*

voSi, 8 S ier
 «re
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of related interest from Faber and Faber

*

THE NAME OF THIS BOOK IS DOGME 95 by Richard Kelly

in the same series

WOODY ALLEN ON WOODY ALLEN edited by Stig Bjorkman
ALMODOVAR ON ALMODOVAR edited by Frédéric Strauss
BURTON ON BURTON edited by Mark Salisbury
CASSAVETES ON CASSAVETES edited by Ray Carney
CRONENBERG ON CRONENBERG edited by Chris Rodley
DE TOTH ON DE TOTH edited by Anthony Slide
FELLINI ON FELLINI edited by Costanzo Costantini -
GILLIAM ON GILLIAM edited by Ian Christie
HAWKS ON HAWKS edited by Joseph McBride
HERZOG ON HERZOG edited by Paul Cronin
HITCHCOCK ON HITCHCOCK edited by Sidney Gottlieb
KIESLOWSKI ON KIESLOWSKI edited by Danusia Stok
LEVINSON ON LEVINSON edited by David Thompson
LOACH ON LOACH edited by Graham Fuller
LYNCH ON LYNCH edited by Chris Rodley
MALLE ON MALLE edited by Philip French
POTTER ON POTTER edited by Graham Fuller
SAYLES ON SAYLES edited by Gavin Smith
SCHRADER ON SCHRADER edited by Kevin Jackson
SCORSESE ON SCORSESE edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie
SIRK ON SIRK Conversations with Jon Halliday
 ee

Trier on von Trier

edited by Stig Bjorkman

TRANSLATED BY NEIL SMITH

fi
Jaber and faber
 First published in 1999
by Alfabeta Bokforlag AB
Box 4284, 102 66 Stockholm
This translation with updates first published in 2003
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London wWcIN 3AU
Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited
Printed in England by Mackays of Chatham, plc
All rights reserved
© Stig Bjorkman and Alfabeta Bokférlag AB, 2003
This translation from the Swedish © Neil Smith, 2003
The right of Stig Bjorkman and Lars von Trier to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988
Picture Credits: Irving Foto 1, Lars von Trier 2, 3, Danmarks Radio 4, Den
Danske Filmskole 5, Peter Beck Sorensen 6, Soren Kuhn 7, ro, 11, Svenska
Filminstitutet 8, 9, 12, 13, Henrik Dithmer, Danmarks Radio 14, 15, 16, Rolf
Konow 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, Bjarne Hermansen, Danmarks
Radio 20, Morten Constantineanu Bak 21, 22, 23
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A CIP record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN O—-571—20707-3

2d 6 8.10.5
Fie Se ¥
 Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Foreword by Stig Bjorkman ix
i bars ners
2 The First Films 19
Liberation Pictures 41
MANIFESTO I 61
The Element of Crime 63
MANIFESTO 2 87
Epidemic 89
Medea 111
MANIFESTO 3 —I Confess! 123
Europa 125
The Kingdom 145
MANIFESTO — Dogme 95 159
Breaking the Waves 163
Psychomobile #1: The World Clock 181
Change, Music Videos and Adverts 191
The Kingdom 2 195
The Idiots 201
Dancer in the Dark 219
Dogville 241
Filmography 257
Index 265
 » e

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to everyone at Zentropa Entertainments ApS,

who helped me find my way through Lars von Trier’s cinematic
world: to Hanne Palmqvist and Mette Nelund, and especially to
Vibeke Windelov, who went through the manuscript on Lars’
behalf. Thanks also to Niels Vorsel, co-writer of a number of Lars’
films, and to Jesper Jargil, the maker of documentaries about the
filming of The Idiots (De udmygede, a.k.a. The Humiliated) and
the installation Psychomobile #1: The World Clock, who contributed
photographs of the installation. Also to Peter Schepelern for his
invaluable assistance in tracing elusive pictures of Lars von Trier’s
childhood and earliest work.
I would also like to thank Memfis Film AB, Lars Jonsson, Anna
Anthony and Emma Sahlin, who provided video recordings of
Lars’ earliest films and various film-scripts. Also Fredrik von
Krusenstjerna for the many suggestions and comments he con-
tributed during work on the documentary Tranceformer.
Finally I would like to thank Holger and Thyra Lauritzen’s
foundation for film research. The grant I received was in large part
responsible for making work on this book possible.
Stig Bjorkman

Vii
I first met Lars von Trier in 1995, when I was making I Am Curious,
Film, an overview of Nordic cinema in its first century, to mark the
centenary of film. Lars was obviously going to be involved some-
how. There are few Scandinavian directors — in fact, few directors
at all in Lars’ generation — who possess such an idiosyncratic tal-
ent and innovative style.
I already knew Lars from his deeply original and provocative
films. Rumour had it that he was difficult, reserved. Nothing could
be further from the truth. Lars proved to be not only unusually
approachable, but also someone who was generous with his time
and his opinions — as well as being passionate about film. As a result,
the day Lars visited Stockholm was extremely rewarding, and we
found that we had in common an enthusiasm for a number of films:
about whose importance and appeal we were fairly unanimous.
Lars was going to talk about Carl Th. Dreyer, and there are, para-
doxically, many things that connect these apparently contrasting
artistic temperaments. There is a stringency, an implacability and
an obsessiveness which, even if expressed in entirely different
ways, can be seen as a common factor between them. They are
magicians from different eras who, with different means but simi-
lar seriousness and passion, have sought out new ways of explor-
ing the nature of film.
Shortly after the day we spent filming in Stockholm, Lars con-
tacted me and suggested producing this book together. It felt like a e

challenge from the outset. The idea of talking to this director who
used film as both his research tool and his source material prom-
ised to be both an adventure and a rewarding experience.

1X
 . aie
: .
~ a
s P
In the summer of 1995 we hada first meeting. Lars was prepar =
ing for the shooting of Breaking the Waves at the time. The book
project, and the conversations for it, were initiated some eighteen
months later, These conversations have since stretched over a long
period. They mostly took place inLars’ home, in a comfortable
suburb north of Copenhagen. They also occurred during long
walks in the surrounding countryside, an area of almost tropical
bounty, with great beech forests, savannah-like grassland and tan-
gled thickets, which called to mind scenes from one of Lars’
favourite films from his childhood, In Search of the Castaways. In
this rebellious landscape Lars spoke enthusiastically about the pos-
sibilities of flight via the imagination.
Openness and trust were a given basis for our conversations. I
have had the opportunity to read scripts of actual films and of
projects that are still at the planning stage. I have also been able to
watch Lars in action as a director, during the filming of Breaking
the Waves on Skye and The Idiots close to his home, in the neigh-
bouring community, the Sellered so detested by the ‘idiots’ as well
as on Dancer in the Dark and Dogville.
His development since The Element of Crime is as daring as it is
astonishing, but it is also consequential. Questions, challenges and
renewal have been recurrent motivations and arguments in Lars’
work in film. Combined, of course, with a considerable dose of
provocation. Much of his work has been intended to expand both
his and our vision. Some of this desire to continue exploring the
medium of film, and his solid faith in the future possibilities of
film, is expressed in Lars’ final words in I Am Curious, Film, where
he compares cinema with painting:
“The art of painting must have started when someone drew on the
wall of a cave. That probably continued a century or so. It would
have started with tiny little lines, then gradually became more com-
plicated. The lines turned into a bison or some other creature. Bear-
ing in mind the position that art has reached now, countless centuries
later, we might compare cinema with art. Cinema is a mere hundred
years old. And we’ve just worked out how to draw a bison. There’s a
long way to go. That’s why I’m very optimistic about the future.’
And Lars, with his films, has proved that he is at the forefront of
this development. There is every reason to be optimistic about the
future of film — and that of Lars von Trier.

x
 1
Lars Trier

Where shall we start? Lars? ‘Von’? Or Trier?

You’re wondering where the ‘von’ comes from? You see those big
paintings leaning against the wall? I did those when I was about
twenty, and I think they’re signed von Trier. No, hang on, ‘von’
first appears on that huge self-portrait. I’ll just go and check. (Lars
goes over to the wall, where his first works in oil are lined up. He
checks the signatures.) No, these are all signed ‘Trier’, plain and
simple. It was only later that I was afflicted with this terrible case
of ego worship.

Wasn't it during your time at the Danish Film School in Copen-

hagen that you were ‘ennobled’ — or assumed the name ‘von Trier’?
Yes, I started using the name again at film school, because it
seemed the most provocative thing I could do. No one really cared
how my films looked or how well they did. But this ‘von’ business,
on the other hand, really upset people.

But why assume this aristocratic name at all? And when did you
start using it?
About 1975. But it can be traced a lot further back, to my grand-
father, Sven Trier. He always wrote his name in Germany as Sv.
Trier, because the abbreviation of Sven is Sv. And he was addressed
in Germany as Herr von Trier, because people misunderstood the
small ‘v’. It turned into a funny family story that was often
repeated.
1 The artist as a young journalist. In January 1976 Lars von Trier published
an article on Strindberg, ‘On the brink of madness in Holte’, in the local
paper Det gronne omrade. The article was illustrated with this picture, with
the caption ‘writer and artist Lars von Trier outside Geelsgaard in Holte,
where Strindberg stayed during his creative (and erotic) period of madness
during the summer of 1888’.

In the middle of the 1970s I read an awful lot of Strindberg, and

Nietzsche, of course. During Strindberg’s crisis in Paris — which is
always called his ‘inferno crisis’ — he signed his letters ‘Rex’, the
royal signature. I thought that was pretty funny. I liked that. . .
both the craziness and the arrogance of it. So I started adding a
‘von’ to my name. This sort of thing isn’t at all unusual on the
American jazz scene. Several people there have used noble titles
and called themselves ‘Duke’ or ‘Count’ and so on. And later on,
naturally, ’ve had film-makers like Sternberg and Stroheim in the
back of my mind. Their ‘vons’ were entirely made up, of course,
but that didn’t do them any harm in Hollywood.

So it was a way of ‘making a name for yourself’. Did you know you
wanted to be ‘a name’ even when you were young?
z

2
No. Well, yes, maybe . . . Of course! Your name is your identity, so
I suppose I'd thought about it.

When we started talking about this project, you said you thought
the book should be called Trier on von Trier...
Did I? I thought you came up with that. I’m sure it was you. Or
else it was Peter Aalbzk Jensen’s idea. What’s your book about
Woody Allen called?

In Swedish and Danish it’s called Woody on Allen, because I

wanted it to be Woody Allen the person talking about the artist of
the same name.
About the artist and the phenomenon? Well, maybe Trier on von
Trier would be a fitting title. I wouldn’t mind that. Although the
opposite could be interesting as well, Von Trier on Trier. Maybe
we should do two versions of the book. Or do it so it can be read
from both directions, like one of those television guides, where you
turn the magazine over to separate the articles from the pro-
gramme listings.

This project was your idea to begin with, so I want to ask why you
want to do a book of interviews now?
I like this sort of book. For instance, I’ve read the book that you
and a few other people did with Ingmar Bergman several times.
There’s something about the interview format that gives a certain
direction to the content, as well as getting the artist’s own words
down on paper. I suppose in some ways it’s more fun than when
the artist writes about himself on his own. Bergman is probably
the exception, because he writes very well and describes his life
and work in an entertaining way.

So you’re keen to speak more in depth about your films and your
views on film in general, and about your aesthetic views on film?
You think there are things in your past that others could find use-
ful?
Well, there’s a chance that they might. So why not! Damn it, yes, if
I’ve enjoyed and got something out of reading similar books about

3
other directors, I hope someone will get some pleasure from what
I’ve come up with.
One advantage is that you can digress more. Conversations have
no time limit, and they don’t have to end with any well-formulated
conclusions. I was asked to do that sort of PR work for Breaking
the Waves, but I turned it down because I couldn’t bear it. This sort
of small talk feels quite liberating, though.

Shall we go back a bit and do a flashback to your childhood, when

you were still just Lars? From what I understand, you grew up in
a middle-class, civil-servant family, although both your parents
had extremely gagica social ideas.
I don’t know how radical my father’s view of society was. He was
a social democrat. But my mother was a communist and a firm
believer in liberal childcare and in the child’s right to make its own
decisions. At the moment I’m in a therapy situation where I’m
coming to grips with my mother’s way of bringing up her children.
But you’re supposed to be angry with your parents, aren’t you? In
the end everything is their fault. At any rate, it’s their fault that
we're here.
What my mother, Inger Trier, wanted to create, at least on the
surface, was a free individual. At the same time it’s perfectly obvi-
ous that she wanted me to live up to a succession of creative and
artistic ideals that she hadn’t been able to achieve, but which she
had worked out for herself, and therefore also for me. It was like
an obsession for her. When she was younger she knew left-wing
authors like Hans Scherfig, Otto Gelsted and Hans Kirk. Their
friendship meant a lot to her at the time, and her social life and
interests influenced her subconsciously to create a fantasy in me.
It’s been said that she was trying to ensure the survival of her
artistic genes by having me. My father, Ulf Trier, isn’t my real
father. My mother told me that on her deathbed. She had a
romance with a man whom she believed had the sort of genes that
I would find useful in the future. My biological father’s cousin, for
instance, was supposed to have good musical genes and was very
talented musically. She was aware of this, and I remember that she
tried to encourage me to spend time learning music all through my
childhood, in spite of the fact that my limited musical talents leave
2/3 The foundation of Lars Trier’s relation-
ship with water. Here together with his mother,
Inger Trier.
a very great deal to be desired. But she was always encouraging me
to express myself artistically in some way or other. It was obvi-
ously very clearly planned on her part. I’ve always felt under pres-
sure from that, even when it wasn’t really there. In retrospect I can
see how consciously her plan was executed.

Was your biological father an artist¢

No, he was a civil servant as well, but, in my mother’s eyes, his
family had the capacity for sublime creativity. At least that’s what
she said on her deathbed — that she had planned everything on that
basis. It’s a good, juicy story that you could really make something
out of. As one of the ingredients in a biography it has its attrac-
tions. But I can’t live up to Bergman’s childhood traumas and his
stories about wardrobes — which, according to his sister, were com-
pletely untrue.

How did your liberal upbringing affect you? Did you find it diffi-
cult, having to make your own decisions in areas that children
don’t usually have to think about? I also wonder how it affected
your friendships with children who might have been brought up in
a more traditional way.
I certainly found it difficult. Partly I felt privileged compared to my
friends, because I wasn’t forced to follow clearly defined rules and
regulations. But it was also upsetting, because, apart from my par-
ents, everyone treated me as if my childhood was no different to
the other children’s. (Lars’ youngest daughter comes in and wants
help finding a toy. Lars leaves the room briefly.) That was Selma.
She’s got a proper, literary, Swedish name [after Selma Lagerlof,
the Swedish author]. But her middle name’s Judith, and her sister
Agnes’ is Rakel. They both share Jewish and artistic names. We do
what we can to predetermine our children’s futures!

What about your own predetermination? We were talking about

your upbringing and how it affected your relations with your con-
temporaries. Your liberal upbringing meant that you had to make
a lot of decisions for yourself at a relatively early age, like whether
you should go to school, when you had to go to the doctor or the
dentist. You also had to buy your own clothes and other things.

6
Having that sort of trust can be a positive thing, but there were
also a lot of negative side-effects from having to take that sort of
responsibility. I was a very nervous child. When I was six I used to
lie curled up under the table for hours, terrified because an atom
bomb could fall on us at any moment. I was clinically anxious, and
I still am — even if nowadays it’s about other things.
When you feel that you have complete freedom of choice,
you’re forever being knocked back when you’re confronted with
the outside world, where freedom of choice doesn’t exist. Natu-
rally, my contemporaries represented that world. The main prob-
lem was trying to get these two worlds to connect. I soon became
a sort of leader figure to my friends, and I almost felt it my duty
to take responsibility, decide what games we should play and so
on. It was actually quite a lot of work. Of course, there were a lot
of people who didn’t want to be part of this, and that led to other
problems.

Did you experience this as a source of conflict even then?

No, probably not. But later on I realized that it was a source of
extreme anxiety for me, the fact that I lacked a natural authority
that could have helped me and guided me in my decisions. I was
forced to create an internal authority, and that isn’t particularly
easy for a child.

Did you go to the dentist, or did you not bother?

Of course I did. And I did my homework earlier and faster than the
others, because I didn’t have parents who told me when to do my
homework. So I used to do it at the bus stop on the way home
from school. =
I was also tormented by childish fantasies and feelings of guilt. I
thought I was responsible for the whole world. Ican remember, for
instance, a flower that was growing by the side of the road, and the
flower had been damaged and couldn’t stand up straight. But I
managed to lift it up and support it. Every time I passed that flower
I had to check that it was still standing, because otherwise the
world would collapse.

It’s difficult to define and identify clearly the aspects of our child-

‘i
hood that we still carry with us, and which affect and colour our
adult lives...
What I have had problems with is everything in the world that I
can’t control — things that I’d dearly have liked to be able to con-
trol.

But now, looking back, do you think that your childhood and
upbringing were positives
I’ve got incredible self-discipline, but that’s also something that tor-
ments me. It’s given me an edge, if you like. I’m very reliant on my
own abilities. But we’re all emotional little creatures as well, so this
sort of upbringing had its own problems . . . unnecessary problems.

But you don’t have trouble co-operating with other people, from
what I understand.
I’m not sure about that. No less trouble than anyone else. Obvi-
ously I want to have things my way. And if other people want to
do things my way, obviously I don’t have a problem with that.

Your father, Ulf Trier, was Jewish ...

Well, half Jewish.

But I gather that meant quite a lot to you when you were younger,
and that through him, and the world of Judaism, you tried to find
a sense of belonging.
You could certainly say that I was trying to find a sense of belong-
ing. My family had a fairly relaxed attitude to Judaism. There are
loads of Jewish jokes, and there was certainly no shortage of them
in our home. But I did feel a sense of security in ‘Jewishness’. My
parents had drawn up a family tree, and both my mother and
father encouraged me to investigate our family history further. I
discovered, amongst other things, that we’re distantly related to
the von Essen family, which amused me mainly because of my
interest in Strindberg. [Siri von Essen was Strindberg’s first wife.
They were divorced in 1891 after a turbulent marriage, an event
that contributed to Strindberg’s ‘inferno crisis’.]
 But I certainly tried to find a sense of belonging in Judaism, a
sense of belonging that it later became apparent that I didn’t have
any right to at all. I haven’t got a single Jewish gene. Well, possibly
one or two from my mother’s side. But at the time, when I was a
teenager, I felt extremely Jewish and went around with a skullcap
on when I was in the Jewish cemetery.

Did you go to the synagogue as well?

No, I can’t say that I did. Maybe a few times, but I didn’t have a
particularly religious attitude to Judaism. My father represented
assimilated Jewish culture. For the Trier family it was more impor-
tant to be Danish than Jewish. My father wasn’t very religious
either. He was probably more rebellious in his politics.

Were you close to your father?

Yes, very. I was extremely fond of him. He died when I was eight-
een years old. He was fairly old, about fifty, when I was born. In
comparison to my friends I had an old father. There was never any
chance of playing football with him, or anything like that. He
wasn’t physical in that way. But he was very funny, and loved play-
ing tricks. Sometimes when we were out I felt almost ashamed of
him. He would limp, or drag one leg behind him, and pretend he
was handicapped. Or he would go into the shop windows and
hold the dummies under the arm. All the silly things that children
hate their parents doing. All the time! It was awful! But he was a
reassuring figure, because he knew what he wanted, unlike my
mother, who was weak and indecisive.

You left school early, long before most people, and a year or so
before the official school-leaving age.
Yes. I remember my schooldays as a deeply unpleasant time. To
begin with I went to a terrible school. It was the Lundtofte School,
and it was horribly authoritarian. It was very difficult to reconcile
the liberal upbringing I experienced at home with the more rigid
demands of school. It was practically impossible. I felt claustro-
phobic almost all the time. All that sitting at a desk, or standing in
rows in the schoolyard or corridors, made me very anxious. I
would sit and look out of the window, watching the gardener
work. I used to dream of becoming that gardener, because he could
decide when he wanted to sit down or stand up or get on with his
work.

School must have been a source of greater conflict for you than
your friends, who probably didn’t experience the same freedom
from rules and regulations as you did at home.
Of course, and when I complained to my parents, they just said
that they couldn’t understood how I could bear it or why I didn’t
just walk out. If my friends had complained about school at home,
they would probably have risked getting a slap instead.

So one fine day you got up and walked out...

Yes, I suppose I did. But I’d had a lot of problems before that. I was
ill. I suffered from migraines during a large part of my childhood
... 1 don’t know why, but all of a sudden this is sounding like a
real Bergman story. (Laughter.) ’m sure he must have suffered
from bad migraines as well!

How old were you then?

I was in the fifth year, so I must have been eleven or so. You were
supposed to stay in school for seven years, I think. I remember
having to go to the school psychiatrist when I began to play truant,
and he said: ‘If you don’t go to school, the police will come and get
you!’ That was his solution to the problem, and he was supposed
to be a psychiatrist! His attempts at persuasion weren’t terribly
pedagogical.

So you stayed at home and played truant more and more, and, in
the end, stopped going altogether. How did you manage to make
the decision?

My mother solved the problem by organizing private tuition. I

studied at home for about six months or so, then my mother gave
up. But by then I was old enough to leave school anyway. Going to
Lundtofte School was a wholly unenlightening experience. I can
probably remember one or two teachers who were vaguely positive.

Io
The rest were terrible, and I just felt I was wasting my time. I
don’t think I’ve ever found anything I learnt at that school
remotely useful.
After that I studied privately, and eventually I took an exam
roughly equivalent to the school diploma. That bit of studying
went incredibly quickly — and was interesting as well.

How long after you had left school did you start studying on your
owns

Two or three years, I think. There was a long time when I didn’t do
much at all, actually. I painted a bit sometimes. And a friend and I
would paddle out on to some logs in a lake near here. We used to
sit there drinking wine and talking long into the night. That took
up about three years. My mother thought this was quite all right.
That was pretty good. I don’t think many parents would react like
that.

You’ve been very open about your childhood and upbringing. Is

that because you, as a public person, believe that this discussion
ought to be accessible to other people?
You do ask some horrible questions!

But isn’t that the point?

It’s almost as if you want some sort of political confession from
me. You were much more respectful when you spoke to Bergman!
‘Herr Bergman, why have you written a book about your child-
hood? Is it so that other people can learn something from it?’ You
never asked him questions like that.
I don’t know what to say. I’ve probably said so much about my
childhood for therapeutic reasons.

I think it’s good — and courageous — of you to talk so freely about

your background. You seem to have sorted things out for yourself
considerably more quickly.
I haven’t sorted anything out! The worst thing is not knowing who
my real father was. My mother’s ideas of childcare were based on
a demand for complete openness. Everything was up for discussion,

TEE
everything could be talked about. There weren’t supposed to be
any secrets. The fact that she carried her great secret for so long
implies that it must have been quite traumatic for her. I’m sure of
that. It was completely at odds with everything she stood for.

You say that everything in your home was open, with no secrets.
But in one room there was a cupboard that was kept locked. And
you’ve said that that cupboard contained your mother’s letters to
your real father. Didn’t you ever wonder about that locked cup-
board when you were younger, because everything else was so
open and accessible?
The Danish word for cupboard, ‘skab’, is interesting. It doesn’t
just mean cupboard — it can also mean an insect. And the expres-
sion ‘at skabe sig’ means to play the fool, or to make a fuss. If you
wanted to, you could make a case for the cupboard actually being
an insect in the home.
But somehow or another, with therapy, I’ve come to the conclu-
sion that my childhood wasn’t as free as I used to think, because
my mother had the plans that she had regarding me, and led me in
the right direction, even if she simultaneously tried to pretend that
these plans didn’t exist. So this secret might well have suited her
after all.

She made a fiction for you and your life, you could say, and has
been a sort of director of your life. You could probably say the
same of many parents, that they try to create a fiction for their chil-
dren, and that the children are meant to realize the wishes and
dreams that they themselves didn’t manage to achieve. But in your
mother’s fiction this secret occupies an important and intensifying
position. It’s a mystification.
Of course. My mother was unusually creative.

This sort of mystification is fairly common in film — a secret wait-

ing to be explained, like ‘Rosebud’ in Citizen Kane. A lot of film
noir is based on that sort of thing too.
Yes, she must have had a feel for it. Imagine if she’d never revealed
the big secret. But she did, and on her deathbed as well! You

Iz
couldn’t get much more melodramatic. Looked at from a cinematic
point of view, it was good that the revelation got out. Otherwise
there would be no story.

But for you it isn’t just a story. It’s something that’s affected you
deeply.
I actually took her confession fairly lightly to begin with. It was so
absurd, and so unexpected. Completely. I had never doubted my
father or his love for me. It was all unexpected, but at the same time
it didn’t mean much to me, especially given the upbringing my par-
ents had given me. They thought that environment was more signif-
icant than inherited characteristics. They were less important.
The reaction only came later. I almost had a breakdown because
of it.

