. A great deal of
Master of the House also feels like it’s happening in real time, and since ordinary domestic life doesn’t tend to have a musical soundtrack, I find that the available scores for this film dilute its effectiveness: they have a becalming, soporific effect, whereas with the sound off you can feel the build-up of tension that domino refers to in the post linked to above:
domino harvey wrote:All the wonderful eggshell walking of the first half is far more bold in its portrayal of the put-upon housewives of the land than the preachy second half. I'm sure salvation and rehabilitation was/is possible for abusive husbands and fathers, but I don't think the film gave us much more than a reversion to childhood at the hands of a strong matronly woman rather than showing how inner strength to be a Good Man could flourish (or be reignited if one believes he once was a good man).
I too like the first half better than the second, because as domino says it’s a brilliant portrayal of life under an abuser. Dreyer is an absolute master at establishing, developing and shifting the mood of a scene.
To begin with, we have this minutely detailed chronicle of the morning chores. Nothing happens, really, but as well as feeling immersed in these familiar domestic routines, we can also sense the underlying tension. Everyone is just a little too downcast – even before Viktor has woken up, we can tell this is a house strewn with eggshells. I love that moment when the wife is in the dark attic hanging clothes, and the daughter runs up and warns her to hurry, because father is stirring. The silent anxiety hanging in the air isn’t over-emphasised, but you still feel that slight contraction in the stomach at the prospect of Viktor getting out of bed. Not only do the family members have to do their chores quietly, out of the way in dark rooms, they also have to rush them in order to be on hand when Viktor finally wakes up. This is why I don’t think this film simply favours form over content: it’s not just a realistic but empty catalogue of quotidian drudgery, it also works quite subtly to imbue every one of these domestic details with anxiety – the anxiety that trickles down from the abusive ‘master’, just as the ‘master’ in
Michael spreads his own decadent lethargy throughout his household, until we can feel it in every gesture and every object that we see, and understand why Michael wants to escape.
The best sequence in
Master of the House is, I think, the one where Mads slaps Viktor, he grabs her arms and struggles with her, and then Ida tries to restrain him and he turns around and throws her to the floor. We’ve felt the tension slowly building for several reels, and now it explodes in an outburst of physical violence. There’s something horribly authentic about this violence: it’s just a slap, and a bit of arm wrestling, and a casual push that (perhaps unintentionally) causes Ida to fall. By the usual standards of film or stage violence, it’s pretty mild. Viktor himself, abuser that he is, clearly doesn’t take it seriously at all. But for us, if we’re in tune with the mood the film has carefully been establishing, it feels terrifying – as such ‘mild’ violence does when it occurs in this sort of context in real life. You feel your stomach contract again, your heartrate quickens, your toes curl; it’s brilliantly horrible.
But even more impressive is the aftermath, when Viktor has left and the mood gradually settles down. The daughter comes out from hiding and tends to her mother, Frederik can finally blow his nose, change his socks, and have a bowl of hot porridge (in a quietly heart-breaking touch, his mother adds an unholy amount of butter and sugar). For a while the mother has to just stare into space, while the two older women sit down at the table and get their bearings, before clearing everything away. I’m always amazed at Dreyer’s ability to get all of this – the details, the timing, the emotions – exactly right. It may actually be the most moving part of the film. The scene kind of ‘breathes out’ very slowly: there’s a strong sense of relief, and everyone is touchingly, un-fussily gentle and kind with each other, but they’re also visibly traumatised. As we experience this sense of shell-shock in the quiet after the storm, we realise that the tension and anxiety at the start of the film were the long drawn-out aftermath of a series of such incidents. These people are in a constant state of both recovering from and anticipating Viktor’s abuse, and his little jibes and complaints, as well as being upsetting in themselves, are also possible harbingers of worse cruelty (which of course is triggered when someone dares to stand up to the bastard).
Also worth mentioning that Astrid Holm is wonderful in a potentially thankless role. Whereas in
Joan, Dreyer focused intrusively on Falconetti’s extreme facial expressions through an endless series of extreme close-ups, in
Master he tends to keep his distance from the heroine. That’s not just because it’s an earlier, less experimental film –
Michael has a lot more close-ups too, and more expressive acting from the leads. But Ida is being slowly swallowed up and absorbed by her own home, and the relative lack of close-ups underlines this, as does Holm’s remarkably understated performance. Dreyer could have asked her to be more weepy and histrionic, but instead she has the unmistakeable ‘I’m not here’ demeanour of an abuse victim, her face frequently blank when Viktor is insulting her, her performance of her chores precise, practised and mechanical. There are some nice, unassuming camera movements in this film: the tracking shot when Ida and her daughter are making the sandwiches shows the complex coordination of objects on the sideboard, as the two women collaborate to get the food ready as efficiently as possible. It’s like a little production line, and just as de-humanising. But then there’s the very brief dolly shot as Ida carries the baby through the living room, when Viktor is out, and we feel the space come to life for a moment, and realise how claustrophobic it feels the rest of the time; Ida hasn’t lost her capacity for joy, and her home could theoretically be a happy one.
As for how convincing Viktor’s reformation is... I don’t think he simply reverts to childhood under Mads’ rule; quite the opposite, in a way. If there is a hint that he can be redeemed at the start, it’s in his obvious, and somewhat comical, childishness. When he realises that Ida has truly left, and that throwing a tantrum and threatening Mads’ bird and terrifying his daughter won’t bring his wife back, we see him sober up and begin to behave like a mature adult for the very first time. It does feel like we’re now getting a glimpse of how Viktor used to be, before his professional life went down the drain. By resuming her role as his ‘nanny’ to some extent, Mads forces him to confront the immaturity and irresponsibility of his behaviour – you could argue that Viktor is never more grown up and responsible than when he finally swallows his pride and stands in the corner. But yes, ultimately this stuff is all a bit corny and inauthentic. Beautifully executed as it is, I tend to find it quite hard to swallow. The very inauthenticity of it makes it kind of moving, though.