Was it long after? Months, years?

No, it was only a few days later. In a sense I felt that I’d lost both
my mother and my father at the same time. To a large extent, that
overshadowed my grief about my mother’s death.

We’re sitting here talking about your childhood home. Now you
have moved back here, for the second time. First you moved in here
with your first wife, Cecilia (Holbek). Now you live here with
your partner, Bente (Frage), and your children, the twins Ludvig
and Benjamin. What does this house mean to you?
First and foremost, it means peace and security. I’ve tried to move
away a couple of times, but it’s never worked. I moved back home
time after time. As a young man you want to get away, the further
the better. But one day IJ realized that I couldn’t. This was where I
belonged. It’s neither a slum nor a castle. It has no great dramatic
qualities. Its main advantage is that it’s where I come from. I’ve
lived here all my life. I don’t know if that’s positive or negative, but
I’ve had to acknowledge that the house is very important to me.

What is it that unsettles you outside the walls of this house?

I think homesickness has a lot to do with it. I’m speaking from out-
side my own mental position here. I can understand Tarkovsky

13
 making a film like Nostalghia in Italy, far from his home. This
probably happens in my films as well. Even if I make them in other
parts of the world, there are components that can be traced back
to the fixed point in my life that’s home. Particularly all the water
that runs through my films. There’s a stretch of water near here
where I paddle my canoe. That river meant a lot to me when I was
growing up. It’s like a nerve, which probably sounds like a worn-
out cliché. But paddling along the river, looking at the landscape,
with the mills and the old factories, means a great deal to me.
Whenever I travel too far from this stretch of water I get unhappy.
Water is comforting. Whenever I have to travel, I always want to
be near water. It would be very uncomfortable to be somewhere
where there was no water for miles.
I think of this landscape as mine, and I know the whole area. A
_ lot of people have moved here since I was a child, but in some
sense I feel I have a greater right to be here. I was here first! I feel
at home here. I can relax here.
We’ve made quite a few changes to the house. And we’ve built a
place for me to work in the grounds. I’ve enjoyed smashing the
things that were my mother’s favourite possessions. Glass bowls
and ornaments and stuff like that. One huge bowl that used to sit
on the kitchen table. I smashed that right after my mother died.
That was great.

When did you first move away from here?

I was probably fairly old. It was when I was about to start at film
school. I was about twenty at the time. Then I moved back after
my mother died, together with my wife at that time, Cecilia. In
between I lived in various places in Copenhagen. I’ve never much
liked living in the city. When we divorced, Cecilia got the house,
where she stayed on with our two daughters. Later on she wanted
to sell the house, but couldn’t find a buyer, so our production com-
pany, Zentropa, bought the house. Now that my company has
bought the house, I suppose I own it. The strange thing is that the
house was also Czcilia’s mother’s childhood home. We only found
out when some distant relative of hers came to visit. It’s like some-
thing out of a film sometimes . . .

14
Do you relive moments from your childhood when you’re in the
house? Does it bring back memories?
I don’t really think about that, but I suppose it happens. The good
thing about the house isn’t just that it feels comfortable, but that
it’s adaptable. I can always change things, which I’ve been doing.
The whole house has been rebuilt. Changing the look and the
content of the rooms is a symbol of me taking over the house and
making it mine. It’s always been like that: one of the children
inherits the farm and the parents move to a smaller house on the
land. Then the inheritor gets to decide what to do with the house
and how to manage the land.
I’ve been worrying about where I’m going to die. Sometimes I
imagine myself in a room in some unfamiliar hospital, dying shut
up inside four anonymous walls. It’s a very claustrophobic feeling.
I’ve tried to counteract and combat that feeling by moving back
into this house. Here I am, and here I’m going to stay. I might
change my mind about that. But that decision, that certainty, gives
me a certain security. I know that I shall never be tempted to move
to the United States or anywhere else. And that’s an incredibly
good feeling. I believe that you die sooner if you don’t have a sense
of belonging.
At the same time it hasn’t been an easy decision. I’ve got a lot of
fantasies and dreams and ambitions. So of course I’ve felt like liv-
ing in another country as well...

How does a normal day look when you’re not working?

When I’m not working?! (A very long pause.) I don’t know what
sort of day that would be... I spend quite a lot of time at my com-
puter playing Tetris. I like that a lot. It’s a well thought-out game,
and it has a calming effect on me. And I spend a lot of time with
my family and do normal domestic things. And I do a bit of sport,
paddling my canoe. And I watch television, but the amount of pro-
grammes on offer now means that I spend most of my time zap-
ping between channels. I’d sooner rent a video.

And a day when you’re working?

That’s most days, really. Iwrite mostly during the mornings in my

T5
little studio in the new house in the garden. In the afternoons I nor-
mally go in to Zentropa and work on what needs doing there. Late
in the afternoon I generally go out in the canoe. After that I’m
pretty tired.

Do you think that every day contains some sort of creative work?
This business of being creative has positive and negative aspects.
You get very dependent on the need to create. I suffer from a mass
of phobias of different sorts, and when I don’t apply my energy to
creative work it turns to these anxiety-creating evils instead.
Maybe this puts my creativity in a peculiar perspective: it isn’t just
a need and a desire to create, but, primarily, a means of survival.

Where do you get inspiration from?

That’s hard to answer. In your youth you collect a load of themes
and motifs from what you read and see, from the interests that you
gather together and build up. That’s the basis of my inspiration.
And that’s what it develops from, probably for the rest of my life,
I imagine. I’m not the sort of person who goes out into society or
off on some journey to look around and get inspiration that way.
Not consciously, at any rate.

What if we don’t call it inspiration but ‘driving force’ instead?

I believe that your driving force is connected to your psychological
insecurities. It might be a more mechanical driving force, but I
think it’s the same adrenaline at work. A sort of enthusiasm. But
how it arises I couldn’t really say.

You’re not affected by other art — literature, music, other films?

They don’t give you inspiration and ideas?
I can’t answer that! I’m impossible. I’m not interested in other art
in that way. I listen to pop music now and then, but it isn’t any-
thing that functions as any sort of driving force.
I think that most of my films have come about as a result of me
setting myself a task. I might think to myself, ‘Now I’m going to do
something funny,’ “Now I ought to do something tragic,’ or what-
ever. And then I ask myself what I think is funny or tragic or what-

16
ever. Anxiety-inspiring, for instance. If I wanted to come up with
something scary, ’d choose something that I feared myself. I
would go through my internal database and pull out something
that I could use.

Can you give an example of how the plot of one of your films
developed?
(A long silence.)

If we take Breaking the Waves, for instance?

I can’t remember how the story first occurred to me, but it was
based on a book from my childhood. I wanted to create an inno-
cent heroine. Where could I find an innocent person, and that
sense of innocence? I found several references within myself, and
others from external influences, possibly from experience of other
art forms. And then it occurred to me that Bess should look like
this and should behave like this. The construction of the plot, the
construction of the intrigue, is almost like solving a rather banal
crossword. If I’ve got this innocent heroine, who should I let her
meet, and what shall I let happen to her? There has to be a counter-
balance to her, and I can get that from her husband, Jan, who
would therefore have to have contrasting characteristics, and so
on. Then the process gets extremely banal — it’s just a matter of fol-
lowing classical dramaturgy. It becomes very mathematical. Or
rather, I choose to do it in a mathematical way. Even if I might
react against great reams of dramaturgical rules, I still have the
basics of dramaturgy within me. Basic common sense is probably
an equally valid description of it.

What part of making films do you prefer, if you can differentiate

between the various processes?
I can probably say that it would be whatever I have most time to
do. Wherever I have most room for manoeuvre. Just following a
recipe to the letter isn’t very rewarding, and working under time
constraints is always frustrating.
My experience of film work has changed a lot over the years. On
films like Breaking the Waves or The Idiots, ’'ve got more out of

17
the shooting and working with the actors. Shooting The Kingdom
was unpleasantly stressful, so the editing was the best thing with
that one. With my earliest films it was mostly the final phase, the
soundtrack and mixing, that was most rewarding. That was when
I began to get a sense of the whole that I had been aiming to create
in the films. In my first films I never had enough room for
manoeuvre during the recording. With them the process of work-
ing on the scripts was more rewarding than the actual realization
of them.

18
 2
The First Films

Going back in time again, you were allowed to borrow your

mother’s cine camera when you were fairly young, and started
making films with it. Did you know then that you wanted to get
into films when you grew up?
Well, I suppose I did. Films were already in the family. My
mother’s brother, Borge Hest, was a successful documentary direc-
tor, and he supported my ambitions. I felt a need to describe my
own reality. You could probably also see it as escapism. When life
gets too threatening, you have to create some sort of fantasy exis-
tence, a life where you can control the things you can’t control in
real life. That’s a fairly good reason for creating fictions, I think.

This desire, this need to create another life for yourself — through
film — was something you felt early on, then?
Yes, fairly early. I was probably ten or twelve when I started mak-
ing films. And it was fairly clear to me that that was what I wanted
to do with my life. It was fun trying to come up with a story and
all the other stuff involved in films, the technical side of things. But
when it comes down to it, it’s about building up your own uni-
verse, something that you can regulate and control. It’s incredibly
satisfying. And very puerile as well. A lot of children create imagi-
nary worlds where they’re in charge. It’s no insult to say that a lot
of artists base their work upon childish desires. Childishness has
its own merits, I’m absolutely convinced of that.
Directing films is also about creating a world of your own. The
main task of a director is to persuade everyone involved in the film,

19
both in front of and behind the camera, to join in his game, to
agree to his terms. As a child you soon realize that you can’t just
tell other children what they have to do and then imagine that
they’re going to want to play the game because of that. It’s better
to find a way of convincing them that they’re joining in because
they want to. This game — making films — means that you have to
be fairly manipulative.
I think I’ve got a lot better recently at persuading people that
they want to join in the game. Especially where the actors are con-
cerned, where co-operation is the name of the game. But it’s still
my game that we’re all playing in some way.

What would you say is your best quality as a director

My stubbornness. And having an idea of what sort of thing is
remotely manageable.

And your worst quality?

(A very long pause.) It depends what you mean by worst. Whether
you mean what my own handicaps are, or the way I affect other
people. In both cases I think it might be my impatience. But if Iwas
more patient, maybe my work wouldn’t be as stringent as I would
like. Stringency is something I value a lot. And I think my imagi-
nation is far too limited. It’s too egocentric, which limits it a lot.

Did you see a lot of films as a child? Did you go to the cinema
much?
I don’t think I went more than my friends did. But my interest in
film developed thanks to my uncle. I was particularly fond of edit-
ing together the different scenes I had filmed, and my greatest wish
in those days was to have my own editing table. While my friends
were dreaming of bikes or horses or cars, I was dreaming of an
editing table. A proper Steenbeck, a professional editing table.

You wanted to make 16mm films?

I didn’t care what format it was. The important thing was being
able to edit sound and pictures. I was already fairly obsessed
with the technical side of things. And my mother’s camera, a little

20
Elmo 8mm, could do loads of different things. It could run
backwards, could be set at loads of different speeds, and it could
take single frame shots and double exposures. It was fantastic!
And, of course, I had to try everything out. Video’s a bit boring in
comparison to old cameras like that. They presented a more fun-
damental, mechanical challenge. They were great fun. Later on my
mother gave me a projector with sound. The soundtrack was on a
magnetic strip on the film reel.

You’ve kept all those old films, and they’re great fun to watch. In
one of them there’s an image in particular that struck me. It’s a
long close-up of yourself. It looks like you were trying to see your
reflection in the camera. Do you remember that?
Yes, I remember it. It’s a strange shot. There’s a series of fairly dif-
fuse, improvised images that I’ve kept, which I keep thinking of edit-
ing into something. Among them are a few black-and-white shots of
me, where I’m sitting and feeling my face and doing odd things with
my fingers. I can’t remember exactly when I took those images. I had
so many complicated ideas about what I wanted to do.

When did you get really interested in film?

I must have been fairly interested the whole time, enough to want
that Steenbeck editing table, for instance. I used to sit there with a
little hand-held monitor, looking through the film, and I had a
fairly primitive editing set-up using glue. The joins in the film were
always thicker than the rest of the film, so it would jump a bit in
the projector when the join went through. It was bloody irritating.
And sometimes the film got stuck, and burned through.
At some point I bought an old 16mm projector in a camera shop
for 150 kroner (£14). A huge black machine, no sound. And then I
got a few films from a friend of my mother’s who worked at Statens
Filmcentral [a Danish distributor of short films|. Among them were
two short bits of film that I edited together. One was a documentary
about cockroaches, and the other was part of the trial of Joan of
Arc. The scene where she’s being interrogated by the judges, I’ve
seen it thousands of times. I put them together as a sort of edited
montage. I hadn’t the faintest idea then that it was one of Dreyer’s
films. I also coloured in some of the scenes by hand.

21
4 The actor Lars Trier in the Danish-Swedish television series Hemlig sommar
(Secret Summer) from 1968, together with Maria Edstrém.

So you decided to get involved in film...

I think I was seventeen the first time I applied to the Danish film
school. And they turned me down. But before that I’d done some
acting in a television series for children and teenagers, a Danish-
Swedish co-production. It was called Hemlig sommar (Secret
Summer) and was directed by Thomas Winding. During the record-
ing I was mostly interested in the technical side of things, and when
I visited the studio about six months later I was allowed to help set
the lighting and so on. And I thought this was all pretty exciting. I
was twelve when I was in Hemlig sommar, so I must have been
thirteen or so when they let me help out in the studio.
I remember bumping into Thomas Winding at a cafe in Copen-
hagen, when I was just getting going with The Element of Crime.
And he said to me, ‘If you only want to provoke people with a load
of dead animals, you might as well not bother.’

22
Did being in Hemlig sommar make you want to continue with film?
Yes, I got extremely interested in the technical side, the camera
tracks and all that. It fuelled my desire to make films myself. I
became rather influenced by Thomas Winding and came up with a
few projects involving his characters. But it still wasn’t me. It was
all a bit too Teutonic, a bit too dramaturgical.

And then you went to study film.

Right. Id tried a bit of everything. But most of the time I was try-
ing to make my own films. I joined a group of amateur film enthu-
siasts called Filmgrupp 16. They had cameras that they hadn’t used
for years. I became a member; | think the annual membership fee
was 25 kroner! And suddenly I had access to equipment. I started
shooting a couple of 16mm films straight away. I took other work
to pay for the film and other stuff Ineeded. One of the jobs was on
a building site, putting up the huge aircraft hangars at Vzrlose.
The doors of the hangars were huge, and when they were open,
they were precisely the same format as CinemaScope!
Thanks to my uncle I also got a bit of work at Statens Film-
central. It was sort of consultancy work, looking through films
that had been sent in and working out whether they deserved to
get distribution. In the evenings I had access to the editing tables at
Filmcentral, so I could sit there editing my films. It was very handy.”
During that time I managed to put together two films, both
about an hour long. One was called Orchidégartneren (The Orchid
Gardener), and the other Menthe — la bienheureuse. It was
recorded in French, in spite of the fact that I can’t speak a word of
French. I made it after seeing India Song by Marguerite Duras, so
of course I had to film it in French. In Menthe I did my first exper-
iments with back projection. I tried it later on in some of my work
at film school as well. It’s an exciting technique. It’s like doing a
laboratory experiment out in the field.

Cinematic technique interested you a lot at the beginning of your

career.
That’s right. I remember that we did some pretty funny titles for
Menthe. They were revealed as the camera slowly moved along a

23
woman’s naked body. That sort of camera movement was
extremely difficult to do, so I came up with a steel construction to
attach the camera to, which meant that we could move as slowly
as we wanted, centimetre by centimetre. Technique, and the things
it can lead to, fascinated me. In those days technique meant some-
thing different. Now you can do whatever you want to on film
electronically. It’s all done in laboratories and special-effect stu-
dios. And it’s become a lot duller. The idea of workmanship has
vanished completely. I think it’s pretty natural to want to turn
away from technical effects.

Were The Orchid Gardener and Menthe based on your own stories?
I wrote a couple of novels that were never published, and The
Orchid Gardener was based on one of them. It was a very exhibi-
tionistic film. I appear in Nazi uniform and then as a transvestite in
the film. I was really going for it. But David Bowie was my great
idol and role model at the time, which is pretty obvious from the
film. My curiosity has always made me want to try different
things. I wouldn’t like to call them experiments, though, or classify
my earliest films as experimental.
Menthe was a somewhat eccentric reworking of The Story of O,
and, as I said, it was very influenced by Marguerite Duras. India
Song was a revelation. It’s one of the few films that have really
influenced me.

What was it about Duras that influenced you most?

When you get the idea that a film has come from nowhere, that it
wasn’t made here on earth — that’s fantastic. I can’t express it any
other way. I felt like that when I saw India Song, and possibly even
more so when I saw Tarkovsky’s Mirror, which I must have seen at
least twenty times and which I’m completely obsessed by. I’ve seen
a lot of Marguerite Duras’ other films, but they haven’t had the
same effect on me as India Song. Nor did Hiroshima mon amour,
which she wrote for Alain Resnais.

As a director Duras often used narrative techniques that you've

used as well, particularly the way the plot is driven by one — or
more — narrative voices. There’s a hypnotic quality in these voices,

24
like the voices in The Element*of Crime or Europa, which is also
very suggestively charged.
Yes, P’d emphasize the suggestive element. India Song is an incred-
ibly atmospheric film where plot is less important. Full of symbol-
ism, you could say. But I didn’t feel any need to interpret the
symbolism — or the symbolic language — of India Song. The film
was majestic, and the atmosphere incredibly beautiful.

Have you seen the companion piece to India Song, Son nom de
Venice dans Calcutta desert? There are no actors — it’s mostly long
camera shots of building facades and grand interiors. But behind
that you hear the voices, music and sound effects from India Song.
It sounds interesting — a sort of iconography. It’s a fascinating idea,
using fragments of images and setting them to a soundtrack. Mir-
ror is constructed in a similar way, with newly shot footage mixed
with archive material and documentary inserts.

Are there other film-makers you came across when you studied
film history who affected or fascinated you?
Of course, above all Jorgen Leth and two of his films, Det perfekte
menneske (The Perfect Human) and Det gode og det onde (Good
and Evil). The latter influenced me a lot. It’s a film I keep coming
back to. I must have seen it at least twenty times.

What was it about those films that fascinated you?

To begin with, they were very untraditional; they didn’t tell a story
in the conventional sense. I was very interested in advertising
imagery in those days, like Jorgen Leth. Photographs from Vogue
and magazines like that. A sort of still life, using people. And Jor-
gen Leth’s films approached the same aesthetic as those pictures.
But I don’t want to define them narrowly by implying that they’re
just about aesthetics, because Leth’s films mean a lot more to me
than that. They convey atmospheres and experiences and events
that aren’t just aesthetic. It was liberating to see films that were dif-
ferent to most of what Danish cinema was coming up with. I
thought that Danish films in those days, the mid-1970s, were
incredibly boring.

25
 I remember another film from that.period: The Night Porter by
Liliana Cavani, with Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling. I’ve
just seen it again on video, and these days it’s the sort of film you’d
probably classify as kitsch. It’s got a sort of basic comic tone that I
didn’t notice when I saw it the first time. It’s very Italian in style
and atmosphere.
I met Liliana Cavani once. It was just after The Element of
Crime. There was going to be a big EU meeting in Paris about
European cinema, and I was invited by Jack Lang, the French
Minister of Culture at the time, to go along as a representative of
the Danish film industry. Everyone was there! I sat opposite Anto-
nioni during the meeting, alongside Bertolucci and Ken Loach.
Bergman had been invited from Sweden, but of course he didn’t
come. But everyone else was there. It was a pretty interesting expe-
rience for me, considering that I’d just finished film school and
made my first film.
The first day I was sitting eating breakfast on my own. They had
organized the catering in an office in the Ministry of Culture. The
socialists had just come to power. I was squeezed in by a wall, and
noticed that there was a picture by Picasso behind me, which they
must have borrowed from the Louvre. If I’d stretched out my
arms, I could have hit a Picasso with one arm and Braque with the
other!
I was staying at a hotel near by, and I had the room above Lil-
iana Cavani. One morning I rushed off to a flower market that was
close to the hotel and bought a bunch of lilies on my Danish
expense account, knocked on her door and thanked her for The
Night Porter. But she was furious. She thought it was a commer-
cial, imperialistic piece of crap, something she’d just done for the
money. Later she had gone on to make more sincere, left-wing
films that were more to her own taste. She honestly thought The
Night Porter was a piece of shit, though she did take the flowers,
albeit not with any great enthusiasm.
But I was very struck by The Night Porter at the time, with all its
symbols and signs. I probably pinched quite a bit of it for The
Kingdom. In spite of everything, it was an interesting film. The
show trial of the former concentration camp boss showed how
deeply ingrained Nazi attitudes were. And Dirk Bogarde was bril-
liant in the role. Liliana Cavani was hopeless at directing people,

26
but Bogarde managed to create a character in spite of her. It’s still
a film that’s meant a lot to me. As I said, I was very influenced by
David Bowie at that time, and he used to go about in a Nazi uni-
form. I was trying to imitate him. It was all part of my rebellion
against my mother, I think, this business of ostentatiously going
about in military uniform. She’d been in the Danish Resistance
during the war.

You’ve mentioned before a film that influenced you a lot when you
were younger: a Disney film called In Search of the Castaways. You
said at the time that that film had been the inspiration for most of
your films.
Yes, I liked that one a lot. And I can recognize that a lot of images
come from that film. There’s one scene in it where they survive a
flood by climbing up a huge tree. It’s an unforgettable scene, and it
embodied a sort of childhood dream. I used to build tree houses
when I was little, and I was very good at climbing trees. I loved it.
So that scene from In Search of the Castaways was the inspiration
for both The Element of Crime and the final scenes in Europa.

It’s certainly a very poetic scene. The children escape into the top
of the tree, where a lot of animals have also gathered.

And the scene where they escape on some sort of cliff is very good.
There’s another film I remember from that period. I might have
been a bit older, but it was one of the best films I’ve seen — John
Schlesinger’s Billy Liar. It’s a brilliant film.

What is it aboutit that you like?

Its imagination. And the rebellious streak in the central character’s
daydreams. All of a sudden he’s standing there with a hand
grenade, throwing it at an old lady. At the same time he works for
an undertaker, and is supposed to hand out calendars for the com-
pany, which he doesn’t bother to do. He flushes them down the toi-
let during his lunch break. I was very fond of Billy Liar. There are
a few films that have stuck in my mind like that. I’ve only seen In
Search of the Castaways once, but those images from it are etched
on my memory.

27
Have art or literature inspired you in a similar way? Are there
works of art or books that have lived on in your memory like these
films have?
I read quite a lot when I was younger. Strindberg especially. But
perhaps art has been more important. I was very taken with Peter
Watkins’ portrait of Edvard Munch in the television programme
he did. It was a revelation. When I saw it I had to go and paint —
and scrape the paint with the handle of the brush as well. Strind-
berg’s and Munch’s madness was the height of artistic romanticism
for me then. It’s interesting that both Strindberg and Munch came
to Copenhagen to be cured by Professor Jacobsen, who was the
great Danish psychiatrist of the time. He was an eccentric who
used to go about in a cape. I once met a Swedish woman who was
so old that she had been treated by him. But Strindberg’s novels got
much duller and Munch’s paintings were far less interesting after
their meetings with Professor Jacobsen, so he was a bit of villain in
my eyes. They might have felt better, but their art was damaged by
those consultations. Strindberg wrote a couple of his best plays,
The Father and Miss Julie, here in Denmark, and Munch had
already painted his remarkable schizophrenic works before he
came here. Then he turned into a sort of Norwegian Carl Larsson.
No, artists are meant to have it bad, because it makes the results so
much better!

You painted for a while yourself when you were younger ...
Well... Imight have painted ten or fifteen pictures, then I stopped,
after painting a huge self-portrait, two metres by three in size.
After that there was nothing left to give! But I think I managed to
paint my way through most of the ‘-isms’ within painting during
that period. I started with expressionism and went through
impressionism to naivism. But I never really had time to try mod-
ernism and abstract art. I was very fond of Chagall, who was also
my mother’s favourite artist. His work can be a bit too sweet and
nice, but I like that easy style with figures floating in the sky.
I was very fond of Fellini when I was younger. His lightness, his
ability to get his characters to take flight — even literally. Amarcord
was a wonderful film, I thought at the time, funny and full of fantasy
and told with wonderful imagery. I can’t really stand him any more.

28
I think Fellini is a director you abandon as you get older, even if La
Dolce Vita and 8*/2 are still films I have a high regard for.

One thing about La Dolce Vita which isn’t always stressed enough
is Fellini’s journalistic way of telling stories. He films small reports
and essays, and then puts them together to make a big, generous,
multi-coloured fresco.
That’s true. And it explains why his films can be so uneven. Like
Roma, which has some scenes that I was very taken with, but oth-
ers which are quite indifferent. Like those frescoes in the under-
ground, they’re mostly rather saccharine. When his symbolism
becomes too obvious, it’s hard to put up with. It’s better when
there’s a bit of mystery to it.
I also like the Italian way of recording sound. When I was at film
school, I wanted my films to be dubbed all’italiana, i.e. slightly out
of sync. And all atmospheric noises had to be very stylized. So if
two people are in a car, the noise of the car shouldn’t sound natu-
ral, but like a dubbed and flattened buzzing noise. Like in
Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia, another film I’m very fond of. I was
completely obsessed with it for a while. And also La Notte by
Antonioni. An ambitious film, with an atmosphere all of its own.
The fog over the golf course, for instance! A wonderful, idiosyn-
cratic and personal film.
But there aren’t any films like them any more. It’s impossible to
find films with that incredible wealth of expression nowadays.
Maybe I just don’t see enough films, and there are still films like
that but I’ve managed to miss them. What I miss today is a sense
of joy in narration, in invention. And a sense of mystery, above all.

Joy in invention. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do, to rediscover

the medium of film again?
Yes, I suppose I’d like to. Whether or not I manage to is another
matter. Now I’m older I’m more interested in older films. When I
see an old film with a sense of style, it cheers me up. I recently saw
Ken Loach’s Family Life again. That was great. Or Jan Troell’s
Utvandrarna (The Emigrants). That’s wonderful. Take a scene like
when Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) is travelling through America.
You see him in several camera pans that suddenly stop and get

29
 va

cut in-half. That’s a pretty unusual arrangement — very unusual

images.

Perhaps that’s because some modern, anachronistic detail would

have appeared in shot otherwise...
That’s a terrible thing to suggest! But that’s probably because
you’re Swedish. I don’t know what it is that makes me feel so light-
hearted when I see that film. Perhaps it’s because it’s got such a fine
sense of style.
That’s certainly something lacking in films today. A lot of what’s
made is shaped in a very conventional mould, or else put together
in a sort of MTV-style with fast editing and a thumping rhythm.
Or there are very stylized films that are almost entirely form and
very little content. I miss the awareness and feeling for form that so
many directors in the 1940s and sos had, both in the USA and in
Europe. Perhaps it will come back. But that was an incredibly fer-
tile period for film. I saw a film from the 1970s on video the other
day — Five Easy Pieces by Bob Rafelson. A wonderful film! Really
wonderful! I’d never seen it before. Then I saw his The King of
Marvin Gardens, which I couldn’t stand. It was so banal and man-
nered, whereas Five Easy Pieces had a spontaneity and lightness to
it. It feels like everyone involved said: ‘OK, let’s make a film
together,’ then they went on to make Five Easy Pieces quickly,
lightly, and with a sense of fun. This business of taste is funny. It’s
so precise. You might think, “This is good and proper,’ but that’s
only what you think. I think most people who watch films can’t tell
the difference between one and the other. I mean, this question of
style — I don’t think it bothers most people. They just think a film
is boring or not boring.

When did you start to notice the difference yourself? When did
style and taste become important to you?
I’m not entirely sure, but I think it was when I started making my
first 8mm films. I think I looked at them with a certain awareness.
I tried to make my own camera crane. I had grand plans for how it
would look and how it would be built. I filmed camera shots rid-
ing my bike in one of my first films. I mean, if you’re twelve years
old and making films and getting interested in how to get good

30
camera shots, then you’re probably already fairly aware of how
films look.

Do you watch a lot of films these days?

No. That’s the whole point. I hardly see any new films. I don’t
think much of films that are fashionable today. Like Brazil by
Terry Gilliam. I hated it! Or those Frenchmen who made Deli-
catessen. | couldn’t stand it. It’s mannered and superficial, and it
doesn’t say anything to me. Delicatessen is grotesque without hav-
ing the generosity or colour or intoxication of the truly grotesque.
But you get that in Fellini. Brazil was a film I couldn’t watch-all the
way through. And I feel the same about Peter Greenaway’s films.
They’re films without mystique. The aesthetic is so heavy and
obvious that the films are anchored to the floor. Yet I still get com-
pared to these directors now and then.

You got into film school in Copenhagen in the early 1980s.

Yes. Like I said, I tried before, when I was about seventeen. I
applied again, and this time I got in. Something that was obviously
in my favour this time was that I’d already made a couple of films.
I think The Orchid Gardener managed to convince the entrance
board that I had potential.
I came up with a good idea when it came to the final entrance test.
Applicants were given a camera and three minutes of film, and in
three hours we had to come up with a short film, which we had to
edit directly in the camera. In other words, we had to take our pic-
tures in the right order, as we wanted to see them in the finished film.
I wasn’t really thinking artistically about what I was going to do.
Instead, I was wondering what all the others were going to do. I
thought that they would probably go to the main square in Kristian-
shavn near the film school and film some poor Greenlanders sitting
there drinking, or to the park to film people out walking their dogs.
I was fortunate enough to have a car at that point, so I thought
I would drive somewhere else and film there. I could spend an hour
getting there and an hour getting back, so I would have an hour to
film something. So I went off to Skovshoved, which is a residential
area with a lot of rich people’s mansions. I remember it was a
brilliantly sunny day, and the streets and roads out there were

31
completely deserted. So I took pictures of those mansions, with the
occasional gardener or someone in a swimming pool. I made a sort
of ‘Peeping Tom’ report, and I thought it was pretty good. The film
was quite funny and, above all, it was different to what all the oth-
ers presented. It was a tactical manoeuvre. So I got into the school!
The people who got in with me were an eccentric bunch, so I was
lucky there. But I don’t look back on it as a particularly happy
time. I was fairly depressed and had a few physical problems,
mainly with my stomach.

In an interview many years ago now you said that it wasn’t thanks
to the school but rather in spite of it that you learned anything.
Yes, schools can work like that as well. I was probably antagonis-
tic to a lot of what was said and taught at the school. But in order
to break the rules, I had to know what they were first. It was idi-
otic. It was a waste of time. I already knew how I wanted things.
In spite of everything, I’d managed to make two hour-long films
before I got into the school. Of course, there have been interesting
films made by people who went to film school and learned how to
cross-edit and how to avoid crossing the axis when you’re filming
a situation with two people in front of the camera.

What did those years at film school give you?

Well, to begin with, I didn’t have to pay for the films I wanted to
make! I had an almost fetishistic attraction to the technical side of
things, and at film school I suddenly gained access to more advanced
and professional equipment. It was wonderful to be able to get my
hands on all that equipment! I could see before me all the endless
possibilities that this technical equipment suddenly offered me. I
regarded film school mostly as a workshop. I could learn by experi-
menting and testing out different techniques. I got much more out of
the film exercises than the theoretical part of the course.
I was very rebellious and got into arguments with most of the
lecturers. I thought they were idiots. The one I got on best with
was Mogens Rukow, who taught scripts. He took me under his
wing a bit, because he thought what I was doing was pretty
unusual. But I was in constant conflict with the direction teachers,
Gert Fredholm and Hans Christiansen. They really didn’t like

32
what I was doing. They wanted to see a completely different type
of film. Not conventional film exactly, but some sort of hybrid. It
should be nice and tidy and proper and . . . I don’t really know
what sort of film they wanted, or what they themselves made. But,
to me, they both stood for mediocrity in their attitude to film.
We also had teachers for art history and musical theory, but I
never understood the point of that. An appreciation of art was surely
something we should have developed before we got to film school.
People who apply to and get into film school are adults, after all. If
you accept people who have a certain level of experience and things
they want to do, it’s a bit late to start teaching them that sort of
thing. I don’t think they should try to teach what films should con-
tain. They should teach technique. The students themselves ought to
contribute the content. I’m far more inclined towards a workshop
sensibility. A workshop where students get the chance to make as
many films as they can. I’m not very fond of schools . .

You’ve said that when you were bored at film school, you made
sure you always had a book by de Sade with you, or Pauline
Réage’s The Story of O.
That’s probably true. At one point I wrote a script for La Philoso-
phie dans le boudoir by the Marquis de Sade. A grand drama in
three acts, splendidly vulgar. I thought I might use it to practise on.
But Gert Fredholm, who taught direction, told me to destroy the
script. It wasn’t enough that I couldn’t make the film. Any evidence
that a script like that had been written at film school had to be
destroyed! I made a short film based on a story by Boccaccio
instead. A lot of what I first did at film school was only done to be
contrary. The tasks we were given were so stupid. It felt like being
back in nursery school again.

You were fairly interested in erotica and erotic stories at that point.
Do you think that erotica has been depicted in film in a sensual
and convincing way? Is there any particular film, or films, that
you’ve found stimulating?
Erotically stimulating?

Yes.

33
(A very long pause.) No, I can’t think of anything at the moment. |
was very fond of The Night Porter, but that was more on a theo-
retical level. It wasn’t very erotic in a stimulating way. It was far too
fragrant for that. The Story of O wasn’t very successful as a film. As
a novel, though, you could probably say that it’s stimulating.

Why do you think it is that films that are supposed to be erotic —

and I don’t mean porn films — are so unerotic?
Well, erotica is something that’s more fun to do than to watch. But
one great characteristic of film is its capacity and possibility to cre-
ate erotic people. There’s a whole host of erotic women on film.
And not merely in erotic films. But film is so good at creating erotic
images, with sensual and charismatic actors at their centre.

Can you name any actresses who've got this charisma?

I think Charlotte Rampling radiated sensuality. |was mad about
her. Dominique Sanda was incredibly beautiful. Catherine Deneuve,
she’s magnificent. There are a lot of French actresses who have that
erotic magnetism.

You’ve named three European actresses. Is there anyone in Amert-

can cinema who’s appealed to you in the same way’
Some of the great stars had that sensual charisma. I think
Katharine Hepburn had it, and Marilyn Monroe, of course. We
could probably look up a list of actresses and find loads of them.
Because what film offers is the chance for them to build on their
erotic potential. There’s an extremely strong sexual undercurrent
to most female acting on film.

Max Ophiils once said, ‘Making films is easy, you just need a beau-
tiful woman and a mobile camera and you follow her as closely as
possible.’
There’s a lot in that. I saw Maurice Pialat’s Loulou recently, with
Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu. It’s a brilliant film. And I
remember when I first saw Huppert’s début film, The Lacemaker,
by Claude Goretta. I thought, ‘That insignificant girl, she can
hardly be the lead.’ But after seeing it all the way through I was

34
5 Trier in a leather jacket during filming of Nocturne.

quite captivated, almost obsessed by her. Jeanne Moreau was

another brilliant actress.

If we return to your time at film school — what else is there to say

about it?
Mainly that there I came into contact with a cameraman called
Tom Elling and an editor called Tomas Gislason. We formed a tri-
umvirate who worked well together. The collaboration we set up
was extremely important for me, something that developed and
continued on my first feature films. It started with a short film
called Nocturne, which was my most visual adventure up to that
point. Today it looks like an MTV clip, but at the time it had a
sense of freedom about it. The film was highly influenced by Tom
Elling and his experiences. Tom was a painter before he started
film school. After Nocturne we did a film that probably wasn’t
much good, Den sidste detalje (The Last Detail). It was a sort of
gangster pastiche, partly inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville. But we
carried on our collaboration later with Befrielsebilder (Liberation
Pictures) and The Element of Crime.

a5
What did your collaboration with Tom Elling and Tomas Gislason
give yous

An awful lot. I was able to put into practice a lot of the theories
they had. Tom had spent a lot of time on what you could charac-
terize as symbolic painting. We worked a lot with symbols and
symbolic language, and we had complex theories about the sym-
bolic content of separate shots. We developed structures and con-
tours in our images. We drowned some scenes in water or poured
oil on the walls to make things clearer. The sort of thing you do in
painting or sculpture. We were extremely interested in getting a
patina on the things we filled our shots with. We spent a lot of time
getting that patina on things. In The Element of Crime our interest
in patinas became almost overwhelming. Niels Vorsel once said
something about ‘the danger of nature’. That fascinated us, the
collision between nature and culture. Our point of view was purely
visual, and greatly influenced by Tom.
Tomas, on the other hand, had a lot of theories about editing.
Above all, he had got very involved with eye scanning — where the
focal point for the eye should remain in the same place in two
shots after you edit them together. These were theories we took
with us from film school, but we tried to use them in a creative
way. We had them as a starting point. Purely technical details were
what inspired us. And that was something they weren’t keen on at
film school. You shouldn’t start out with technique, but with con-
tent, or rather the message. You should start with the message,
then create a story around it, and then — eventually — spare a
thought to style.

You mentioned Niels Vorsel, who has been one of your closest col-
laborators and co-writer of a lot of the scripts for your films. Was
he another person you came into contact with at film school?
No, he was actually an extra on my exam project at film school,
Liberation Pictures. We had a mutual friend, and, through him, he
ended up in the film. One day we bumped into each other in a cafe,
and he started discussing a project with me. He wanted to film
Wagner’s Ring in the Ruhr. As far as I could make out, it would be
filmed from the autobahns and would be projected on to huge
screens so it could be seen from the autobahns. It was a huge,

36
bizarre project, and I said it sounded extremely exciting. But I’d
just got funding for a script for a detective film and suggested we
work on that instead. So we went on to write The Element of
Crime in a couple of months, if I remember rightly.

Had Niels Vorsel already published anything at that point?

He’d published one small book, J.B., which was almost a concep-
tual publication. And he’d written some radio plays. He was also
in Epidemic, but you know that.

Of course, he and his wife, and you and your first wife, Cecilia
Holbek ...
Yes, she’s the nurse. If there’s anything she’s never been, it’s that.
During the time we were married, I think at most she might have
given me a cup of tea when I was ill. But only once!

But you and Niels have collaborated on a lot of films now. How do
you work? Do you each sit alone and write, or is the collaboration
more direct?
We sit together and work. To begin with he used to sit at an enor-
mous IBM typewriter, but he’s had to give that up for a computer.
When we wrote The Kingdom, Niels did a lot of the research as
well. That was the bulk of the work on that one, so we had to
divide it between us. But usually we work by writing a treatment,
a synopsis together first, then we share the work between us and
write separate scenes On our own.
Together we’ve written what we call a trilogy, The Element of
Crime, Epidemic and Europa. And then The Kingdom. And we’re
also working on the project that I’m calling Dimension, a film that
will take about thirty years to complete. We started recording in
1992, I think. All my little ‘film family’ are in it. Eddie Constantine
was in it to start with, but of course we can’t have him any more.
In December 1996 I filmed a few scenes with Katrin Cartlidge,
Stellan Skarsgard and Ernst-Hugo Jaregard. One idea behind it
was that I’d work with actors who I’d just used in a current film.

Can you say anything else about the project?

bid
Well, the idea is to make a film by recording two minutes per year
up to the year 2024. We haven’t got a script, we just improvise the
action each year. It’s a pretty weird project. It’s always annoyed me
that you usually make people up in films to make them look
younger or older. With Dimension I wanted to do something where
time was a central theme. The project is regarded as being well nigh
impossible. The scenes are so short. But, one way or another, it will
also be about how difficult it is to make a film like this one.

Do you edit each instalment the year you film it and add it to what
you already have? Or are you saving the editing for later?
Originally we weren’t going to edit the sections as we went along,
but we’ve ended up doing that after all, mainly to get financial
backing for the project. The Film Institute has been very under-
standing about the project, and we’ve also got a grant from Statens
Filmcentral. I suggested at one point that they could give us a pro-
duction grant equal to what a normal Danish film would get,
which we could put in the bank, financing each year’s recording
with the interest. I mean, put the money in some sort of fund, and
then, when the film was finished, give the money back to the Film
Institute. But that wasn’t possible because of the Film Institute’s
rules and the agreements they have with the government. So we
have to apply for funding each year. And so far we’ve got it. It’s
probably hard to stop a project like this once it’s started. Other-
wise we’d have to throw away everything we’ve already recorded.

And you'll be unveiling the finished piece in 2024?

Yes, why not! As long as I’m still around. You'll probably get to
see it as well. How old will you be then, seventy-five or so?

No, eighty-five, if you have the premiére in the spring. Otherwise

Il be eighty-six.
Well, we'll have to arrange a special screening where we can wheel
you into the cinema and ensure you can see the screen properly.

But you ought still to be around then. You'll be a pensioner — sixty-

eight years old.
a)

38
But I’m convinced I'll die of cancer any moment. I’ve got a whole
load of phobias about cancer these days. Haven’t you?

No. I haven't actually got that many phobias.

Well, ’'ve got more than enough to go round. The best thing about
cancer phobias is that they swamp all the others. Now that I’m
worried about dying of cancer, there isn’t so much room for the
other phobias. There’s a certain logic to it. At the moment I’m suf-
fering from crushing cancer phobia. The problem with a phobia or
an anxiety of this sort is that it isn’t creative. You don’t get any-
thing out of it. You ought to be able to turn the anxiety into some-
thing else, because there’s a fair amount of energy in it. But it just
creates apathy instead.

You’ve said that your work is a way of confronting your phobias

and anxieties. Can you develop that a bit more?
The phobias that I suffer from can obviously be used to my advan-
tage sometimes. A person who’s afraid of the dark will probably
make a better horror film. But mostly phobias just make you
uncomfortable. At the moment I’m so self-obsessed that I imagine
my own death five or six times a day. It’s pretty pathetic... There
he goes again, the idiot, fantasizing about his own death again,
half a dozen times a day!
I’ve spoken to Ernst-Hugo Jaregard about this a few times.
We’re both terrified of dying. I think I’m most afraid of the process
itself. Ernst-Hugo’s fear was different. He couldn’t imagine life
without Ernst-Hugo Jaregard! I once said to him that seeing as
we’ve experienced our own death night after night, and been so
terrified of it in advance, then we’re going to be really well-pre-
pared when we’re finally confronted with death for real, because
we’ve suffered so many rehearsals of the event itself.
The worst thing is that you don’t get anything out of all this
anxiety. It has the sort of power that it would take to climb a
mountain or go off exploring or something like that. But anxiety
gives nothing in return, even though it demands blood, sweat and
tears from me when I’m trying to get through a difficult night.
When the morning comes, it’s all gone. There’s no visible evi-
dence of what I’ve been through. I haven’t managed to plant a
f

39
flag at the top of a mountain. It’s all a pretty pathetic perform-
ance.

But you can become immortal through your films ...

I can become immortal through my films. . . (Laughter.) But that’s
not much good to me now. Immortal is putting it a bit strong, too,
but it’s possible that someone in the future will dig out an old film
and think he’s found something interesting. I probably still think
that immortality comes from a stable, sound basis, not from the
opposite. If something has characteristics that make people think
of it as worthwhile, then it has to contain energy that isn’t just neg-
ative. That’s what I think, anyway.

Nevertheless, Dimension is a project that ought to keep you alive

for a while. The film could be your life insurance.
That all depends on what you mean by life insurance. It could be
insurance against dying. But I imagine you’re referring to usual
insurance terms, where those who are left get some money.

I mean that the film might act as insurance for you, that you have
to stay alive until the project is finished.
Yes, I can imagine that. I’ll do practically anything to convince
myself that I’ve still got some life left.

40
 3
Liberation Pictures

SYNOPSIS

The first day after the liberation of Copenhagen, May 1945. A

group of German soldiers is gathered in an unspecified location,
characterized by water and fire. These men, the war’s losers, are
killing themselves or saving their comrades from the humiliation of
being captured by the Allies. Even Leo, the film’s main character,
wants to commit suicide, but at the vital moment his revolver
merely clicks. He writes a letter to his Danish sweetheart, Esther.
We find Esther in a house on the edge of the city, where the lib-
eration is being celebrated. She is embracing a black American sol-
dier when she catches sight of Leo, who has crept into the house.
When they are alone, she criticizes Leo for taking part in an act of
torture. A young boy from the resistance was blinded. Leo denies
being involved, and says the SS were behind the act. Esther points
out his culpability, but promises to take him to a hiding place in the
forest anyway.
In the forest Leo remembers his childhood. People are moving
through the trees, and Leo ts lured into an ambush. He is captured
by resistance fighters, and Esther blinds him before he levitates up
into the sky. Behind the windscreen of a car we see Esther’s tear-
streaked face.
cee
he hs

LARS VON TRIER: This is a long film, a film with long scenes — par-
ticularly the final scene. It takes a long while for the image to fade.
I remember there’s a little dog in the scene, which stands nodding
its head, because there are explosions in the distance. It took a long
time before it was still again, and then I let the image fade.

41
No, it doesn’t fade. But you let Kirsten Olesen look into the cam-
era, and there’s a sense of you saying ‘thank you’, because the scene
is over now. But the camera’s still reacting, you get a sense of
Kirsten emerging from her character, and you break the fiction. I
was going to ask you about this final image later, but we might as
well start with it instead. Was it an idea that was formulated at the
editing table, or had you planned to do it like that from the outset?
I'd planned to do it like that from the start . . . Yes, that’s what we
came up with at some point. We’ve got the long drive in the car,
and that shot from the ground, which I think we managed very
well. It’s an effect that succeeded, I think. Whenever I had a par-
ticular aim with something technical, or with some technical spe-
cial effect, I always planned it so it was obvious how it had been
done. I did it like that even in my first films at school. If there was
a mirror in the scene, I would often move the camera so that the
whole film crew appeared in the mirror. I liked that, that the cam-
era became visible at a certain point.

That was typical of Godard in his earliest films. Is he a director

who’s influenced you?
No, he hasn’t meant that much to me.

Liberation Pictures looks like it was a fairly expensive production

for a film-school film. Was it hard for you to get it off the ground?
No, we made it pretty quickly. The film probably just looks expen-
sive. Its production values are high when you consider the budget we
had to stick to. We were lucky to find an old factory where we filmed
the whole of the first part of the film. It was very suggestive, with its
old ovens and so on. And we made a few improvements of our own.

Did the film school have any opinions about the film before it was
made?
Not that I remember. We had a long discussion about the long
crane shot at the end of the film. Edward Fleming, who is also a
director, played the central character in the film and didn’t want to
go up in the crane. And we were supposed to have a sunrise in the
background. And the forestry official who helped us up in north

42
6 Lars von Trier testing the camera crane for the long, unnerving crane-shot
at the end of Liberation Pictures.

Zealand where the film was recorded suggested having the forest
in the background as well. But when we finally got the crane set
up, the sun rose on the wrong side. We’d read the map wrong. So
we’ve got Esprup Lake in the background instead. And it was very
nice, even if it wasn’t meant to be like that to begin with. But we
thought, what the hell, we’ll take it as it is. So we tied Edward
Fleming to the crane, and I went up with it, 28 metres, because the
cameraman didn’t dare go up. We had to get it done quickly. We
had to get the shot in one take to get both the sunrise and the mist
that was drifting over the ground. And it was proper mist, not
something out of a machine.
So we did the long, slow ascent. I’d promised Edward not to lift
him more than ten metres above the ground. At the end of the shot
he opened his eyes and looked down. And he said, calmly but very
sternly: ‘We’re going down now!’

So that was one phobia you could deal with?

Yes, fear of heights is one of the few phobias I don’t suffer from. I
can hardly see a crane without wanting to climb up it. Situations

43
that I can control and make decisions about don’t really bother me.
When we filmed The Element of Crime, I was always up high. Either
that or down in the sewers. We paddled round in the sewers and
floated around in them. Or else we were up in tall cranes instead.

Yes, and in Epidemic you’ve got a long scene where you're hanging
from a rope under a helicopter, flying over the countryside.
Yes, but that wasn’t bad either.

Liberation Pictures takes place during the days following the lib-
eration of Denmark from German occupation, and the central
character is a German soldier. Why choose him as the main char-
acter?
By Danish standards it was pretty provocative to view the surren-
der from the German point of view. People were used to seeing it
from the Danish perspective. But then we got to see some docu-
mentary footage of captured Danish collaborators, ‘stikkere’, and
of some Germans as well. Those pictures were shot with great
awareness of the camera’s role, of who it was who was document-
ing the whole thing.

But you wrote the story together with your two closest colleagues
on the film, the cameraman Tom Elling and the editor Tomas Gis-
lason.
Well, I’m not sure about that...

That’s what it says in the final credits.

Well, we did the storyboard together, and some of the story prob-
ably came about while we were doing that. But I don’t think we
wrote the script together. It’s possible though. In any case, we did
an extremely detailed storyboard before we started filming.

And the film follows the storyboard?

Yeah, most of it.

This sort of preparation, is it something you’ve done since then?

44
Yes, up to The Kingdom. | stopped after that. Breaking the Waves
came about naturally without any storyboard. You can’t predict
anything when you work with a hand-held camera. But even at
film school I was very choosy about camera movements. I’d set
myself a mass of rules. Panoramic shots and tilts, horizontal and
vertical camera movements, they weren’t allowed. I thought cam-
era movements that weren’t in parallel were unattractive. I didn’t
like altered perspective. Nor did I want to combine crane shots
with panoramic shots. The camera’s gaze should be along pure,
clean horizontal or vertical lines. I remember having a very good
second cameraman on Europa, who wanted to do some small
panoramic shots to settle the image. But I said no. I could easily
have fixed the camera stand so that it couldn’t move horizontally.
I was very conservative on that point, until I moved on to using a
hand-held camera, which is considerably more anarchic.

Had you felt obliged to establish rules like this for yourself before?
Yes, I felt I had to. It just came naturally. But by setting yourself
rules, you also choose a style. I used a lot of parallel camera move-
ments at a lot of different points. It was a bit like a cartoon. We did
a lot of work with motifs in the foreground but also in deep per-
spective. Important things were going on in the background, and
the action could shift between the two. It was very consciously
constructed.

You also created similarly complex shifts in the soundtrack, where

voices could overlap. The dialogue in some scenes is occasionally
interrupted by a narrator moving the action of the film forward.
That was something I developed at film school, which I first used
in Nocturne and then continued in Liberation Pictures. Everything
was synchronized late. What interested me was that body language
was a separate thing and that the voices didn’t match it. It helped
to create the sense of unreality that I was after in these films.
When we recorded the narrator’s text for Europa with Max von
Sydow, I made him lie down. That way, his voice assumed a com-
pletely different tone. We worked in the same way with Michael
Elphick in The Element of Crime when we recorded his internal
monologue. A lot of what I was doing then was based on theories.

45
 2 es 7

In many of your earlier films you used iaterhal dialogue to tell the
story. Have you got a theory about that? o ae PE
a
* Interiof monologues have always seemed to me to have a dream-
‘like quality. They also say something about observation. The per-
son who is speaking — or thinking out loud — has observed
something. It’s a stylistic touch which has a lot in common with the
Raymond Chandler films of the 1940s. ‘
a

And with film noir.

Of course.

You use this narrative technique in Liberation Pictures as well.

Yes, and there are several scenes where it’s raining, which is another
typical film noir trademark. Rain can be very evocative, and it can
emphasize things and generally make a scene more intense. They
hated rain scenes at film school. But I argued with them and
pointed out the practical advantages of filming so many shots with
rain. If it rains during recording, you don’t have to postpone the
shoot. That was the sort of argument they could accept.

But you must have used rain machines as well?

Of course, and the fire brigade too. I exploited the fire brigade as
much as I could during my earlier films. Constant floods!
we
You seem to enjoy getting the actors soaked...
Yes, you get to see the outlines of their faces and bodies in a clearer
way. Especially in black and white. It always looks great.

As far as colour’s concerned, you divided Liberation Pictures into

three acts. First one that’s reddish-orange, then a yellow, then a
green. How did you come to tone the film like that?
I don’t really remember. But I suppose I thought the red tone gave a
sort of ‘inferno’ look. There are a lot of fires early on. We just set fires
at various points in the scenes. It’s pretty exaggerated, but in its own
way it’s actually quite beautiful. There are loads of torches, and it was
years before I could see another torch. I’m still not very fond of them.

46
 { ,

I don’t remember why we chose to film the second section in yel-

low. I think the.wind was important. In the first section the ele-
ments were fire and water, and in the second air. I don’t think
anyone would get an awful lot from me remembering why the sec- .
o
ond section is yellow. But this business of tinting black-and-white
film is an unashamed imitation of Tarkovsky, a bit like his Mirror.
When we'tried out different colours, we found that orange-red is
an extremely good colour, because it gives a particularly strong
sense of colour as it contains both yellow and red.

The film is pretty cerebral in character, even down to the choral

music accompanying the visuals.

That was also inspired by Tarkovsky. He used Bach. I just went a

step further and chose a choral piece. It made the film even more
overblown, but I still think it’s a good piece of music.

Do you listen to music much? ve

No. These days I mostly listen to disposable, modern pop music.

But I’ve spent a lot of time on music in the past. I went through a
phase of listening to a lot of impressionistic music, and piano music
as well. That was partly thanks to that film about Delius by Ken
Russell. That was a great film, without doubt the most disciplined
thing Russell has done. It got me interested in Delius’s music. Rus-
sell made films about several composers, The Music Lovers and
Lisztomania, and so on, and they were really dreadful. But Delius
was an extremely good film, and it was black and white.

The central character in Liberation Pictures, Leo, tries to contact

various German cities. He calls out to them. This happens again in
your trilogy about Europe, with The Element of Crime, Epidemic
and Europa.
That’s Leif Magnusson, the director, sitting down in one scene and
trying to contact Germany by telephone. ‘Fraulein, geben Sie mir
bitte Berlin,’ he begins. But he can’t get a connection, so he lists all
the cities he wants to contact. ‘Liineberg an der Heide, Essen im
Rubrgebeit . . . ‘ When you see or hear the names of these cities,
they summon up images. It’s a very visual thing, talking about

47
cities, because a lot of cities have some sort of soul attached to
them, whether or not you’ve actually been there. Cities are like
people. Take a film like Bergman’s The Silence. You get that sense
of atmosphere in that. The fictional city in that, which seems to be
in some East European country, really does have a soul, albeit a
particularly depressing one.

What is it that fascinates you so about all these German cities’

names? They appear as a kind of catechism in Epidemic and the
other films as well.
These cities and their names have an almost mythological quality
for me. It’s also to do with Germany, like The Element of Crime
and Europa. There’s a Teutonic cultural quality about it. I can’t
really explain it very well. But there is a fascination, which you
should probably ask Niels Vorsel about, because it’s more his fas-
cination than mine. There’s a terribly depressing film noir feel to it
all: There’s a similar mystical content in all the American cities that
the film noir genre is anchored to. The effect just gets more
extreme with these German cities’ names. When you pile on night,
darkness and rain or fog . . . ‘It’s always three o’clock in the morn-
ing,’ as someone says in one of those films.
That was Niels Versel’s favourite scene. He didn’t write Libera-
tion Pictures with me, of course, but he particularly liked that
scene. The camera takes a symbolic tour of the floor of the factory
where the scene is set, a tour which is supposed to give an impres-
sion of the geographical positions of these cities. It’s quite a smart
idea, I think. When we get to Liineberg an der Heide, the heath
landscape is symbolized by some sand on the floor. It was one of
the most successful scenes in the film. I’m very fond of shots like
that, with a mobile camera pointing straight down, vertically,
because your usual vision is compromised and you don’t know
what’s up or down.
We planned that scene for a long time, weeks before we filmed
it. We planned the scenography on a large table, and it included
most things — water, vegetation, wind. In one place where we’d
poured some sand we hid some small lights that shone through it.
It’s a very dreamlike image. I’m very fond of model landscapes. I
tried to do something similar in The Element of Crime, but we

:
48
didn’t have time. But at film school we had all the time in the
world. We could carry on tinkering as long as we wanted.

How long did the filming itself take?

Not very long. About a week or so, I think. That’s not long at all,
but then the film is only an hour long. But we did spend a long time
preparing it.

The locations in Liberation Pictures are often very spacious, and

the rooms and layouts are also difficult to identify and get an idea
of. How did you find and choose the locations, and what sort of
qualities were you looking for?
The locations — perhaps we ought to call them the film’s spaces —
are also significant for the plot, not least because it was important
not to reveal exactly how they were constructed and how they
were connected to each other. The film explores these spaces in the
way that other films try to explore the psychology of the plot or
the central character. And when you explore psychology, you don’t
start by showing and explaining connections and circumstances;
instead you give a series of pieces of the puzzle which eventually
give a more complete and clear image. It’s not much fun to give a
quick overview of any psychology. I tried to use these spaces in a
similar way.
But I have to say that the spaces in Liberation Pictures lack
coherence. They don’t exist in reality. They’re more embodiments
of an idea than realistic locations. The first location, with Leo and
the German soldiers, was put together from lots of different
rooms. We created a location that existed only for the camera. It
gives quite a claustrophobic feeling, although I think ‘claustropho-
bia’ is a dull word, or definition, in this instance. But there is a con-
scious lack of any sort of overview. We chose what the viewer sees
and what he can’t see. We’re compromising the signals.
It’s a bit like trying to film Napoleon and his army of 100,000
men. I can do that by showing one soldier who has got separated
from the ranks, and then put the sound of marching in the back-
ground. You can get an impression of a whole other dimension
from a single detail. I think that’s the best thing about the opening
scene of Liberation Pictures. We picked out a few details, which
*
49
give the impression that we’re in a huge labyrinth where a whole
mass of different things are happening. It’s a bit of a trick really!

So do you remember how you constructed the location?

P’ve always wanted to work mathematically and symmetrically.
We drew up a storyboard and made various plans for how the
camera movements would happen, and so on. Then we built up
the various elements of the décor in relation to that. I can’t really
remember — and I’d rather not remember — but I think we were
fairly systematic about it.

In classical drama people talk about the unity of plot, time and
space, but you don’t really bother much with that. There’s unity of
plot, but unity of time and space is something that you seem to
have consciously avoided in your first films.
I don’t know how conscious it was. But, to put it another way, I’ve
never been in any doubt as to how things should be expressed and
embodied in my films. Not at all. That doesn’t mean it’s a wholly
conscious decision on my part — rather the opposite. Things just
had to be the way they were.

The way you deal with space in Liberation Pictures recurs in The
Element of Crime and Europa. The locations lack clear bound-
aries, which gives the viewer a sense of unreality and insecurity ...
And that was a conscious decision, that was what I was trying to
convey to the viewer. When I make leaps in time in The Kingdom,
the intention is the same. There, where I want to open up the
unknown and the unsettling and the frightening, it’s very impor-
tant not to show clear spatial connections or how the different
locations are connected to one another. That’s why I only chose to
show parts of the rooms in that.
But in these earlier films, in Liberation Pictures and The Element
of Crime, I wasn’t trying to convey a sense of fear, but of disinte-
gration. My old dislike of panoramic shots and tilts also meant
that the spaces became more confined and less realistic. If you fol-
low a character walking through an apartment, you can’t help see-
ing the whole apartment. But if you have fixed shots and parallel
a

5O
movement, you limit the scope of vision and therefore also sensory
perception of the location.

It’s also a narrative technique that can be effective in a story with

a lot of suspense.
Of course, the images can compensate for whatever the plot lacks
in terms of intrigue.

This sort of technique also allows you to play with illusions and
even perceptions of time and surprise the viewer. There’s one scene
in The Element of Crime, for instance, where the main character is
on his way to a brothel. It’s a very long scene, filmed in a long cam-
era shot, where, to begin with, we follow him entering a building.
Then we lose him for a while, while the camera goes past some
clothes lines and sheets swaying in the wind. And when the camera
comes to the end of its run, he’s suddenly there again, but facing
the wrong direction, so we get the impression that he’s in two
places at the same time.
Don’t ask me why I did that scene. It’s a long time since I saw the
film now, several years. But it might be fun to see it again.
One problem is that we decided in advance exactly how a scene
should look. Then we’d get to the location and it would turn out
to be bloody difficult to get the scene exactly as we’d planned. But
the results of that can be interesting as well, when you do your
damnedest to achieve your idea no matter what it costs, because
you — and the actors — are forced to carry out gestures that aren’t
always natural in that situation. But they can also be more inter-
esting to look at than if you’d chosen the simplest and most realis-
tic way. If you plan to finish a long scene with a close-up of a pair
of legs, for instance, and this then proves impossible unless you put
the character on a table. But that creates an absurd situation that I
think has its own advantages: suddenly someone’s standing on a
table without the slightest explanation. So in a choice between the
natural and the construct, I’ve often chosen the latter. .
This sort of attitude can infuriate the film team. One technician
walked off the set once. We were going to have curtains in
Osborne’s office in The Element of Crime, but it turned out that
they couldn’t be hung inside the set. I said that it didn’t matter; we

51
could hang them outside instead. ‘But it’s raining outside,’ he said.
‘Great,’ I said. So he left. He couldn’t deal with that sort of think-
ing. Curtains have to hang inside a window. But I think that
absurdities like that can only help to enrich a film.

Liberation Pictures was filmed very quickly. One reason for that
must have been these extremely long scenes¢
Of course, you’ve experienced that yourself. When everything’s
been planned and is in place, you get quite a lot of time to do the
actual filming. The same thing happened when I was filming The
Kingdom 2. After a load of short scenes filmed on a hand-held
camera, I could allow myself one long scene where we followed the
actors through a very long take. And suddenly we’d gone through
eight pages of the script. And suddenly the job’s done! And the
producer ends up swearing!

The strange thing is that most producers are afraid of long takes.
They seem to think that they take more time, and even that they
cost more, when for the most part it’s quite the reverse. A producer
counts the number of pages in a script and reckons that the direc-
tor ought to be able to get through three or four scenes a day.
That’s according to the conventional view of multiple shots and
the division of scenes into long shots, half shots and close-ups. But
with long takes you can easily get through eight or ten pages a day.
Yes, and you have the scene changes in the script as soon as you
change location. And the producer does his calculations according
to the number of locations. But sometimes they can be linked or
combined. That happened on The Kingdom 2. I had a load of
scenes in the doctors’ room, for instance, or in the corridor or the
wards. Thanks to the steadicam, we could move freely between all
these sets and could easily get through ten or twelve scenes in a sin-
gle take. So what the producer thought would take three days to
record, we managed in a morning.

What do the actors think about these long takes?

I think they like them in principle, because they get to act in a con-
text that isn’t usually available. In The Kingdom there’s not a lot

52
that’s particularly well defined. In my earlier films everything was
much more planned and calculated in advance.
I remember that some of the more complex scenes in Europa
were extremely demanding for the actors. Particularly one scene
with Ernst-Hugo Jaregard, when we started the scene with a model
train, then continued in a single shot across the model railway, out
through the roof, in towards a train that was travelling parallel to
the model train, and into one of the carriages where Ernst-Hugo
was going to deliver his long monologue. This was all filmed in one
single long take without any edits. The camera was on a crane, and
the carriage where Ernst-Hugo was standing was shaking and
swaying, and it was lit by special lighting effects to make it look as
though it was in motion. This meant that Ernst-Hugo had to stand
on a little platform one and a half metres off the ground and sway
as though he was in the train, at the same time as performing this
long speech. And every time he began his speech I’d say, ‘Thank
you,’ because there was always something that had gone wrong in
the introduction to the scene. He was absolutely furious in the end,
I remember. We did a lot of different takes of that scene, because of
course it also happened that when we finally got the chance, Ernst-
Hugo muddled his lines. I remember joking with him, when we’d
finally got the scene after a day’s work, saying: ‘I should have gone
for Max von Sydow instead!’ He wasn’t very impressed with our
technical arrangements and camera movements. He was only
interested in his performance, which he was on the point of losing
his grip on. But I got on very well with Ernst-Hugo. We hardly ever
argued.
I’m still very proud of that scene. It was terribly complicated,
but good fun to do. Originally we were going to do it with back
projection, but then the technician who helped us with those
scenes suggested that we record the shot for real. I misunderstood
him and thought he meant the back-projection. But he didn’t. But
it did give me the idea of doing the scene without any trickery, by
building a train carriage directly linked to the model railway. So
we did it, and built a roof with hatches in for the camera to go
through. So the camera goes from the model, up through the roof
and out towards the train in the studio. And it was surrounded by
smoke and specially lit to give the impression that the train was
moving. The camera moves along the carriage towards the compart-

53
 ment window, where Ernst-Hugo delivers his monologue. And
when he pulls down the blind in the window, the light effects play
on the blind, while the carriage carries on rocking.

Do you remember how many times you had to shoot that sceneé
It took a whole day, if I remember rightly. But that’s what we’d
planned for.

A lot of the scenes in Europa are pure trickery.

Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly . .. They were attempts at Holly-
wood solutions to problems of scenery. Henning Bahs, Dreyer’s old
collaborator, was the scenographer on Europa, and he had loads of
ideas and solutions to the problems the scenes posed. I’ve actually
always wanted to make a film in a single shot, like Kvindesind. It
would be fun to try once. It would also be a lot easier to do.

There’s Hitchcock’s Rope, of course...

Yes, but that was a disappointment, because the film doesn’t use
the idea for anything special. It would be fun to move freely
through a large landscape, and maybe even go indoors as well.
Hitchcock confines himself to a small apartment. I don’t think that
that particular film and that story were best suited to that sort of
experiment.

Have you seen Jerzy Skolimovski’s film Walkover?

© No, I haven’t seen that one.

It consists of maybe twenty scenes, about four minutes each, about

as long as a camera could take in one shot when the film was made
in the mid-1960s. It’s about a boxer travelling from one place to
another for a boxing match, and a lot of it is filmed with a hand-
held camera. From what I remember, there’s a scene where he gets
on a train — and the photographer gets on after him.
There’s a brilliant but simple scene in Orson Welles’s Touch of
Evil, where he goes into a lift while the other actor runs down the
stairs and stands there waiting for the lift when the doors open.

54
That was a great idea.

Perhaps we should get back to Liberation Pictures. What’s your

attitude to symbols? If we take the beginning of the film, you have
a whole series of shots of little birds.
Those birds have a direct connection to the plot. Leo says later in
the film that he can talk to birds. And I thought these close-ups of
little birds had such a good, melancholic feel to them. That’s about
all there is to say about symbols, in my opinion. I’ve got nothing
against symbols, as long as they don’t have to be analyzed. Sym-
bols lose their potency if everything has to be explained. If ‘the
bird’ represents something different, it doesn’t make it more inter-
esting. The image of a bird represents so much more. I’m against
explanations that diminish an experience.
It’s worth asking why you have to use symbols at all. Words are
just as good. Things can be exactly what they appear to be, and
function as symbols at the same time. People often try to simplify
things by trying to find hidden symbolic language. Everything is
symbolic, you could say. Symbols in films don’t interest me much.
I’d sooner talk about ‘pure greatness’. That appeals much more.

Do you read what critics and other people write about your films?
Yes, I read reviews with my eyes closed, preferably. I look at the
title, then shut my eyes so I can’t see anything else. I’ve read some
of the analysis that people have done in the realm of film studies.
After all, I read film studies myself at university. The sort of essays —
and analysis they write there are of most interest to the people —
writing it. I can’t remember ever reading any film analysis that
made me think, ‘Of course, that’s what it’s all about!’ But I think
it’s excellent that people are trying to reveal a film’s significance
and complexity and its wealth of expression. But it’s nothing that
I have any use for.

The main conflict in Liberation Pictures concerns a betrayal, and

betrayal is a recurrent theme in your films...
I’m afraid it is. The story told in Liberation Pictures is terrible. But
it’s true, that’s what the film is about — betrayal.

oe)
How did the story come about?
I don’t remember. I’ve suppressed that completely. I don’t know
how it came about that the film dealt with Nazism. I can imagine
— thinking about the co-operation we had with the film school -
that I was given a basic outline of the story, and then went to Tom
(Elling) with it. And that would have suggested a number of loca-
tions, which we would later try to tie together in some sort of con-
text. Instead of a normal location he would suggest, for instance,
the factory location that we have in the film, and point out all the
advantages and possibilities that it offered. That’s something I
learned from and used in my later films.

Perhaps that’s to do with his background as a painter.

Definitely. Certainly his way of seeing things from a different per-
spective.

In Liberation Pictures, betrayal by a woman is the decisive dra-

matic conflict. In Europa, betrayal is again a constant theme, and
there again it’s a woman who stands for the betrayal...
Yes, they’re always doing that! I’ve been betrayed by women
myself. And it turned out that my mother was responsible for the
greatest betrayal of my life. There’s also a literary tradition of
treacherous women. Treacherous men are really incredibly banal.
With treacherous women the dramatic impact is more apparent.
Women are mothers as well, and mothers are people you ought to
be able to rely upon. And when you can’t trust them, the conse-
quences are that much worse. The tragedy is more obvious when
it’s women who are treacherous.

The whole film noir genre is based upon portraits of treacherous

women.
Yes, the women there are relentlessly and carelessly treacherous.
The men are more clearly defined: either they are heroes or villains.
But the women are always changing sides.

Liberation Pictures also reflects gender conflict. At one point

Esther (Kirsten Olesen) says: ‘You’re so useful. I could use you.’

56
Yes, well . . . It’s so embarrassing to hear the dialogue. Really
embarrassing!

Why?
It’s so pretentious. And poor. It’s what I like least about the film. It’s
so bad! The Element of Crime suffers a bit from the same thing, but
not as badly as Liberation Pictures. ‘I could use you’! No, it’s terri-
ble, really terrible! Complete nonsense. Rubbish! I hate everything
that’s said in that film. It’s dreadful. With the possible exception of
the story about the birds, because that’s quite poetic. The lines
aren’t so clumsy, and Edward Fleming delivers them very nicely.
Nocturne suffers from exactly the same sort of pretentious dia-
logue. But thank God I got over that after Breaking the Waves. The
good thing about Breaking the Waves is that the characters speak
about the things that the film is about. Everyday things, like how
to do things. If Jan is ill, what do I do to make him better? It’s nice
when the characters talk about the subject of the film, instead of
sitting there reflecting about a mass of idiotic ideas. I can’t stand
that any more.
The soundtrack to Liberation Pictures was pretty OK, from
what I remember, with the music and sound effects. But that makes
the dialogue even worse.

If Liberation Pictures in part depicts gender conflict, that makes

your casting choices more interesting. In the female lead you cast
Kirsten Olesen, a professional actress with a lot of experience of
both film and theatre. As the male lead you have Edward Fleming,
who ts mainly a director, and has also been a ballet dancer. In terms
of their acting experience, there’s already an imbalance in favour of
the female character.
You could say that, purely about the acting. I didn’t get on terribly
well with Kirsten Olesen. We did Medea together later as well. She
didn’t really understand what it was we were doing, and she didn’t
bother trying to understand either. That was particularly true of
Medea, but also with Liberation Pictures.
Liberation Pictures was fairly unusual in that it was a film-
school movie. Kirsten also had to do some fairly unusual things in
the film. She sings one of Brahms’ Lieder in slow motion and had

a7
to dub the song with a speeded-up Mickey Mouse voice. Edward
Fleming was gay as well, which gives added support to the women
in this particular instance of gender conflict. I think Edward was
extremely good in the role. He has a strong, expressive face and
was very good at portraying a conflicted German soldier.

Maybe we could return to my first question, which I was going to

ask last, about the final shot of Kirsten Olesen in the car. Was the
sense of alienation that you achieve by her looking into the camera
planned or a complete coincidence?
I can’t answer that, but I was pleased with it. Didn’t Pasolini end
one of his films like that? I was very keen on Pasolini for a while,
particularly that trilogy he did towards the end of his career, with
The Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales. And Theorem was
a wonderful film. Salo was interesting as well. He was fairly daring
with that one, it’s a really extreme film. It’s a good thing that there
have been such colourful characters as Pasolini in film. Film would
be a lot poorer without them. Like Fassbinder. It’s a good thing
that there have been all these gay men.
All these homosexual directors made a huge impression. And cre-
ated some very powerful films. Both Fassbinder and Pasolini were
extremely strong characters, who went considerably further in their
art than many others have dared to go. Perhaps I know Fassbinder
better thanks to Udo Kier, who has been in a lot of my films and who
visits me here every now and then. He lived with Fassbinder for sev-
eral years. I haven’t always been that keen on Fassbinder’s films. I
admire a lot of them, and I think that Berlin Alexanderplatz is a
masterpiece. But I respect the way he chose to live his life, as well as
his work as an artist. Pasolini has probably meant more to me.
While we’re on the subject of homosexuals, I once happened to
mention on the radio that I had great respect for homosexuals as
directors, as far as their work in films was concerned. But, I said,
they were useless as critics. About eighty percent of Danish film
critics are homosexual, and there was a huge fuss and debates on
the radio. You can’t say things like that!

You once described one of your films as ‘a heterosexual film’. Why

did you do that?

58
In conjunction with my first trilogy of films I wrote several short
manifestos to each film. In one of them I spoke about ‘heterosex-
ual film’ — I don’t remember if it was in conjunction with Europa.
I think, for me, ‘heterosexual’ stood for polarization. You can’t
deny that within contact between men and women, there are two
different poles. I was really just trying to make a comparison.

bes
 MANIFESTO 1

Everything seems to be all right: film-makers are in an unsullied

relationship with their products, possibly a relationship with a hint
of routine, but, nonetheless, a good and solid relationship, where
everyday problems fill the time more than adequately, so that they
alone form the content! In other words, an ideal marriage that not
even the neighbours could be upset by: no noisy quarrels in the
middle of the night . . . no half-naked compromising episodes in
the stairwells, but a union between both parties: the film-maker
and his ‘film-wife’, to everyone’s satisfaction . . . at peace with
themselves ... but anyway... We can all tell when The Great Iner-
tia has arrived!
How has film’s previously so stormy marriage shrivelled up into
a marriage of convenience? What’s happened to these old men?
What has corrupted these old masters of sexuality? The answer is
simple. Misguided coquetry, a great fear of being uncovered (what
does it matter if your libido fades when your wife has already
turned her back on you?) . . . have made them betray the thing that
once gave this relationship its sense of vitality: Fascination!
The film-makers are the only ones to blame for this dull routine.
Despotically, they have never given their beloved the chance to
grow and develop in their love . . . out of pride they have refused
to see the miracle in her eyes .. . and have thereby crushed her . . .
and themselves.
These hardened old men must die! We will no longer be satisfied
with ‘well-meaning films with a humanist message’, we want more
— of the real thing, fascination, experience — childish and pure, like
all real art. We want to get back to the time when love between
film-maker and film was young, when you could see the joy of cre-
ation in every frame of a film!
We are no longer satisfied with surrogates. We want to see reli-
gion on the screen. We want to see ‘film-lovers’ sparkling with life:
improbable, stupid, stubborn, ecstatic, repulsive, monstrous and
not things that have been tamed or castrated by a moralistic, bitter
old film-maker, a dull puritan who praises the intellect-crushing
virtues of niceness.

61
 We want to see heterosexual films, made for, about and by men.
We want visibility!
-

Published 3 May 1984 at the Danish premiére of The Element of

Crime.

62
 4 :

The Element of Crime

SYNOPSIS
=
For the past thirteen years Fisher, a policeman, has been living in
Cairo. He visits a psychiatrist in order to talk, under hypnosis,
about his latest job, which he has been working on for the previous
two months.
A serial killer is on the loose in Germany. He has assaulted and
killed a number of young girls. The murders are being described as
the ‘lottery murders’. All the girls who have been murdered have
been lottery salesgirls. Fisher is working under the authoritarian
Commissioner Kramer, but chooses to consult his old teacher,
Osborne — now a pensioner, and author of the book The Element
of Crime. Osborne doesn’t seem to be in full command of his fac-
ulties, but puts Fisher on the trail of a suspect, Harry Grey.
Osborne maintains that Grey died in a car chase, but Fisher is con-
vinced that the mysterious and elusive Grey is still alive.
Fisher embarks on an affair with Kim, a prostitute, who gave
birth to Grey’s child. Together they set out on the trail of the mur-
derer. Fisher suddenly uncovers a possible pattern to the killings.
Six girls have been killed, and with an anticipated seventh murder,
the scenes of the crimes would make up the letter H on the map.
Fisher attempts to lay a trap for Grey at the possible last crime
scene with the help of a young girl who has apparently already
been contacted by Grey. While Fisher is waiting for Grey with the
girl, he loses an amulet in the shape of a horse’s head. Similar amulets
have been found beside all the earlier victims. The girl becomes
frightened, believing Fisher to be the murderer. When she tries to
escape, Fisher suffocates her, thus fulfilling the pattern of the crimes
in place of Grey. Fisher escapes, though, because Commissioner

63
Kramer claims that Osborne, . mentally ill, committed the
crimes. Osborne is found hanged.

+ +

About a year after Liberation Pictures you had the chance to make
your first feature-length film, The Element of Crime...
It came about quite by chance. The Film Institute had got a new film
consultant, Christian Clausen, who wasn’t very popular within the
film industry. He had previously been a production assistant. A lot of
directors decided not to co-operate with him. So I thought that this
could be a Fcc for an opportunist like me. So I took a walk across
the little bridge between the film school and the Film Institute with
my project. And Christian Clausen didn’t have any other projects. He
thought The Element of Crime seemed a thoroughly odd film. After
pointing out that the abbreviation of ‘point of view’ ought to be spelt
POV and not POW as I had written, he approved it.
I don’t think he ever really understood the film. The only thing I
remember is him being thrown out of the premiére in Cannes for not
wearing evening dress and turning up in jeans and demanding to be
let in. But he gave the film his support, and I’m grateful for that.

The Element of Crime was produced by Per Holst, a former direc-

tor himself, and later a very successful producer, of Bille August’s
Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror) amongst others. How was
your collaboration with him?
The film was originally going to be produced by Gunnar Obel, an
extremely colourful producer with whom I’ve worked a lot since
then. But he wanted to cast a couple of popular Danish actors in
the leading roles, Ole Ernst and Anne-Marie Max Hansen. He
described in very colourful terms how he imagined them fucking
on the bonnet of a car in one scene. And the film wouldn’t be called
The Element of Crime but The Inspector and the Whore.

Which is the title of the film that never gets made in Epidemic...
Exactly. But after a few meetings with Gunnar I said I didn’t think
we could work together. He also distributed porn films.

64
7 The Element of Crime: Michael Elphick (Fisher) and MeMe Lai (Kim)
exchange acting stories with their director, here in the role of the hotel
receptionist ‘Schmuck of Ages’.

I know. It was Gunnar Obel who distributed my film, Kvindesind,

in Denmark, although perhaps it doesn’t fit into that category.
He used to take his son with him when he was going to buy porn
films. His son was maybe nine or ten years old at the time, and he
had to sit and watch the films alone if Gunnar got too tired or had
to leave the room to go to a lunch appointment. And his son had
to decide which films they should buy in. Gunnar is a quite
remarkable character, and I liked him a lot. He’s a strange mixture
of different things. He’s from Jutland, and is both a racist and a
real charmer. And extremely paranoid. He installed bullet-proof
glass at his holiday home because he was afraid of Muslims. I bor-
rowed the house once, and found a loaded pistol under the pillow.
He didn’t want to live in Copenhagen after they started talking
about building a mosque in the city, which never happened in the
end. He really did cut an odd figure in the Danish film industry.
When I broke off our collaboration he said he’d see to it that I
never worked in the Danish film industry again. He had some serious

65
mafia tendencies. But we worked well together after that. He was
co-producer on Europa. He was a fantastic personality. Peter Aal-
bek Jensen, my colleague and producer at Zentropa, does his best
to be an equally colourful producer, but he can’t match up to Gun-
nar Obel.
No, Per Holst took over as producer of the film. He’s also an
odd character. Have you worked with him?

No, only with Nina Crone here in Denmark.

I don’t know her, but they’re all mad, each in his or her own way.
The job must make you mad. Per Holst was quite difficult to
understand. He’s one of those people you don’t know if you can
trust, because it’s hard to interpret exactly what they’re saying. But
his great advantage was the boundless enthusiasm that he for some
reason showed towards my project. He was always encouraging
and supportive and generous with resources. If I asked for five cars
for a scene, he would say that we ought to have ten, and helicop-
ters and stuff as well. The film ended up over budget, but he was
fine about it.

You chose to film it in English. Why?

To begin with, I think English is a good language for film. All the
films I like are in English. And most of the films I don’t like are in
Danish! The Element of Crime can be seen as a sort of latter-day
film noir, so English was more suited to the film than Danish. And
in the back of my mind I also had an idea that it might get noticed
outside Denmark if I filmed it in English. Which happened, of
course. There’s nothing to say that just because I make films in
Denmark I have to make them in Danish.

Was it complicated, filming in English? I mean, did anyone on the

production team oppose doing it in English?
Considering that it was being supported by the Danish Film Insti-
tute, it wasn’t that complicated. ‘Well,’ they said, ‘so you want to
film in English. OK, get on with it.’ The only thing that was a
problem was the agreement between the Institute and the govern-
ment. In the agreement it says that films have to be filmed in Danish

66
to be considered Danish. So we thought about doing a Danish ver-
sion and an English version. But we only completed the English
version. We took the risk.
But there were problems after the film was finished. The Film
Institute withdrew their initial support, so all of a sudden Per
Holst was standing there owing the Institute ten million kroner.
But at the same time Per Kirkeby, the painter and film-maker, was
voted on to the Film Institute’s committee. Both Tom Elling and
Niels Voersel knew him. I asked for and was given a long meeting
with him, and we fell out badly. I thought that as an old rebel, he
would understand and take our side. He later wrote a letter saying
that he’d never had such an unpleasant meeting before. He armed
himself with all the arguments of the powers that be and defended
the entire system. It was quite remarkable. Since then we’ve got on
much better. Our collaboration on Breaking the Waves, where he
was responsible for the chapter illustrations, was extremely
rewarding.
I was regarded with suspicion by all sorts of people in conjunc-
tion with The Element of Crime. A lot of Danish cultural figures
got in touch with me and asked if I was seriously interested in
making films. They thought the film was destructive, and ques-
tioned both my desire and aptitude for film-making. It was around
the time when punk broke through, and punk music was regarded
as terribly destructive at the time. People didn’t see it as an expres-
sion of a fundamental and spontaneous desire to express some-
thing.
Making The Element of Crime was great fun. All that technol-
ogy, and all those props — helicopters, and loads of horses. It was
also reported later, by animal-welfare activists, that we had all
these dead or half-dead horses. But they were horses that were
going to be put down anyway and thrown to the lions at the zoo,
so why couldn’t we use them in our film instead? And if you want
to talk about symbols, then people who do harm to horses really
are evil. Horses are friendly, useful animals — a working animal
that by definition is good. Killing cattle isn’t regarded as anything
particularly bad, because they’re going to end up in an abattoir
anyway. But horses are supposed to die of old age.
I’ve been in touch with Friedrich Gorenstein, who collaborated
with Tarkovsky on the script of Solaris. He has a theory that

67
Tarkovsky died because in Andrei Rublev he had a horse dropped
from a ladder. He was convinced it was a punishment from God.

In conjunction with The Element of Crime you published your first

film manifesto, where you summarize the meaning of film in a sin-
gle word: ‘fascination’.
Yes, I liked the idea of manifestos, this business of putting things in
context. Like the Surrealists’ manifesto. I’m very fond of that. And
the Communist Manifesto isn’t bad either . . . But it’s a dangerous
word, fascination. I have a terrible habit of falling for certain
words at certain points. But I remember the creation of The Ele-
ment of Crime as total fascination. It was incredibly exciting. We
were working with a completely professional team for the first
time, where a lot of people kept their distance from me and the
cameraman, Tom Elling. We were both newcomers, whereas they
knew how to make films and how films ought to be made. That
caused a few problems to begin with, but we’re both extremely
stubborn. So in the end we managed to create a film that didn’t
look like all the others.
Sometimes we had to be devious to get them to do what we
wanted. We’d give them the instructions for a scene, and they
would light it as they were used to doing. Then we’d say that that
wouldn’t do at all, that it was completely wrong, and that we’d
have to start again from scratch. This was repeated a few times,
and a lot of them got furious. We also worked with an electrician
who’d worked on Liberation Pictures and who had worked on a
feature film in the meantime. He kept wanting to use blue strip-
lighting. He thought it would be suitable here, bearing in mind the
film’s basic and recurrent yellow tone. And I thought it was one of
the ugliest ideas I could imagine. So I kept getting rid of the bloody
light. I remember him getting so angry that he broke the lamp in
protest.
Now and then the producer called us in for conciliation meet-
ings. He thought we ought to talk about the problems we were
having. A lot of the crew thought we were arguing too stridently
about how we saw things.
Id like to return to the lighting and sound of the film. In my
early short film, Nocturne, we used monochrome lighting, a

68
strongly filtered light which means that all the nuances in colours
disappear. We went to a lighting company and they told us about
sodium lamps, which were available in high- and low-pressure ver-
sions. One was entirely monochrome, and the other gave slightly
greater colour reproduction. So we used that type of lighting on
the film instead of the usual floodlights. The only problem with
them was that they couldn’t tolerate water. Too much moisture
and they exploded. This happened again and again, because the
film is saturated with water from beginning to end. The broader
shots were recorded on black-and-white film and tinted after-
wards, because we couldn’t cover such large areas with sodium
lighting alone, but all the closer shots were recorded using sodium
lamps. This also meant that we could put in a blue lamp, or some
other colour, and get different lighting effects — in other words,
moderate the yellow lighting with other coloured elements. I don’t
think that sort of experiment had been tried before in Danish cin-
ema before we did The Element of Crime. It was a lot of fun, but
bloody difficult!
Another good thing was that you could see the effects of the
experiment immediately. The sodium lamps suppressed or extin-
guished all other colours. So we went round the locations in this
monochrome light. It was a real ‘happening’. It was at its best in
the sewers where we installed sodium lamps. And we had Wagner
playing during the recordings — the whole film was dubbed later. It
was pretty insane.
We would row about in a rubber inflatable through raw sewage.
There was a sort of dam-room that we wanted to fill with water.
But we only got sewer water, so we had to use hoses to get rid of
the shit. I remember that it was pretty much only our old friends
from film school who helped out on those scenes. The profession-
als sat above ground sunbathing the entire time. The assistant
director on the film, Ake Sandgren, who was a contemporary of
ours at film school, Tom Elling and one other member of the team
were down there filming in the shit. It was fantastic. Not many of
the locations we used in the film exist any more.

You set up a very suggestive atmosphere in The Element of Crime.

You get a sense of it right at the start, in the scene with the dying
horse, for instance, and in the images of Cairo in the prologue.

69
Yes, they’re unusual, suggestive — amongst other things, you see a
parachute hanging outside a window. They were filmed using
8mm, if Iremember rightly, and were done by a homosexual archi-
tect who died of Aids soon after. Yes, The Element of Crime was a
bizarre project from beginning to end.

The film is called The Element of Crime, with the definite article in
the title. Was there any particular reason for that?
The title is linked to a book written by Osborne, one of the central
characters in the film. The book is called The Element of Crime,
and it proposes the thesis that crimes occur in a certain element, a
locality that provides a sort of ‘centre of infection’ for crime,
where, like a bacteria, it can grow and spread at a certain temper-
ature and in a certain element — moisture, for instance. In the same
way, crime can arise in a certain element, which is represented here
by the environment of the film. “The element of crime’ is the force
of nature that intrudes upon and somehow invades people’s
morals.

In the beginning of The Element of Crime we hear a narrator’s

voice say: ‘Europe has become an obsession for you. The Element
of Crime is also the first part of a trilogy about Europe, followed
by Epidemic and Europa. But to a fairly large extent, Europe seems
almost synonymous with Germany for you.
It probably is to a Dane. Because if you look down towards Europe,
the first thing you see is Germany. Seen from Denmark, Germany is
Europe, which is obviously an unfair view. There’s also a fairly
large country called France, and a boot-shaped country called Italy,
but they’re more difficult to see from the Danish horizon.

In the opening scene of the film, which can be seen as a sort of pro-
logue, the Egyptian psychiatrist says to the central character,
Fisher: ‘It’s hard for you to remember, to get into that belt of mem-
ory, and he goes on to say that that’s why they’re going to use hyp-
nosis. You seem to be very interested in supernatural powers like
this. In one central scene in Epidemic a young woman is unexpect-
edly and bizarrely hypnotized, and in Europa Max von Sydow’s
hypnotic voice leads us through the whole film.

7O
Yes, I think hypnosis is extremely exciting, and film is itself a
medium with a hypnotic effect.

Have you tried being hypnotized yourself?

No, but I’ve tried suggestion. I’m afraid of letting myself get into
hypnosis, because it makes you lose control. But I’ve tried hypno-
tizing other people.

Whos? Your actors?

Yes, it’s happened with a few actors. In Epidemic I had a black

actor, Michael Gelting, who played a priest. (He also has a small
part in The Kingdom.) In one scene in the film he has to stand in
water almost up to his head. He also has to deliver a long mono-
logue, and he was very worried about forgetting his lines. So I hyp-
notized him into believing that not only would it be very nice in the
water, but that contact with the water would help him remember
his lines. And it worked. He calmed down after being hypnotized,
and got through the scene without any problems.

You’ve also pointed out that Dreyer used to hypnotize his actors.
Yes, I heard that from Baard Owe, who played one of the leads in
Gertrud, and who I worked with on The Kingdom. Dreyer used to
say Mass in a foreign language, which Baard Owe thought might
have been Hebrew. It’s quite likely, because Dreyer had learned
Hebrew when he was working on the script of his film about Jesus.
There’s also a very hypnotic atmosphere in Gertrud. It’s a brilliant
film, but it was panned here in Denmark. It’s one of my absolute
favourites.

‘What's the story?’ asks the voice at the beginning of The Element
of Crime. So, what’s the story? What do you think the film is
about?
The Element of Crime was an attempt to make a modern film noir,
but a film noir in colour. I thought it would be terribly difficult,
because there was a risk of it being far too coloured. I tried to
counteract that in my use of colour and in the choice of locations.
The film, after all, is filmed in a Europe that is under the threat of

FE
nature. I haven’t seen the film for a long time now . . . What’s the
film about? Well, what can I say? There’s an element of intrigue,
with a couple of obscure ideas about switches of identity . . .

The film sometimes reminds me, in both style and content, of

Orson Welles’ Confidential Report, in which Welles plays the
unscrupulous business magnate Mr Arkadin, who hires a detective
to uncover a big-time swindler, who turns out to be Arkadin him-
self! The film portrays an investigation that leads to an unexpected
solution, and a revelation not wholly unlike what happens in The
Element of Crime. There’s a switch of identity, and guilt-transferral
similar to what happens in your film.
I might have seen it, or maybe part of it, but I don’t remember it as
a particularly noteworthy film. I’ve got my own Welles favourites.
Touch of Evil is a fantastic film, a cinematic gem. I often return to
it — Tom Elling and I have watched it together several times. I’ve
got a certain weakness for The Lady from Shanghai as well, possi-
bly because of all the back projections and tricks with mirrors. The
scene in the hall of mirrors is pure genius, which Woody Allen was
inspired by in Manhattan Murder Mystery. And Rita Hayworth is
magnificent in it.
Citizen Kane has never really appealed in the same way. I can
admire it. I think his experiments with deep-focus photography are
interesting. But here, and in The Trial as well, he comes across as
far too plastic. The décor looks plastic and constructed. When
Welles tackles Kafka it over-eggs the pudding, because Welles has
so much of Kafka in him. When an American tries to be European,
I lose interest. I prefer a slab of pure Americana like The Magnifi-
cent Ambersons. But you talking about Confidential Report has
reminded me that I must have seen it. I just don’t remember the
plot.

Confidential Report is also sprinkled with a collection of extremely

bizarre bit parts played by several of Welles’ talented actor friends
— Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave, Suzanne Flon and others.
They aren’t wholly dissimilar to the impartial figures who populate
your film. I’m thinking of Janos Hersko (the head of the Dramatic
Institute in Stockholm) or Stig Larsson (Swedish author and film-

72
maker) or Astrid Henning-Jensen (an older director) who make
similar ‘guest appearances’ in The Element of Crime.
I hadn’t thought of it in connection to Welles’ film, although I
know he often had ‘ghosts’ in small roles in his films. :

There are also certain parallels between The Element of Crime and
Touch of Evil. They both take place in a nocturnal no-man’s-land,
a border area between reality and dream — or rather, nightmare. It
isn’t hard to find points of contact, not least in the final scene,
where Lt Quinlan’s best friend gets him to reveal his duplicity on a
hidden tape-recorder.
That’s true. It’s reminiscent of the scenes I shot at the dam at the end
of my film. It’s not far from here, and recently I’ve started canoeing.
I often go past that dam. It’s a very strange structure. I also think it’s
extremely beautiful, and very effective in The Element of Crime. It’s
got something almost mythological about it. You’re quite right, I can
see and recognize the parallels between my film and Touch of Evil.
And if they are there, then I’m glad. I’m happy with that.

Do you remember why you chose Janos Hersko and Astrid Hen-
ning-Jensen for The Element of Crime?
We went on an exchange trip to the Dramatic Institute in Stock-
holm once, where we showed Liberation Pictures. I remember that
the students only had one question after the screening: why? I
talked about ‘art for art’s sake’, which was very unpopular at that
point. Then I met Janos. I’ve always been predisposed to like
exotic personalities, and he’s certainly one of them! So he appeared
in The Element of Crime, and later also in Europa. I didn’t really
know Astrid, but she had been a guest lecturer at the film school,
and I thought she had a wonderfully expressive face. Behind the
evidence that her experiences have left on her face you can still see
traces of the little girl.

There’s a scene where Janos Hersko, playing the pathologist, says:

‘It’s a very beautiful corpse. The corpse is impersonal, but it inter-
ests the scientist. You could say that via the film you're acting as a
scientist investigating boundaries and emotions.

73
8 The Element of Crime: Janos Hersko as the pathologist, with a fresh
corpse and Michael Elphick.

That’s true, I also feel like a scientist. I have a strong sense of it,
that I behave like a scientist, investigating film.

But could you also say that you differ from other scientists by
being more conscious of the results your investigations are going to
lead to? Researchers in other areas are perhaps less sure of the
goal, of what their work will lead to.
A scientist doesn’t just throw himself into a project without having
a pretty good idea of where it will take him. If he chooses to inves-
tigate the cosmos, he can take it for granted that there are going to
be comets and planets. A scientific investigation often has its basis
in seeking to prove a theory or refute one. It’s the same with me.
I’ve allowed my imagination and my fascination for things to
direct me, but I’ve always had a theory about what the end result
is going to look like.

But, despite this, have you ever been surprised by the results? For
instance when you made The Kingdom, which was an entirely new
style and way of working for you?

74
Yes, I was mainly surprised that it was so rewarding to change
technique. ‘

The other main character in the film, Kramer, says at one point: ‘It
sometimes helps to study the geography of a crime. Can you say
something about how you created the geography of the film? I
understand that the designer, Peter Hoimark, found and created a
lot of suggestive and expressive locations?
We didn’t actually collaborate that closely. He’s quite a feverish
person. He often got very excited. And film work is often pretty
stressful. I think he mostly felt that he had to follow orders, which
wasn’t always easy. Take the scene where we had to create a pit for
victims of foot-and-mouth disease, for instance, where we had to
place a corpse under a mass of dead animals. I’d ordered thirty ani-
mals for that scene. When I got there, there were two horses, three
pigs and a cow that stuck its tongue out at me. I said that that
wouldn’t do, that we’d ordered thirty animals. But Peter replied
that we couldn’t afford them because the film was already so
expensive. It was one of the most demanding and complicated
scenes in the film, a long scene involving a helicopter and a load of
divers. I wanted to stop filming because the basic requirements
weren’t there. We had to cut the animals up to make it look as if
there were a lot more of them. I remember that night scene very
well indeed, because we only had that night to do it in. The heli-
copter could only fly until sunset, and the pilot sat there constantly
pointing at his watch, while we were working frantically to get
everything right. The flares that were supposed to light the scene
weren’t there, and the person responsible for them came running in
at the last minute, just before the sun went down, and got them set
up. So we had just enough time for one take, but from what I
remember we persuaded the pilot to let us do another one. The
result was bloody good in the end.
The preparatory work to find locations was pretty extensive,
and we found loads of places we liked. Taking them as our starting
point, we rewrote the script where there was a good reason to do
so. For instance, we wrote that the hospital was in a cellar. So that
was how we decided which locations to use. Most of them worked
well, others less so. Then we had the props to furnish the locations

ii
with, hammocks and old oil lamps and other crap, to give a certain
atmosphere. They were the sort of props that were supposed to
suggest a nomadic lifestyle, things that were easy to pack away and
move.
Peter Hoimark wasn’t entirely responsible for the scenography.
We had another designer, Jeffrey Nedergaard, who designed a lot
of the locations. For example, he was completely responsible for
Osborne’s office, which was a remarkable set. It was set up in a
location with a very high ceiling, divided into different levels with
platforms jutting out and so on.

The architecture in that room also contributes a lot to the sense of

unreality in many of the locations. The walls are strangely angled
and you can’t quite get your bearings in it.

We also added an oily patina and other reflective materials to give

the impression that nature was taking over. Everything was damp
and the walls were dripping. When I saw Alien3, it struck me that
the environment it was set in was almost exactly like the one we
created for The Element of Crime. It’s interesting that something
that was regarded as an avant-garde film ten, twelve years ago can
now be linked to a purely commercial product.

The scenography of the film doesn’t just consist of environments,

of rooms, furniture and props. It also contains people and other
living matter.
You could put it like that. You could say that the people aren’t
used for anything other than part of a fairly comprehensive
scenography. There’s not a lot of conventional acting in the film.

I don’t really mean the central characters, Fisher, Kramer and

Osborne, but all the bit parts and extras in the film, all the people
wading through water or lying on the ground and so on.
You’re right, we did a bit of ‘furnishing’ with human bodies as
well. There’s an odd thing about the actor who played Osborne,
Esmond Knight. It turned out that he was blind, which none of us
had any idea about. We had done the casting in London and knew
his sight was bad, but it turned out that he was totally blind. He’d

76

“‘g:
lost his sight during the Second World War and walked with a
white stick. Soin his scenes someone had to lie on the floor and
move his legs when he had to move!
Esmond had been a close friend of Laurence Olivier, who had
always given him small parts in his films. A bit like Fassbinder and
his actor friends, who could count on getting bit parts in his films.
He’d also worked on a lot of Michael Powell’s films, and one by
Hitchcock. He’d been a pilot, so when you had to tell him where
on a plate a piece of food was, if you said ‘Five o’clock position’ he
always put his fork in the right place.
Esmond must have been over seventy when we made the film,
and one good thing about him was that he used his handicap to his
own advantage. He would put his hands on women’s breasts and
say: ‘Oh, so it’s you, dear!’ I was walking past his dressing room
once, where he was standing with the wardrobe manager, Manon
Rasmussen, and I heard him say: ‘Oh, Manon, do you know what
the word “extrovert” means?’ ‘No, Esmond, I don’t,’ she replied.
He put his hands on a carefully chosen part of her anatomy and
said: “This is extrovert!’ And she let out a shriek. He was great fun!
He also had a glass eye which he would take out every now and
then and put on the shoulder of some woman in the team, saying:
‘Pve got my eye on you.’

How did you find the rest of the actors on the film? Most of them
must have been new acquaintances to you, because they were
mostly foreign.
We cast the film in London. We got hold of a casting director who
gave us suggestions of different actors. It was fantastic, because we
met about twenty actors a day, who would come to our office in
London for interviews. That’s how they do it in Britain and a lot of
other places. You can’t imagine it ever happening in Denmark.
Here you contact the actors themselves about a part, and they
either accept or they don’t. Anything else would be unthinkable.
But in London we met loads of actors who were already well
known from television and so on.
It turned out that the actor playing the central character,
Michael Elphick, had attended the same school as our casting
director. He was fairly well known, because he’d played the lead in

At:
9 The Element of Crime: Kim (MeMe Lai) and Fisher (Michael Elphick).

a television programme called Private Schultz, which was pretty

good. We didn’t know for a long time whether he would take the
part, but of course he did in the end. But I don’t think he’s partic-
ularly proud of his work on The Element of Crime, because I’ve
since seen his CV, and it doesn’t mention the film. But he was very
nice, even if he had certain dependency problems while we were
filming. It didn’t affect his performance though, rather the reverse.
It suited the story and the setting of the film.

And the female lead, MeMe Lai?

We came across her in London as well. We were after an actress
with an Asian background. What I remember best about her is that
she had had a breast implant to make her bust bigger, which I found
out after our first day of filming with her and Michael Elphick.
After the take they were both sitting on their own crying. MeMe
was crying because she thought her breasts were now far too big,
and Michael was crying because he thought he’d been too tough on
her in the scene. It was a fairly shocking introduction to my life as
a grown-up film director. ‘Is this how it works?’ I wondered.

78
 * : >
Fe * *
One important aspect of siMtineg a schib is the characters’ names.
And the characters in The Element of samaas very telling
names — Fisher,, Harry Grey, and so on.
I think the name Harry Grey was inspired by some character in
Joyce. Niels Vorsel was very fond of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
There’s a quotation from Frencge? Wake in the film: ‘Harry me,
marry me, bury me, bite me.’ I can’t remember why we chose the
name Fisher for the detective. I think he was called Mesmer in the
first draft.

The name Harry Grey has other associations. Harry Lime from
The Third Man, for instance, and Harry Morgan in Hemingway’s
To Have and Have Not. #
Of course. Osborne’s not a bad name either. I’ve heard that if you
want to do a religious reading of the film, Osborne is the Father,
Fisher the Son. In which case Harry Grey — H. G. — must be the
Holy Ghost. But that’s an attempt to rationalize things in hind-
sight. I never had any thoughts along those lines.

You can also see Fisher as a fisherman trying to haul in his catch.
Yes, it’s possible that we intended that sort of association. But mostly
we liked being able to give him the nickname Fish.

You mentioned the quotation from Finnegans Wake, and the film
includes a whole host of similar quotes. There’s one from
Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’: ‘Water, water
everywhere and not a drop to drink.’
Yes, that’s mainly there as a joke, because Michael Elphick wanted
a drink so badly, but wasn’t really after water. Coleridge’s poem is
about a sailor at sea, surrounded by water he can’t drink. In
Michael’s case, he was surrounded by water, which wasn’t what he
wanted to drink at all.
But I love that sort of quotation. We had one scene with
Osborne, where he was going to quote from an old Danish nursery
rhyme, ‘Far har kapt den, jeg har dopt den, mor har sytt av tyget.’
It was impossible to quote it in Danish, but it was completely
impossible to translate into English. So in the film it became:

ged
 - :
. [ae
‘Mom does it, Dad does it and het have a try.’ There’s a sexual
connotation there, and the fact that horses evidently have trouble.
Some of the quotes were in the script, but some of them were
thrown in whenever we found something we thought was fun.
When Fisher throws his pistol out of the window, for instance, he
shouts: ‘Tora, tora, tora,’ which is a reference to an old war film
about Pearl Harbor, of course.

Over the years a lot of people have offered different interpretations

of The Element of Crime, and references have been identified, not
only to other film-makers like Welles but also to philosophers like
Nietzsche and works like T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. What do
you think about these attempts to interpret your film?
As soon as people come across anything mysterious, they start
looking for a way of contextualizing it. But I can’t do that for
them, because I haven’t got the answers myself.
The best bit of The Element of Crime was putting together the
initial intrigue for the plot and filming the ending. It was pretty
scary with that bungee jump at the end of the film. When we made
the film, bungee jumping was still an unknown quantity. All we
knew was that people had started doing it in Latin America, where
it all began.
I'd seen that sort of jump on some documentary when I was
younger, and I thought it could be fun to try something similar.
Especially from a construction crane like that, looking like some
sort of prehistoric creature. One funny detail was that a couple of
years after making the film I got a letter from someone offering to
jump from the Eiffel Tower, if Iwas prepared to film it.
Creating the introduction was fun, and also the ending, but the
bit in between wasn’t as much fun. The plot itself is fairly theoret-
ical. It’s about one man, Fisher, pursuing another man, Harry
Grey, a criminal, and during this journey he gets so affected by the
fate of his quarry that he slowly begins to assume his identity. He
assumes ‘the element of crime’ which governs Harry Grey, and
makes it his own. It’s an interesting thought, but a stupid idea to
base a film on! The Element of Crime is more literary in form than
cinematic. And in large parts of it the locations and the atmos-
phere are more interesting than the story. I think the middle section

80
is the least successful, certainly when compared to the beginning
and ending. ,

But somewhere in this central section the female lead asks Fisher:
‘Do you believe in good and bad?’ Isn’t that what a lot of your
films are about, the struggle between good and evil?
‘Do you believe in good and bad?’ .. . Ishould have made her shut
up! But, of course, a lot of my films are about that, and it’s also
what my life is about, to a large extent. I was brought up not to
believe in ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Iwas brought up to believe that there
was an explanation for everything. Absolute extremes like ‘good’
and ‘evil’ don’t exist — instead, there are things like mistakes and
misunderstandings. Religion formed no part in my upbringing,
and religion, of course, cherishes concepts like ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
Fisher represents the humanists who’ve often had central roles
in my films. And everything keeps going wrong for them! He’s
working from the assumption that good and evil don’t exist. But
they’re there all right, in strength. I can’t really say whether they’re
represented by people or nature. The question of good and evil is
pretty central really, which is all the more reason why she should
have kept her mouth shut.

Fisher’s reply is: ‘I believe in joy.

Yes, well. ‘Joy’. We laughed when we filmed that, and said: ‘Who
the hell is Joy?’ But, yes, he says, ‘I believe in joy,’ but at the same
time looks deadly serious. There’s not the slightest sign of any joy
in this film.

What preparations had you done before beginning The Element of

Crime? The form, the style, anything you'd jotted down on paper
before you started filming?
Anything?! We had a storyboard that we followed to the letter, and
the film is largely edited according to the sketches we drew up
beforehand. There were hardly any changes. We worked a lot with
what’s called eye scanning, which is judging the visual concentra-
tion point of one scene, then making sure that the next scene 1s
edited so that the concentration point is in the same place, so that

SI
 ~ , $

the eye isn’t exposed to too much irritation or doubt about what
the important element of a scene is.

At the end of the film Fisher says: “You can wake me up now. Do
you see the whole film as a dream?
No, the whole film is conjured up with hypnosis. It begins in
Cairo, where Fisher is hypnotized by the fat therapist, who has a
small monkey on his shoulder. That was probably Tom Elling’s
idea. He was very fond of cartoons, and he thought that now we
were in Egypt, the psychiatrist ought to have a monkey on his
shoulder. It was actually a bit of a nuisance. It scampered about
trying to bite us whenever it could.

But film as dream, what’s your view on that?

There are popular theories that film is closely connected to dreams.
But I regard film and dreams as two entirely separate media, if we
can call them that. Film is as far from dream as it is from reality.
Whether or not film is somewhere between the two is probably a
matter of opinion. There are dream sensations that I can easily
connect with some films. Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter
is one of them, in my opinion. But saying that a film is a dream, I
think that’s a simplification, an exaggeration.

Eventually The Element of Crime made it to the Cannes Film Fes-

tival, where it was awarded a technical prize. You weren’t entirely
happy with that.
Well, I don’t know. The jury that awarded the prize was a group of
very friendly and pleasant people. I got the same prize for Europa,
actually. But I thought that The Element of Crime was more than
a purely technical achievement. So I don’t know if I was happy
about it or not. One of the members of the jury was Dirk Bogarde,
who’s supposed to have thought the film was crap. He thought the
way we'd made it was atrocious. Which was interesting consider-
ing the fact that he’d worked with Fassbinder on his version of
Nabokov [Despair]. Later on I wanted him to be in Europa, but he
obviously wasn’t interested.

82
 zd

But the screening in Cannes, and launching the film there — and the
prize — was quite an achievement for you, which has obviously had
significance for your later work.
Of course, because the film was sold to a lot of countries, which
meant a lot to me. Gilles Jacob was responsible for the film being
considered there, and I’ve had a good relationship with him since
then.

But the recognition that followed the film’s success in Cannes, did
it help you or were there certain disadvantages to it? I suppose
I’m wondering whether you felt under increased pressure, or that
people had greater expectations of you as a director now?
Not here in Denmark. No one really took much notice of the prize,
although it did mean that they had to treat me with more respect
because the film had got such wide distribution abroad. So in that
way I suppose it helped me.
Actually, there’s a funny story about The Element of Crime at
Cannes which is also a bit weird. As the film’s director I was
invited to the festival, but I didn’t want to go without Tom Elling
and Tomas Gislason. So in order to get them there I exchanged my
plane ticket for three second-class train tickets. There was a huge
fuss about it, because the Film Institute weren’t in the slightest bit
interested in sending anyone except the director and a few of the
actors.
So there was a press conference, where we were pretty provoca-
tive. I happily admit that. A lot of people were irritated at our
behaviour, and several people protested against our presence at the
festival. A couple of the actors were there as well — Michael Gelt-
ing, the black actor, and Esmond Knight. Michael sort of looked
after Esmond. They’d stuck together during filming as well, but
Esmond didn’t have a clue that Michael was black, because he
couldn’t see him. So on one occasion when Esmond let slip a really
racist remark, some sort of typically conservative, stuffy English
comment, Michael told him that he was black. But they carried on
being good friends.
But the press conference was also attended by the director of the
Film Institute at the time, Finn Aabye, and a PR woman, Lizzie
Belleche. And Aabye turns to Lizzie and says: ‘I can only really

83
respect the black bloke, because he’s paid for his own ticket here!’
Which was an interesting thing to say considering all the journeys
he’d made round the world at the expense of the Film Institute,
without achieving much at all for Danish film.
The Element of Crime did arouse a fair bit of attention. The
German producer, Bernd Eichinger of Neue Constantin Film, got
in touch with me and asked us to stop off at Munich on the way
home. This meant that we had to change our train tickets and was
going to cost about 500 kroner, which we didn’t have. So we went
to Finn Aabye and asked if we could borrow the money for the
trip, but he categorically refused. “The Film Institute isn’t a loan
company.’ So we asked Lizzie Belleche and got the same answer. It
was interesting, considering that we were on our way to a meeting
with a producer who went on to be quite important for Danish
film. But that was their attitude towards us. Quite appalling, no
matter what they might have thought about us and our film. That’s
something I shan’t forget in a hurry.
Somehow we managed to scrape together the money, I can’t
remember how. In Munich we were picked up at the station by a
huge Mercedes, a 600cc or whatever it’s called. And Eichinger
offered me a contract immediately. It would have meant a monthly
salary, evidently a fairly large amount. But I wouldn’t be allowed to
make any film unless Eichinger was completely behind the project
and giving it his support. It was the sort of contract that stopped
Orson Welles making films for years. His producers could never
agree on any of his projects. I declined the offer, but said that natu-
rally Iwanted to earn enough money to buy a Mercedes like his. At
which point he threw his car keys on the table. A nice gesture!
Later on we were invited to see a video trailer of their film Das
Boot, by Wolfgang Petersen, in the directors’ room at the top of
the enormous tower housing the film company. The film was a
pretty good action film and was about to be released on video. It
was a really juicy trailer, with new pop music and magnificent
shots of the submarine coming to the surface. It looked incredibly
powerful. Then the lights came back on and everyone turned to
me, smiling broadly. “Well, what do you think?’ I hesitated at first,
not knowing what to say. Then I said, ‘I’ve just got one question.
Why did Germany lose the war?’ In their eagerness to make an
American-style action film, with a swastika-festooned U-boat at its

84
centre, they seemed to have forgotten one troublesome fact. It was
worse than Leni Riefenstahl’s propagandist pictures. Quite unbe-
lievable. ‘
Nothing came of the idea of collaborating. We’ve spoken about
it at intervals since then. Eichinger wants to film various cartoon
strips. That’s not really my thing. But he’s worked extremely well
with Bille August.

After The Element of Crime you worked on a project for quite a

while, but which never got filmed.
Yes, it was a big project, The Grand Mal, which we didn’t manage
to get production support for, although we’d spent a long time
working on it. The film needed nine million kroner, which was a
lot of money back then. The head of the Danish Film Institute at
the time, Claus Kastholm Jensen, could only offer us five million
for the project, because that was the most they were allowed to
give. So I said: ‘Fine, if you give us grants of five million each for
two films, first I’ll do a little film for one million, then The Grand
Mal for nine million.’ We actually came to an agreement.
What an idiot I was! First of all I filmed the one-million-kroner
film, Epidemic. Then there was no money for The Grand Mal. I
should have made them the other way round, make the expensive
one first and the cheap one afterwards. I’d also lost enthusiasm for
The Grand Mal by then. It’s not unusual, when you’ve been work-
ing on a project for a number of years, to lose your interest in it. I
also experienced that a bit with Breaking the Waves, which |
started working on four years before we began filming. Luckily the
script had been lying there for most of that time. I rewrote it before
we started filming, so it almost felt like a new project.
In retrospect it’s probably just as well that The Grand Mal never
got made, even if I still think it had quite a few good ideas.

Can you say something about the plot of the film¢

The title of the film, The Grand Mal, was an expression a bit like
‘le petit mal’, the little death, in other words the idea that during
orgasm you can faint away briefly. It’s also a medical term. The
film would have been set in Berlin. And it would probably have
been very Orson Welles-inspired in character and atmosphere. A

85
lot of the story takes place in a huge casino, and the casino is run
by an old, autocratic man who is also involved in criminal activi-
ties. At some point the owner of the casino dies in a fire. Or rather,
we think he dies. There’s a good scene where the young hero comes
into the office of the casino. He’s the owner’s son-in-law, I think I
called him Mesmer or something like that. It’s night, and the whole
scene is very film noir. The office is right next to the Berlin Wall,
which was still standing at the time. Suddenly the phone rings, and
our hero answers it. On the line is the casino-owner. ‘Oh, I thought
you were dead,’ our man says. ‘I’m calling you from the other
side,’ comes the answer. And then we see the old man standing in
a window on the other side of the wall.
It was a very complicated plot, with rival gangs and some sort of
mafia war. And IJ think I made the hero a brain surgeon. He’s sup-
posed to carry out an operation to sever the links between the two
sides of the brain. It was loaded with symbolism. The action takes
place in Berlin, which had just undergone a similar operation when
the wall was pulled down. The film was probably overwrought. I
did use some of the visual ideas later on in Europa. One scene from
The Grand Mal appeared in Europa, the one where they’re carry-
ing round the coffin.

Have you used anything else from this project in any of your later
films?
The only obvious one is the car chase in The Kingdom, which is a
remnant of The Grand Mal. There were quite a few dangerous car
chases like that in it.

Are you sorry that the film never got made?

Well, life isn’t really long enough to waste four years on a project
that never gets made.

86
 MANIFESTO 2

Everything seems fine. Young men are living in stable relationships

with a new generation of films. The birth-control methods which
are assumed to have contained the epidemic have only served to
make birth control more effective: no unexpected creations, no
illegitimate children — the genes are intact. These young men’s rela-
tionships resemble the endless stream of Grand Balls in a bygone
age. There are also those who live together in rooms with no fur-
niture. But their love is growth without soul, replication without
any bite. Their ‘wildness’ lacks discipline and their ‘discipline’
lacks wildness.
LONG LIVE THE BAGATELLE!

The bagatelle is humble and all-encompassing. It reveals creativity

without making a secret of eternity. Its frame is limited but mag-
nanimous, and therefore leaves space for life. EPIDEMIC mani-
fests itself in a well-grounded and serious relationship with these
young men, as a bagatelle — because among bagatelles, the master-
pieces are easy to count.

Published 17 May 1987 to coincide with the premiere of Epidemic

at the Cannes Film Festival.

87
 5
Epidemic

SYNOPSIS

Lars von Trier and the author Niels Vorsel are working on the
script to a film with the name The Inspector and the Whore. Their
work is almost ready to be presented to the film consultant at the
Danish Film Institute, Claes Kastholm Hansen, but they are horri-
fied to discover that the entire script has been erased from their
word-processor. The film consultant has been invited to dinner on
Saturday, and they have five days to complete a new script.
Von Trier and Vorsel begin work on a new story, about a young
doctor who works in a future no-man’s-land which has been
infected by a deadly disease, the plague. The idealistic young doc-
tor sets off on a private crusade to try to cure the victims, unaware
that he is transmitting the disease on his journey...
A hypnotist and a young woman also come to dinner, and under
hypnosis the young woman experiences and relates terrible scenes
from the fictional story created by the two script-writers.

re)

You’re a fairly private person, not always very accessible. But you
don’t seem to mind appearing in your own films every now and
again, like in Epidemic, and Europa, where you have an important
part as the young Jew. You also appeared — in Dreyer’s old jacket —
after every episode of The Kingdom to offer advice and opinions.
Epidemic is based entirely on the idea of Niels Vorsel and I play-
ing ourselves in a story about the trials and tribulations of a direc-
tor and a script-writer in trying to get a film made. So it’s more of
a private film, you could say. But generally I’m of the opinion that

89
it’s important for the creator of a work to show who he is. I’ve
always been very interested in the film-makers who are behind the
films I really like. That’s why I’ve read books like Bergman on
Bergman, because I wanted to get to know the man behind the
work. Then, of course, there’s the question of whether or not you
get to know them better. Maybe you get to know fuck-all, but the
man and the work are still intertwined. David Bowie, for instance,
is interesting because he is who he is and because he composes the
music that he does. Similarly, Dreyer was extremely interesting,
despite being shy and withdrawn. But that persona has to be seen
in relation to his work, the same as with a director like Fassbinder.
I’ve appeared in the contexts you mention, but at the same time
I have to admit that I’ve got very tired of myself in contexts where
I’m supposed to be accessible as some sort of media-figure. I wrote
a little announcement to the ‘world press’ saying that I couldn’t
and wouldn’t be available for interviews in connection with Break-
ing the Waves. | was suffering, rather unexpectedly, from extreme
shyness and a sort of self-questioning where I thought it was more
important to keep working on my projects than acting as some
sort of living advertisement for my films.

After The Element of Crime and the prize at Cannes you made Epi-
demic, a small, low-budget film costing about one and a half mil-
lion kroner.
Yes, the idea was that Niels and I should make it on our own. We
were going to do the filming and carry the main roles ourselves.
Yes, we were going to do everything! It was great! Just setting the
cameras going, walking into shot, and seeing what we could come
up with. We filmed in 16mm, in black and white. As I’ve said, it
was great fun.

It’s a fun film to watch, too.

Yes, we thought so too. But at the premiére there weren’t many

people who saw the humour in it. There weren’t that many at the
premiere at all actually, and not that many people saw it after-
wards either. But we’ve showed the film to a few people recently,
after The Kingdom had been on television, and now they all laugh,
all the way through. It’s strange, and it’s made me reflect on what

90
you can let yourself do as a member of an audience. The film can
also be seen as some sort of prelude to The Kingdom.

Maybe a lot of people were afraid to laugh after they'd seen The
Element of Crime...
But The Element of Crime also contains quite a bit of humour. We
often had trouble keeping from laughing when we wrote the script.
But in the transformation from script to completed film the
humour changed from being fairly superficial to more abstract.

The Element of Crime can be seen as dystopian, a film with a

strong sense of decay, and that atmosphere seemed to muffle the
comic episodes.
There’s a similar atmosphere in Epidemic, even if the film is lighter
in tone than The Element of Crime. But it was actually the most
difficult film I’ve done. It was a huge task to do everything myself.
Niels and I sweated blood over the technical side of it. We dragged
the cameras about, all the lamps, and loaded the film as well as
dealing with the sound recording.

Did you learn about film technology at film school — how to use a
camera, record sound and so on?

I learned that in my time as an amateur film-maker. But all the

scenes of the film within the film were shot by Dreyer’s old pho-
tographer, Henning Bendtsen.

How did you come to meet him?

He’d been a guest lecturer at the film school, talking about Dreyer
and showing films. His black-and-white photography was incredi-
bly beautiful.

The very first episodes of the film within the film — where the main
character, the young, idealistic Doctor Mesmer, played by you, is
walking about in a basement talking to the other doctors — 1s a
technical tour de force. It’s a long, unbroken scene that goes on for
seven or eight minutes and has some quite complex scenography.
10 Lars von Trier and Michael Simpson in Epidemic.

Yes, we were trying to imitate Dreyer’s Gertrud a bit. We shot the

scene with a battered old 35mm camera. But it’s an interesting
scene in terms of content as well: bureaucracy and politics in a
future society. My mother thought it was very interesting, me
bringing up political ideas. That scene is mainly about the eventual
form of the government after the anticipated spread of the disease.
The government would have to consist of doctors, and they’re dis-
cussing which doctors ought to take over the various departments.
The Department for Culture would obviously have to be closed
down! And they offer Mesmer the post of Minister without Port-
folio, but only if he gives up the idea of trying to stop the epidemic.

Mesmer’s role in the story is very ironic, the idealistic hero trying
to cure the disease while at the same time being the one who’s
spreading infection through the country.
Yes, it’s a fairly classic plot that’s a bit reminiscent of Polanski’s
Dance of the Vampires, where the hero again is responsible for
spreading infection.

Moving on to the framing story, with you and Niels Vorsel and
your wives, how much of that was written down and how much
was improvised at the time?
92
The situations weren’t improvised, but quite a lot of the dialogue
was formulated on the spot. For instance, the episode with Udo
Kier, when he’s talking about being born during a bombing raid,
and about his mother and her death: part of what he said is based
on his own life, some is from other people and a bit was made up
by Niels and me. There was actually some written dialogue for
that scene.
It was interesting to see how that scene was singled out for
praise by the critics. A critic like Morten Piil in Information, who
thought the film was awful, was appalled at how sarcastic and cyn-
ical Herr von Trier and Herr Versel were towards Udo Kier and
his gripping and moving narrative.
So this is a completely acted scene that we wrote for the actor.
The scene wasn’t even shot in Cologne, which the film makes out.
It was shot in my apartment in Copenhagen. In a later scene we
took Udo Kier to a lake in a park, where he talks about everyone
who died of the phosphorous bombs. That scene was filmed in
Brondsholt, because we couldn’t afford to go to Cologne and
shoot the scene there. But Udo played the scene in a wonderfully
sensitive and moving way, walking about and pointing out various
streets and talking about which houses had been hit by bombs, and
so on.
Before we began filming, at a very early stage, we asked Dan-
marks Radio if they were interested in buying the film to show on
television. They said they were, and were even prepared to buy the
film without seeing it. But I didn’t think they should do that, so we
went back to them when the film was finished. A programming
committee of five people saw Epidemic, including Morten Piil.
After the screening they explained that they’d never been so unan-
imous about a film. Epidemic was the worst film they had ever
seen, they said. It was completely incomprehensible, its content
was meaningless, and technically it was too deficient to be shown
on television.
It’s an interesting point of view, but more interesting was the fact
that Morten Piil, as well as sitting on that committee, also
reviewed the film — twice, both equally negative and spiteful. There
were a lot of people who got upset about this project, which made
me think quite a bit. The staff on the newspaper, Information —
which is supposed to be intellectual and left-wing — in particular

23
showed themselves to be extremely suspicious of my earlier films.
Only after The Kingdom and Breaking the Waves did they change
their opinion of me and what I do. a

Wasn’t it also the case that a lot of people in the Danish press were
angry at you even while the film was being shot? Epidemic was a
very secret project, and you refused to let journalists have any
information about the film. |
I don’t know about that . . . ’'d been in London a short while
before and had come across the notion of the ‘closed set’. So we
decided to shoot the film behind closed doors, which wasn’t
exactly difficult, seeing as most of the film was shot in Niels
Vorsel’s apartment.
But by then the fax machine had made its breakthrough, and we
and our production company, Element-film, were sending out con-
stant press announcements via fax. We sent out messages like ‘Ele-
ment-film has consolidated.’ We weren’t really sure what the word
meant, but the newspapers grabbed it and published it as news. It
was ridiculously funny. But, above all, this led to a certain amount
of suspicion about the project in the press, the same sort of suspi-
cion that The Element of Crime had attracted earlier on. Despite
the film being selected for the Cannes Film Festival — the first Dan-
ish film in competition for many, many years — it was regarded
with deep suspicion.
Epidemic also made it to Cannes. It wasn’t shown in competi-
tion, but in a sidebar series of screenings. The Danish journalists
exhibited a certain amount of schadenfreude. They regarded the
film as a fiasco.

Have you ever felt a victim of good old-fashioned jealousy? ‘Don’t

imagine that you’re anything special’?
I don’t know . . . I think it was good that I didn’t go to Cannes
when Breaking the Waves was shown there. That time, the press
were far more positive. I think it’s probably a good idea for me not
to appear in connection with my films.

But your relations with the press changed radically with The King-
dom. That was something that everyone could feel involved in.

94
 a

Yes, I think they thought I was meeting the audience halfway on

that one, so the critics allowed themselves to approach me. But I
remember an interview with Danish television’s film editor, Ole
Michelsen, in Cannes, in connection with Epidemic. We did the
interview before the press conference for the film, and one ques-
tion he asked was: ‘How come you can’t talk to people?’ And I
replied that I didn’t have a problem with it at all. ‘But to me it
seems that you have poor communication with your audience,’ he
replied. Then there was the press conference, where Gabriel Axel
sat in, translating my answers into French. It took a long time, an
hour or so, and occasionally of course you have to say that you
don’t have an answer to a particular question. And now and then
you say ‘Err...’ or ‘Hmm...’ Ole Michelsen was there with his
team, filming the whole press conference. They also filmed people
leaving the room.
And what was the result of the television interview? Yep, first
you hear someone ask a question, and me saying: ‘Err .. . ‘. And
you see some people leave the room. Then another question, and I
say: ‘I can’t answer that.’ And you see more people leave. Then
comes Michelsen’s question: ‘How come you can’t talk to people?’
The whole interview was very tendentious and manipulative.
That’s something television is really good at, and it seems to hap-
pen a lot.

In the press release for Epidemic you present the three films that
were going to make up your trilogy about Europe, although you
hadn’t yet made Europa. You characterize the three films in the fol-
lowing way: The Element of Crime — Substance: non-organic, Epi-
demic — Substance: organic, and Europa — Substance: conceptual.
Is there anything you'd like to say about that?
That’s a horrible question! They were probably just words that
Niels Vorsel and I put together in the hope that they might be
vaguely inspirational. No, there’s a danger that I’m going to get
into some sort of fabrication here. It’s probably something Niels
ought to answer. Shall I give him a call?
(Lars rings and gets hold of Niels Vorsel at once. But he hasn't
got an immediate answer. He asks if he can get back to us. Time
passes. The following arrives by fax:)

95
 ‘As far as I remember regarding that definition, which was orig-
inally composed in English, is that we hesitated between different
words, before settling on the term “substance”. Another word we
considered was “matter”.
‘I also remember (and this may in part be due to retrospective
rationalisation) that the terms “non-organic”, “organic” and
“conceptual” were going to be connected to one of :, re
threads of the trilogy: hypnotism. In The Element of Crime the
hypnosis theme is present as an obvious element, as theatre, make-
believe. In Epidemic it becomes a real, documented, organic
expression. And in Europa — which wasn’t even written when this
press release was composed — the thought/idea was that the audi-
ence would be hypnotised.
‘That ought to explain the choice of “substance” over “matter”.’

Epidemic is divided into five chapters, with the chapter headings

being the five days during which the action of the film takes place.
This has the effect of making it look as though you were trying to
anchor the film in some sort of reality. Even if the story is fictional,
it gives the impression of being realistic. This happens in a similar
way in Hitchcock’s Psycho, which has titles indicating place
(Phoenix, Arizona), date and an exact time for the drama that fol-
lows. And here, too, fiction gives the impression of being based on
reality.
Yes, I agree with you there. That was the thinking behind putting
those titles into Epidemic. I had similar thoughts about Breaking
the Waves. One reason for us setting the story in the past, in that
case the 1970s, was that we wanted to underline the seriousness of
the story. If you set a story in another time, it automatically gains
more authority. I remember the introduction of Psycho very well.
The information about what time it was has absolutely no bearing
on the story, apart from the idea that we are supposed to think of
it as based on reality.

It’s odd because it doesn’t happen later in the film. You might think
that for the sake of continuity as much as realism, Hitchcock
would have carried on with the indications of place and time.
But it could only work with the first scene of the film. The typeface

96
giving the information is so tight and controlled that it fits the
business environment where Psycho starts perfectly. Later, at the
Bates motel, we’re outside of time. It’s still a peculiar tactic, which
serves to underline the strength of the story.
(The conversation is interrupted for a while. The telephone rings
for the third time in quick succession, and Lars answers it.)
Pm surat Woody Allen had a secretary who took care of phone
calls while you were talking to each other in New York. Deep con-
centration. ‘Hold my calls!’ ’'m never that serious, for some rea-
son. Cosier. Which is why you’re going to get a story about
Epidemic...
We were going to do some filming in Germany, Niels and I and
a photographer, Kristoffer Nyholm, who’s also a director, a very
nice bloke I’ve worked with quite a lot. And we rented a huge Mer-
cedes and drove down to Germany, to Cologne. In the centre of
Cologne we couldn’t find a place to park, so we drove on to the
pavement and left the car there. There were loads of other cars
parked on the pavement.
For the scene we needed a pair of nail scissors and a cauliflower,
so Niels ran off to buy them. Niels was good at running. Niels and
I had very short hair at the time, but Kristoffer had a great head of
dark hair and a full beard. He looks fairly Mediterranean, like a
gypsy or an Arab. And he goes to the boot of the car to get the
‘accumulator belt’ [a belt equipped with large pockets, where a
cameraman can keep filters and other equipment] and puts it on. I
was going to be in the scene, so I sat in the car, trying out different
pairs of sunglasses.
Niels comes back and sits in the car, with Kristoffer standing on
the pavement. Then a young policeman comes over to me. He
doesn’t say anything, but gestures to me to wind down the win-
dow. With a rather shaky hand he shows me his identity card. And
I say, ‘I’m sorry, I appreciate that we can’t park on the pavement.
Is there a problem?’ ‘No,’ he replies, ‘just keep very calm.’ And
suddenly I see seven or eight young men in civilian clothing come
running towards us with guns in their hands. One of them holds a
pistol to my head, and Niels gets hit by another. And Kristoffer
was forced to lie down on the bonnet. So there’s all these police-
men standing there, looking terrified. They were all very young,

Oy.
and they all made sure they had a clear view of the car in case they
had to use their guns. I remember reading the day before about
how the police had shot a young Yugoslavian because he hadn’t
stopped when he was asked.
It turned out that we were parked outside the biggest bank in
Cologne, right under their video camera. And the Red Army Fac-
tion always used big Mercedes when they carried out their attacks.
And there I was trying on sunglasses, with Niels running back and
forth, and Kristoffer’s camera belt looked a bit like a holster. So
they must have been glued to the screen watching us and wonder-
ing what the hell we were up to. The whole thing was like a par-
ody of a hold-up in a Fassbinder film! But we had to sit there for
an hour while they checked out our story. There wasn’t anyone
who believed us: three Danes making a film in Germany! But in the
end they let us drive off — without any sort of apology.

Were you frightened?

Not at all, but I was furious. I was beside myself with rage. It was
so absurd. At one point I looked around me on the street. We were
on one of the main roads in the centre of Cologne. And I saw that
the police had blocked off the street at both ends of the block.
We’d also tried to get hold of Niels’ brother, who was living in
Cologne at the time. But he wasn’t home. And suddenly there he
was, walking along the street and going past without noticing us.
He was too busy watching the police. He’d never seen so many
police in one place. I don’t know what would have happened if
he’d noticed Niels and come up to the car. The slightest unex-
pected development could have led to anything with those police-
men. Kristoffer kept a tight grip on the camera the whole time. He
didn’t know if he could turn it on or not, so he didn’t. If he had
we'd have got some great footage!

To return to Epidemic, and to the well-formulated frame story

about you and Niels and the film consultant at the Danish Film
Institute, Claes Kastholm Hansen: you and Niels are supposed to
give him a completed script, entitled ‘The Inspector and the
Whore’, which has disappeared from the word-processor.
That much was true. A script of ours did disappear like that. It was

98
a version of The Grand Mal. The script that we talk about in Epi-
demic is more like The Element of Crime. We discuss what we can
do. We can remember the central section and can write that out
again. We can probably remember enough of the introduction to
rewrite it. But the ending has gone completely. Neither of us can
reconstruct it; it was far too complicated. I think Niels says at the
beginning of the film: ‘How the hell did we start this script?’
Then Claus calls from the USA. That scene was actually filmed
in the States, in Atlantic City, by Alexander Groscynski, a camera-
man who usually works with Jon Bang Carlsen. We recorded a
long scene first, which failed completely because I’d borrowed a
camera from Jens Jorgen Thorsen, and was probably some old bit
of rubbish. It was a Bolex with three lenses. The problem was that
when we wanted to use the wide-angle lens, the other two lenses
got into the shot.
The idea of Epidemic was that the film consultant, Claus, would
be part of the final meal in the film. But he had begun to draw back
and didn’t want to be part of it. It took quite a few bottles of red
wine before we managed to persuade him to join in. But he has
quite a few good lines in the film. Especially one, after he’s read our
script, or rather our sketch for a script (it was only about twelve
sides long). And he says, ‘At best, it’s pathetic.’ It took a lot of alco-
hol to get him with us.

Was he nervous of taking part?

Yes, very nervous. Or rather, unwilling. But he became more will-
ing eventually, which was great.

In the first part of the film, during the first day in the film, youve
got an episode at the National Archive, entitled ‘Denmark’s Mem-
ory’.
+

Niels had worked at the National Archive. That was probably

how that bit came about. But I think it’s a terribly boring scene. It
was a bit half-hearted. The text that the man in the archive has to
read about the plague is endless. But on the other side I did get to
try out effective lighting in the National Archive. That was one of
the sequences I shot, and I was playing with the lighting a bit. That
was fun; I hadn’t tried doing any lighting before.

oo
In Epidemic you shift constantly between the actual plot and mem-
ory, which is something fairly characteristic of your work. That
narrative technique, or narrative structure, was also present in The
Element of Crime.
You’re right there. It’s more a question of taste than anything — a
desire to make the story more mysterious by letting it take place on
different levels. Memory, in that sense, is an interesting level. I
remember, for instance, films like Alain Resnais’ Providence,
which takes place on a lot of different levels. Perhaps the film has
lost some of its power of attraction now, but I remember being
impressed by it when I first saw it. It still has a positive impact, and
John Gielgud and Dirk Bogarde are both extremely good in it.

You repeat different elements and motifs in your films, motifs

which sometimes have an almost hypnotic effect.
Yes, that’s true. I can’t really answer that, because I don’t always
do things with a particular purpose in mind. You get an idea, but
film is also highly technical. If you were going to paint instead, you
have the choice of using a wide brush or a narrow brush, or of
scraping the paint, like Munch did, or else you can glaze it, and so
on. You can compare that to whether you use flashbacks or ‘mem-
ory shots’ in films, or if you want to stick to a linear narrative
instead. You can choose to devote more attention to the locations
and the props, or to the actors in the film. You’re constantly con-
fronted with choices about the construction of a picture, a com-
plete image.
It’s difficult to answer. It would be easier if I worked in just one
genre, where everything I did was intended, first and foremost, to
scare the audience. In that case it would be easy to choose images
and techniques that you know have the capacity to scare people.
But the films I’ve made haven’t, as far as I’m aware, had so simple
an intention. So it’s difficult to give a plain answer as to why the
films look the way that they do.

Of course. And the open structure that you give your films allows
us to interpret them as we want to.
Yes. Or not to interpret them at all! There’s always that option.
° °

IOO
During the second day of the film, you and Niels Vorsel carry out
an amusing demonstration. You paint a line on a wall, then divide
it into sections and give the sections different titles.
That was done as a wink to the cinema dramaturges. It was some-
thing that’s used all the time at film schools. It’s a useful method if
you want to structure a film.

Do you think the dramaturgical structures and methods that are

taught at film schools can help people create good scripts and
films?
I don’t think you can create good films merely by slavishly follow-
ing the methods that are taught. But of course they contain mech-
anisms and tricks that can work and which can be useful. It’s
important, for instance, to know which order you’re going to
introduce your characters in, or how you build a chain of events.
That’s extremely important if you want to maintain any sort of
tension. And I don’t just mean for a thriller, but also the sort of ten-
sion you get between two people in a drama. It might be a love
story, where one partner in a relationship has met someone else
and is thinking of leaving their partner. Tension exists in that case
in when he or she is thinking of telling their partner the news. Or
not telling them. Or draw the process out by disguising what’s hap-
pening with chocolates and flowers. The dramaturgy is the same as
in a detective film. It’s still a question of when and how something
is going to happen. In that sort of situation, dramaturgical theories
can be useful.
This is something I’ve learned more and more about. Especially
making The Kingdom. When and how you insert ideas and ingre-
dients. The whole of American cinematic dramaturgy, which is the
basis of all of these theories, is based upon the idea of making
everything as dramatic as possible. Emotionally charged — whether
it’s about buying a box of chocolates or talking to a prospective
buyer for your house, anything that can lead up to the inevitable
revelation of infidelity and its consequences for those concerned.
The more diversions the main characters make, the more tension is
created in the audience before the final confrontation and the reac-
tions it’s going to provoke. Banal situations, which are nevertheless
charged with meaning.

IOL
These theories also have their dangers. There was a period in
Sweden, in the early to mid-1980s, when producers, and even the
consultants at the Film Institute, were completely obsessed with
the American dramaturgical model.
A lot of American films follow that model to the letter. I remember
when I saw Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, 1 could predict
minute by minute what was going to happen next. When the little
boy was going to disappear, and how and when they were going to
get him back. Every forward movement in the plot is constructed
according to the template. It was incredibly trying because it was
so predictable, and therefore incredibly boring. It’s more fun to try
to bring tension to your film in a rather more refined way, and
maybe turn the screw one turn too far.

Looking at the production situation in Denmark, it seems as

though people here have been considerably more open to new
ideas and experiments than in other places. You were given the
chance to make The Element of Crime and several other films that,
in comparison to past productions, were relatively avant-garde or
extreme.
That’s true. Ithink we’ve had pretty good film laws here in Den-
mark — very good, from my point of view. I can’t imagine being
able to make the films ’ve made in any country other than Den-
mark. Maybe I could have made them in the Soviet Union before
things changed. Tarkovsky could only have made his films in the
Soviet Union. But the system here has been perfect for me.

Returning to the scene in Epidemic with the line on the wall, you
write the word ‘Drama’ two thirds of the way along the horizontal
axis and say: “This is where people will get bored and leave the cin-
ema. We have to have some sort of drama here. Is that your own
discovery, or are you following the American model?
It’s probably in line with the American model. It’s usually about
two thirds of the way through that they put the turning point, the
fulcrum of the plot. That’s where the decisive final phase of the film
starts. That scene in Epidemic was quite fun. We did it in one take.
And we ruined one of the walls of Niels’ apartment.

IO02
Didn't you have enough money to redecorate Niels’ apartment? I
know the film was shot on a tight budget, but...
I’m not sure that we did. The cost of producing Epidemic was
about a million Danish kroner, and I think we went over that by
about 10,000 kroner. The film was so cheap that the director of the
Film Institute, Finn Aabye, was so suspicious of the project that we
were given our production grant in several small instalments. I
think he was concerned that we might put the money in the bank
and get the interest on it, something that was forbidden in that sit-
uation. If the film had cost twelve million it would probably have
been different. A feature film for a million, that’s not only unusual
but highly suspicious in the eyes of film bureaucrats.

At one point in Epidemic you say that ‘a film ought to be like a

stone in your shoe’.
That’s probably because at some point I realized we were making
a film that was like a stone in your shoe! So wemight as well try to
turn that into a virtue. But I probably do think that films ought to
be like stones in your shoe. That’s not so bad. It would be boring
if you made something that people couldn’t feel at all.
a:
Then there’s a long sequence of you in the bath...
Yes ... where I’m lying there talking about wine. Well, I don’t say
very much, but we get a visit from a wine expert. And he talks
about wine. He was very drunk when we filmed that scene. I can’t
remember how much wine he’d drunk before we started filming.
He was also the sponsor for the whisky we were drinking, and of
course it was great seeing all these crates of whisky being carried
into Niels’ apartment.

But you seem to get on well with water...

Right. And as you can see, we’ve got a jacuzzi in the house. Lying
in the bath is something I enjoy a lot.

The third day has the title ‘Germany’ and begins with a list of
German cities, just like Liberation Pictures.

103
Yes, and you can also note that we wrote them on a little type-
writer, a Hermes Baby. And a Hermes Baby has a prominent role
in Max Frisch’s novel Homo Faber, which is one of Niels Vorsel’s
favourite books. The book was later filmed by Volker Schlondorff,
but the odd thing is that there’s no typewriter of that sort in the
film, so Niels thought it was fairly worthless.

But in that scene you talk about the central character in the film
you’re planning, ‘the worthy Mesmer’. He’s on his way through a
plague-ridden Europe, and he ought to meet someone, a theologist,
you suggest, which would give you the possibility of ridiculing relt-
gion and education, and introduce a bit of humour into all the
tragedy. What’s your attitude to religion?
I was brought up in a strictly atheist family. Atheism was practi-
cally a religion for my parents. So the subject was more or less for-
bidden at home. I still got interested in religion though. And I have
a faith. I converted to Catholicism when I first got married. My
former wife, Cecilia, was Catholic, and my daughters have been
christened Catholics. And that’s the faith I practise. I pray several
times a day.
But now I’m divorced, which is against the rules of the Catholic
church. You can separate but you can’t remarry if you can’t get
your previous marriage declared invalid. That’s one advantage of
having the Pope as God’s representative on earth. God, and the
concept of God, acquire a more human dimension as a result. Ital-
ian society is to a large extent built up on these favours and recip-
rocal services. I think Catholicism is a very human religion.

You became a Catholic in conjunction with your marriage. But the

need for a faith, a religion, must have been there inside you before
that?
Of course — the need was there. And I’ve always had a longing to
submit to external authority. But at the same time it’s been diffi-
cult, because my upbringing was based upon the idea of not setting
my faith in these authorities. Thanks to my upbringing I can
appreciate the importance of religious freedom. My father, for
instance, was a firm opponent of missionary work, because he
thought it was a hideous invasion of people’s privacy. He always

104
got incredibly annoyed when Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the
door. He also hated collections. At the same time, he worked in the
Department of Social Affairs, whose main task was to take care of
people and their needs. But he believed that this was the responsi-
bility of politicians, not charities.

You don’t only appear in the film as yourself. You also play the
main role in the film within the film, Dr Mesmer. What are your
thoughts about acting?
I’m not very good at it. I’d like to be a decent actor, but that would
take a lot of time. It’s a fairly nerve-wracking activity as well,
throwing yourself into something you haven’t any experience of.

Yet you’ve still given yourself small parts in several films, like the
night porter in The Element of Crime and the young Jew in
Europa.

They’ve all been roles of a fairly curious nature, not very sympa-
thetic. Just like Polanski. He preferred to play villains or some-
thing similar. And you have to allow yourself a bit of
exhibitionism.

You’ve already spoken about Udo Kier, an actor who’s come to

appear in most of your films. Did you know him before Epidemic?
And what is it about him as an actor that you like?
I met Udo Kier at a film festival in Mannheim, where we were
showing The Element of Crime and where Udo also had a film
he’d directed, in which he also had two roles, one as a man, one as
a woman. I think it was called The Last Train to Harrisberg. Of
course, I’d already seen him in a number of Fassbinder films. We
got talking during the festival, and Udo said he’d like to be part of
one of my forthcoming films. I was already planning Medea, and
the French actor who was originally going to play Jason, Niels
Arestrup, had decided not to do it. So I asked Udo, and he wanted
to do it. I asked him if he could ride, which of course he said he
could, because he wanted the part. Then he went and took his one
and only riding lesson! He was extremely brave. His first scene in
Medea was pretty daring. He had to ride into a house, pick up a

105
woman and ride out again — the sort of thing that you normally get
a stuntman to do. But Udo jumped on to the horse and performed
the scene over and over without the slightest difficulty, and with-
out falling off once.

He often seems to embody evil in your films.

Yes, if you’ve got the sort of face he’s got it’s quite easy to suffer
from that sort of typecasting.

The fifth day, and in the fifth episode of Epidemic you and Niels
invite the film consultant to dinner so that you can present your
project. You also invite a hypnotist and his medium.
He was a very well-known hypnotist, and he’d just got out of
prison after serving one and a half years, or something like that.
He had been convicted of abusing about fifteen women, whom
he’d attacked after hypnotizing them. The verdict may have been
influenced by his manner. He appeared very arrogant and unsym-
pathetic, even in front of the jury. So in a way he had sentenced
himself in advance. But he was very talented, and he could take
hypnosis a long way.
At that time neither Niels nor I knew him very well, and we’d
never taken part in a séance. He brought three girls with him, all
of them good mediums. After a trial recording with all three, we
chose the girl who ended up in the film. After fifteen seconds she
was in a trance, and I remember Niels and I looking at each other,
suspecting that it was a set-up. It was about as unlikely as it could
have been. But just a few minutes later she was crying so incon-
solably that her blouse was soaked. I’ve seen a lot of actresses who
could cry to order, but I’ve never seen anything like that.
From that experience I got the idea of trying to hypnotize the
actors. It’s an interesting idea, because you’re always working with
their finite talent as actors. But if they happen to be very talented
actors, and you can pair that with the liberation of hypnosis, you
could create something remarkable. Werner Herzog has worked
with hypnosis a fair bit, but in those instances the participants
have been in a trance. I think that with hypnosis you could get an
actor to behave completely normally.

106
 EPIDEMIC.%

11 Gitte Lind, the medium. ‘She was crying so inconsolably that her blouse
was soaked.’

And how would that happen, do you think?

Well, you’d discuss the role and go through the character’s lines
and then let the hypnotist take over. The main thing is allowing
yourself to become the other person. And I think hypnosis could
help with that.

But what we see in Epidemic, when the medium talks about the
effects of the plague and reacts to them with uncomfortable inten-
sity, that’s real, not acted?

Exactly. The girl who plays the medium was extremely nervous
before the scene. So we suggested that we should do one take when
she wasn’t under hypnosis. But she refused to do that. So she did
the scene under hypnosis. And she was incredibly convincing.

Had you told her the story of the film within the film first?
No, she was given an extract of a book about the great plague of
London. And she was told that she was being transported to that
time and that situation. In the film you get the impression that she
is relating events in the planned film. The hypnotist’s line, ‘Go into
the film. Go into Epidemic’ was dubbed on later.
107
The line is similar to the narrator’s voice in Europa, encouraging us
to sink into the film.
Right. There’s nothing new under the sun...

In the film within the film you have Henning Bendtsen, Dreyer’s
former collaborator, as the cameraman. And you carried on work-
ing with him on Europa. Can you say something about your col-
laboration?
It was an interesting collaboration. Henning had certain qualities
or secrets that he thought the director shouldn’t know about. For
example, he always used a soft filter when he took close-ups of the
female actors. I had nothing against that. I was just used to the
idea from film school that if you were going to use a filter, then it
shouldn’t be discreet, but that you should use it to get a real filtered
effect. That was something we got from Fassbinder and his cam-
eraman, Xaver Schwarzenberger, who were never sparing with
their effects.
I remember filming screen tests for the actors in Europa, and
especially Barbara Sukowa, who had the female lead. Henning put
her in front of the camera, and I said: ‘Aren’t you going to use any
lighting?’ He replied, ‘Of course,’ and went off and found a very
low-wattage lamp. And he moved it round her face. ‘Thanks, now
I’m happy,’ he said. ‘Now I know what I need to know.’ That fas-
cinated me. He read her face, then he knew how he was going to
film it.

What was his lighting like otherwise?

I really wanted the lighting to look like what he did in Dreyer’s
Ordet or Gertrud. He worked with a lot of small light sources and
spotlights, which highlighted and divided the set into light and
shadow. I once had the idea of making a film about Gertrud, where
I would contact as many of the people who had been involved in
the film as I could. But no one was interested in producing it at the
time. Dreyer’s a director that only film historians seem to be inter-
ested in. The Danish film industry doesn’t pay him much attention
at all. But for me, as you know, he’s meant an enormous amount.

108
You’ve said — not without a certain pride — that many Danish crit-
ics pronounced Epidemic the worst Danish film of all time after its
premiére in 1987. In November 1997 it was re-released in Den-
mark. What was the critics’ opinion of the film then? Had they
changed their minds at all?
I think so. A little bit, at any rate. I haven’t read the reviews. I keep
thinking of Klaus Rifbjerg, the writer who once, many years ago,
reviewed Bergman’s Winter Light and gave it a terrible review.
Shortly afterwards he wrote a new review, where he said that he’d
misjudged the film, that his initial response was hasty, and that
Winter Light was an important work of art. That’s the only time
I’ve known anyone to behave like that. But it would have to take
someone of Rifbjerg’s calibre to be man enough to do it.

109
 SYNOPSIS

Medea is based on Euripides’ classical drama, here performed in a

slightly archaic but timeless setting. Medea has been abandoned by
her husband, Jason, who wants to marry Glauce, daughter of
Creon, King of Corinth. King Aegeus offers Medea and her chil-
dren sanctuary. After the wedding, Glauce refuses to sleep with
Jason unless he can persuade Medea to leave the country. Creon
visits Medea and orders her to leave. Medea summons Jason, and
pretends to agree to his terms. She gives Glauce a bridal crown
impregnated with poison. Glauce pricks herself on one of the
crown’s thorns and dies, as does Creon. Medea hangs both her
sons. Jason has now lost everything. Medea leaves the country on
King Aegeus’s ship.

You filmed Dreyer’s script of Medea, a film that he never managed

to make himself. Do you see this as a tribute or an act of gratitude,
or was it because the subject fascinated you?
The subject didn’t fascinate me at all! I’ve never been interested in
classical drama. I was more interested that it was something
Dreyer had been involved with.
I’'d been commissioned by the television theatre department, and
had suggested a version of Romeo and Juliet. The newly appointed
head of television theatre, Birgitte Price, wasn’t very interested in
that. But they still wanted me to do something for them. Birgitte
Price had herself produced Medea for the theatre, the classical ver-
sion by Euripides, with Kirsten Olesen in the title role. Now she
1RICSE
 <

had plans to transfer it to television, but using Dreyer’s script. But

she wasn’t sure about doing it herself, and asked me if I'd like to
do it»Otherwise she would probably do it. And I didn’t want to let
her take care of Dreyer’s script! In some way I felt connected to
him and his way of seeing Medea. So I used his script and lines as
a starting point, but changed it so that it took place in a Nordic
setting. I’m not sure, but I think Dreyer had planned to film the
introduction in Greece. There’s a note at the beginning of the script
that suggests he wanted to open the film in an amphitheatre.
Unfortunately Dreyer never got to make his film. He had a whole
load of projects that never got made.
But I wasn’t very keen on the film itself. I was most interested in
the landscape shots. For the first time I tried to get out into nature
and film. It was fun, and Jutland provided a lot of beautiful loca-
tions. Before that most of my exterior scenes had been shot at
night, where you create your own location with the help of light-
__ ing. But here we mostly filmed during the day. There’s a bit of a
besa urosawa atmosphere here and there in the exterior scenes, I
think.
~ Working with Kirsten Olesen wasn’t so good. But I did get Udo
Kier as Jason. Originally I was meant to have a French actor in the
role, Niels Arestrup, whom I met in Paris and who was unusually
unpleasant. He said he was very keen to be involved. But as soon
as I left the room I could feel his scornful grin. He’d been lying to
my face. He didn’t want to be in the film at all. We found that out
ten days before we were due to start filming. A lot of Frenchmen
are pigs, and I’ve been involved with several actors who’ve
behaved just like Arestrup.

Why did you want Niels Arestrup in the part? Had you seen him in
earlier films?
I can’t remember, but he had a Danish background and could still
speak a bit of Danish. But that didn’t help much. I saw him later in
Istvan Szab6’s Meeting Venus and wasn’t entirely convinced of his
talent. But he’s a very successful theatre actor.
So I called Udo, whom Id worked with before on Epidemic, and
asked if he could ride a horse. He joined us, and his participation
gave the role a completely different character.

Iiz
 *

Baard Owe also had an important role. As did Preben Lerdorff-

Rye.
2 el

Two of Dreyer’s old actors ...

Exactly. We had one scene where Baard Owe had to ride a horse.
It was going to be filmed in long-shot. First Udo was going to ride
right across the screen, then, on the other side of a river, we see sev-
eral riders going past Baard Owe. Then Kirsten Olesen comes into
shot on our side of the river and has a long dialogue with Baard
Owe. At the end we pan from them out across the landscape,
where we see a couple of children running, and the camera stops
on Preben Lerdorff-Rye, who says: ‘Medea, the children have been
sent home from school.’
Then the problems began. To begin with, Udo couldn’t ride
through the shot on our side of the river, so we put him on a lad-
der carried by two men. They ran along carrying the ladder and ~
Udo, and it looked like he was riding past on a horse. There was ©
trouble on the other side as well, because Baard Owe’s horse kept ’
sinking into the mud. But he managed to deal with that. He was
evidently an experienced rider. Then there was the dialogue with
Kirsten, which went well. But we had to take account of the
weather and some sheep that were supposed to be in a certain
place. And then those bloody brats...
After a lot of preparations, we were finally ready to film the
scene at some point during the afternoon. Everything was perfect
right up to the panoramic shot that stopped on Preben Lerdorff-
Rye. ‘I can’t remember what I’m meant to say,’ he muttered. It
wasn’t really surprising that he couldn’t remember his line after
waiting so long.
We shot the scene again and again, and each time I cut Preben’s
lines a bit more. Towards the end of the day, while the sun was still
up but was slowly disappearing, we shot the scene one final time.
By then I’d cut his lines to one single word: ‘Medea!’ It worked in
the end. Everything went perfectly and we panned to Preben, while
we sat by the monitor with our fingers crossed. ‘Now, Preben,
now! Let’s hear it!’ And he said the immortal words: ‘What’s her
bloody name again?’ That was pretty memorable — he’d managed
to forget the name on the front of the script.

113
 +
But he was very nice. He’d been a timber merchant earlier in his
life. He’d kept that up as well as acting. He also had a few mottoes,
such as never having met a director who had said anything that he
had found useful. He’d spent his life in film, but I don’t think he’d
ever listened to anyone. But he was excellent in Dreyer’s The Word,
for instance. Really good. ’
One advantage of working like that was that we could always
reshoot scenes we weren’t happy with. We spent a long time
recording in Jutland, and when the weather was OK we could just
go out and start filming again. The worst part was those bloody
Viking ships. We had to get a couple of horses on board, but they
got scared when they had to leave terra firma. They got nervous if
there was any wind at all and the ships rocked. So we had to swap
them for smaller horses. We ended up with horses so small that
you could hardly see them over the side of the ship. It’s odd that
the Vikings got about as much as they did if their horses were as
nervous as ours.
We had a very good time on location, and I was working with
good people. A lot of people had warned me about working with
Danmarks Radio. They said the people there were impossible to
work with, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. They were
incredibly enthusiastic. The producer, Bo Leck Fischer, was very
pleasant and talented. And I remember the film team with great
joy. It’s been sad to see how Danmarks Radio has changed and
developed since then. The team spirit seems to have vanished. But
it was still there when we made Medea.

You open the film with two quotes, saying that this is a personal
interpretation and a tribute to the master: “This film is based on a
script by Carl Th. Dreyer and Preben Thomsen from Euripides’
drama MEDEA. Carl Th. Dreyer never managed to film his script.
This is not an attempt to reconstruct a Dreyer film, but an inter-
pretation of the script, in respect and appreciation, and as such is a
tribute to the master.
Yes, that was the intention, but I don’t know how much of a trib-
ute it was in the end.

The film has no title sequence. It just says, ‘Medea. Lars von Trier’.

II4
 :

You would introduce some of your later films like that as well, with
your name and the title. You want people to get into the film at
ONCE es.
Yes, P’ve thought about that a lot, how to get into a film. There are
a lot of good examples in film history of title sequences that really
work, like Hitchcock’s Psycho for instance, where the titles con-
tribute to the creation of an atmosphere. But I haven’t found any-
one who could do anything similar to any of my films, and I
haven’t had any good ideas myself.

The titles act as a sort of trademark.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing. At film school I once tried to
make a long title introduction, a sort of prelude. I’ve tended to
think that it’s better to see the fiction first, then get the key to it, see
who helped create the fiction. Obviously you could do it the other
way round. But when you see a lot of actors’ names, you’re trans-
ported back to reality again and the fiction is subordinate to the
names.
As soon as you sit down in a cinema there’s a sense of expecta-
tion. The first scene of a film is extremely important. It embar-
rasses me and makes me impatient to see a mass of names on
parade before the film has even started. It’s better to leave the cin-
ema with the credits rolling at the end.

I agree that the first scene of a film is extremely important, because

that’s where you set up the plot or the atmosphere. The first image
in Medea shows Kirsten Olesen lying on the shore with the tide
coming in and starting to wash over her.
I don’t think that image works.

Why not?
I don’t think it was a good solution. The image is a bit dull, and
there’s no continuity in the camerawork. The idea was for her to
hold her breath as the water rose. Then she would get up, then sink
into the water again. The idea was absurd. But I imagined that she
was holding in all her anger and rage by holding her breath. That
enormous rage she feels and carries within her. And that had

II5
nothing to do with Dreyer. It was a purely Trieresque invention —
a prelude.

But the image has connotations of timelessness — that we’re going

to be presented with a timeless story. She’s lying there, washed by
the tide, in a wild, deserted, barren landscape.

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. But it’s clear that we were

introducing the landscape, where the tides are very important.
That’s something that fascinated me about the coast of Jutland, the
big differences in the tides. Half the time the shore is completely
dry, and the other half full of water. We found a lot of wonderful
locations, like the one where the horse is racing about. We did a lot
of filming from a helicopter. It was a wonderful location.

The choice of landscape feels very important in Medea. I think you

found a landscape which, like Breaking the Waves, becomes a sort
of emotional extension of the story you’re telling.
I hadn’t thought of it like that, but Medea is a sort of landscape
film in the same way as Breaking the Waves, although in the latter
we inserted several landscape shots which mirror the story fairly
closely. I don’t know how I got the idea of filming there, because
I'd never been to the west of Jutland before. I think someone at
Danmarks Radio suggested I take a look at it .. . No, I know! Bir-
gitte Price wanted to make the film in the bunkers along the coast
of west Jutland. I thought it was a terrible idea. I’d never be able to
sit in a bunker and make a film. But during our research someone
said that there were other places — apart from bunkers — that were
exciting and visually suggestive. We also did a lot of filming on
Male, which you could walk to at low tide.

The cave at the beginning of the film, was that a real place as well?
Yes, it’s an old limestone cave close to where we were filming, a
wonderful place.

Your representations of Kirsten Olesen in the film are very remi-

niscent of Dreyer’s way of filming women. At the beginning of the
film you show several close-ups of her hands, and at the end you

116
have a lot of close-ups of her face. Her clothes and the little hat
she’s wearing are reminiscent of both The Passion of Joan of Arc
and Day of Wrath. Was that a conscious decision?
It must have been. The film was supposed to be a bit Dreyerish. I
felt very connected to his aesthetic. But a lot of the film is too
insubstantial. And we had that model of the Viking castle where
Medea lived. I can’t stand that sort of thing. It looked terrible. The
problem was that the budget didn’t let us film the whole thing on
location. We came up with several Fellini-style solutions instead.
We had Jason and Glauce celebrate their wedding in a tent on a
small sandhill. We later set the tent up in the studio and shot the
scene there. As soon as we had a set where I felt in control, every-
thing went exactly as it should.

That scene is very sensual. It’s also visually ingenious and inven-
tive, with the swaying sheets hung up in the tent, where the shad-
ows of people and dogs sway back and forth.
I’m pretty sick of that scene and the way we did it. It’s funny, but
there’s too much aesthetic there, and not enough result. The
woman playing Glauce was a ballet dancer who wasn’t very good
at expressing herself. It was all a bit sterile. There’s no guts in the
scene. Dreyer’s films aren’t very sensual either. They’re more vir-
ginal. That came through in his script as well, and it all ended up
being horribly virginal. We tried loads of different solutions, with
back projection and chroma-key, like the scene where they meet
each other on the beach with the sand blowing. Here and there I
think the film works. The scene where Medea hands over the poi-
soned crown, for instance.

One very fine scene, in my opinion, is where Medea talks about

how empty her life is, and you see the children sleeping in the back-
ground. They’re filmed in back projection, and as she speaks they
get closer and more in focus.
Well, it’s OK I suppose . . . I don’t feel very happy with the film. I
think that’s because of all that Viking crap that I never really got a
grip on. No matter what you do with things like this, the result is
always a sort of fancy-dress party. It’s bloody difficult to get it to

C17
 tie”

look at all sensible. I don’t think we’ve really got enough distance
to all this Viking business. But when you look at what Kurosawa
does with similar things, it looks impressive. Like The Seven Samu-
rai. But if you look at the film more closely, you can see that the
helmets they’re wearing are terribly badly made. Maybe Kurosawa
thought his film was insubstantial. But both time and geographic
distance have eroded that, so you go along with it.

I don’t really notice the historical displacement in Medea. As I

said, I see the film not as a psychological drama set at a certain
time, more as a timeless drama about fate.
That’s how I chose to interpret the script, because Dreyer’s text
didn’t really allow for a psychological interpretation. Dreyer’s
films can’t really be classified as psychological dramas. They’re not
really on that level. The difficulty is that he simplifies and concen-
trates the dialogue so much. There’s nothing there that suggests
everyday speech. They’re like little captions thrown in here and
there. Dreyer was more interested in creating an extremely beauti-
ful and impressive stylization. There’s no question of any realistic,
psychological acting. The characters are almost icons. It’s probably
better to describe his films as visual art rather than cinema.

You diverge from Dreyer’s script in a way that makes your version
considerably more raw, both more primitive and violent. I’m think-
ing here of the scene where Medea kills her children. It’s pretty
unpleasant in your version. The mother hangs her children, and her
eldest son even helps her kill the younger one. He says, ‘I know
what you're going to do to us.’ He’s prepared to let himself be
sacrificed.
Yes. Dreyer wanted to give them poison. He thought it was too
violent to have them knifed, which is what happens in the classical
drama. He thought that was too bloody. He just wanted them to
die in their sleep. I chose to make it more dramatic. I think there’s
more edge to my version as a whole. I thought it was better to hang
the children. And more consequential. Either you kill them or you
don’t. The action ought to be presented as it is. There’s no reason
to tidy it up and make it look more innocent than it is.

118
Medea was made by an unusual method. You filmed it on video ...
Then we projected the completed film on a screen and filmed it on
video again. That was to get away from that video look, which I
wasn’t keen on.

The colours in the film are very washed out. Was that a result of
filming it that way, or did you tone down the colours when you
were processing the film as well?
We toned down the colours in the first version in the laboratory,
then ran the refilmed version through the lab a second time. We
kept toning down the colours more and more. I was very pleased
with the first version the developer presented. But then it got a bit
less sure because it turned out that he was colour-blind! And we
never got the same result again. No, he was actually very good. He
lost his job shortly after that. He’d managed to hide the fact that
he was colour-blind for all those years.

You broke completely with the tradition of television drama by

filming so much of the film in very wide full shots. The landscape
dominates the screen in a way that’s very unusual in television.
I didn’t really think about the fact that it was going to be screened on
television when I made it. I’ve never been very concerned with
what’s suitable or not where television is concerned, that television
is supposed to be a close-up medium, and so on. There’s not really
that much difference between film and television. If you’re sitting in
the fourteenth row of a cinema or two metres away from a television
set, the experience is the same. The only difference is that your con-
centration is more vulnerable with television. You can be disturbed
by noises in the house or other things going on around you. But you
can’t really take that into account when you’re making a film. You
just try to make it as good as possible, then your audience or viewer
has to make use of it as best they can. If you start to take account of
loads of different factors, your film just ends up as a product.

The reception Medea got in Denmark was critical, to say the least.
Most Danish television critics gave it the thumbs down, and their
criticism wasn’t just negative, but very hostile.

119
Yes, Bettina Heltberg’s review in Politiken was even quoted on the
front page, under the title ‘Washed out Medea’. I’d never seen a tel-
evision review on the front page before, so the film really got it in
the neck. The only person who defended the film was Christian
Braad Thomsen, and strangely enough he was incredibly positive.
But he’s a bit like that. If he goes for something, he does it without
reservation. |

What do you think it was that made the television critics so furt-
ous?
The problem was that the people reviewing television theatre are
neither television critics nor film critics, but theatre critics. They
knew Medea from the theatre, and they would watch a television
theatre production using the principles they would normally apply
to a theatrical performance. Nowadays, of course, it’s called tele-
vision drama and not television theatre. But I thought the idea of
television theatre was a good one. The idea of filming perform-
ances. They didn’t have to be filmed on-stage: they might just as
well be in a television studio. Bo Widerberg, for instance, did
excellent versions of some Tennessee Williams plays.
But Medea wasn’t television theatre, of course. It was a film that
had been recorded on video. And these theatre critics thought that
I’d slaughtered one of their classics. Maybe I had. I don’t know
much about theatre. I just tried to use the material I had to the best
effect.
The critics also came to the screening with certain preconcep-
tions and prejudices. Bettina Hellberg arrived quarter of an hour
late for the screening at Danmarks Radio, and she sat there laugh-
ing out loud at scenes that were meant to be taken very seriously.
Her behaviour was pretty appalling.

And that must have affected some of the other critics?

It must have done. You shouldn’t be allowed to review something
you turn up quarter of an hour late for. It’s incredibly arrogant, for
God’s sake! The old bag should have stayed away.

But you were surprised that Christian Braad Thomsen defended

the film?

120
Yes, I never understood that. I thought that Christian, with his
rather Spartan attitude, would have appreciated a film like Epi-
demic more. But he couldn’t stand that. He thought it was terrible.
But he really liked Medea, and was even keener on Breaking the
Waves. He’s read the images and found in them the basic conflicts
of drama. Because the story I’ve tried to tell is there inscribed in the
images.

Did you read Euripides’ play before you started filming?

Yes, I managed that at least. But I don’t like reading plays. Or film
scripts. You have to be so alert to pick up what’s going on. The.
whole reason for the drama can be hidden in a couple of words.
You have to read very carefully, because otherwise you can miss
the whole point.

At one point Medea says, “There’s no greater sorrow than love.’

That could almost be the motto of the film.
‘There’s no greater sorrow than love...’ Yes, they have enough
problems, those two. Dreyer must get the credit for that line. He
was the one who distilled Euripides into his version of the play.
And I tried to interpret his version as best I could. It’s the only time
I’ve filmed something I haven’t written. And maybe that was the
problem. One solution in cases like that is to follow the text
exactly and merely illustrate it. But I have trouble doing that. For
me, work also has to involve stimulation and enjoyment. A line
like “There’s no greater sorrow than love’ is pretty suggestive in
itself. But it’s not very cinematic, and that means you have to cre-
ate a cinematic interpretation of it. It’s just words. I was trying to
create a style, an atmosphere — tableaux, in the spirit of Dreyer. But
a few simple words can entice me so much that I think, ‘Right, ’ve
got to make a film about that!’
Medea doesn’t say much to me these days. It’s got some nice
scenes, but only on a superficial level. Medea was possibly a pre-
cursor to Breaking the Waves in some of its usage of melodramatic
form.

I21I
 -» MANIFESTO 3 - | CONFESS!

Everything seems fine: the film director Lars von Trier is a scientist
and an artist and a human being. Yet all the same I say that lama
human being, AND an artist, AND a film director.
Iam crying as I write this, because I have been so arrogant in my
attitude: who am I to think that I can master things and show peo-
ple the right path? Who am I to think that I can scornfully dismiss
other people’s life and work? My shame keeps getting worse,
because my apology — that I was seduced by the pride of science —
falls to the ground like a lie! Certainly it’s true that I have tried to
intoxicate myself in a cloud of sophistries about the goals of art
and the artist’s duties, that I have worked out ingenious theories
about the anatomy and nature of film, yet — and I am admitting
this quite openly — I have never succeeded in suppressing my inner
passions with this feeble veil of mist: My FLESHLY DESIRES!!
Our relationship to film can be described in so many ways, and
is explained in myriad different ways: We have to make films with
a pedagogical purpose, we can desire to use film as a ship that can
carry us off on a voyage of discovery to unknown lands, or we can
claim that we want to use film to influence our audience and get it
to laugh or cry — and pay. All this can sound perfectly OK, but I
still don’t think much of it.
There is only ONE excuse for suffering and making other people
suffer the hell that the genesis of a film involves: the gratification of
the fleshly desires that arise in a fraction of a second, when the cin-
ema’s loudspeakers and projector, in tandem, and inexplicably,
allow the illusion of movement and light to find their way like an
electron leaving its path and thereby generating the light needed to
create ONE SINGLE THING: a miraculous blast of LIFE! THIS is the
only reward a film-maker gets, the only thing he hopes and longs
for. This physical experience when the magic of film takes place
and works its way through the body, to a trembling ejaculation...
NOTHING ELSE! There, now it’s written down, which feels good.
So forget all the excuses: ‘childish fascination’ and ‘all-encompassing
humility’, because this is my confession, in black and white: LARS
VON TRIER, THE TRUE ONANIST OF THE SILVER SCREEN.

123
 And yet, in Europa, the third part of the trilogy, there isn’t the
least trace of derivative manoeuvring. At last, purity and clarity
are achieved! Here there is nothing to hide reality under a suffo-
cating layer of ‘art’ . . . no trick is too mean, no technique too
tawdry, no effect too tasteless.
JUST GIVE ME ONE SINGLE TEAR OR ONE SINGLE DROP OF
SWEAT AND I WOULD WILLINGLY EXCHANGE IT FOR ALL THE
‘ART’ IN THE WORLD.
At last. May God alone judge me for my alchemical attempts to
create life from celluloid. But one thing is certain: life outside the
cinema can never find its equal, because it is His creation, and
therefore divine.

Published 29 December 1990 in conjunction with the premiére of

Europa.

124
 Europa

SYNOPSIS

Germany, year zero, shortly after the end of the war in 1945. The
young Leo Kessler, who moved with his parents to the USA at the
start of the war, returns to the country of his birth. He visits his
uncle, who works as a sleeping-car attendant for the railway com-
pany, Zentropa. Leo is offered a probationary position as a con-
ductor, and is to be trained by his uncle. During one journey Leo
meets Katarina Hartmann, the daughter of Zentropa’s owner, Max
Hartmann. They fall in love.
Hartmann ts under threat from the so-called Werewolves, a Nazi
terrorist group who are attacking the occupying powers with
bombs and armed attacks. A close friend of Hartmann’s, the Amer-
ican Colonel Harris, is working on whitewashing Hartmann’s
collaboration with the Nazis during the war, and he coerces a
young Jew to confirm that Hartmann helped and supported him.
Despite this, Hartmann commits suicide shortly afterwards. After
her father’s funeral, Katarina marries Leo.
One of the Werewolves’ leaders, Siggy, tricks Leo into taking
two young boys on to the train, where they shoot a newly
appointed mayor. When Leo finds out that Katarina has been kid-
napped, and that her brother Larry has been shot, he is black-
mailed into carrying out one final attack for Siggy — placing a
bomb on the train, which is planned to go off when the train
passes over a large bridge. Leo carries out the attack, but changes
his mind at the last minute. At the same time, he is undergoing a
parody of an examination to become a sleeping-car attendant. Leo
betrays the Werewolves to the authorities and finds out that Kata-
rina is one of them. He thinks that he has averted the catastrophe,

E25
but the bomb explodes. The train crashes into a river and Leo
drowns.

+ & %

Europa seems to have been a film you spent a long time planning.
The project was named in connection with Epidemic. Epidemic
was made in 1987, but in the brochure for that one it says that you
were going to make a film called Europa in 1990. That seems
pretty far-sighted ...
It was. We’d worked out that we were going to do something that
we called the ‘Europe Trilogy’. We thought that was a good name.
And in the trilogy there ought to be a film called Europa. Niels
Vorsel was very keen on Kafka’s America, which is about Europeans
arriving in America. Here we have an American visiting Europe.
But Europa was very difficult to get finance for — like all my
films, I suppose, apart from Epidemic and The Idiots. It’s always
taken two, three years before we could start production.

But was it just the idea of a film that you had when you made
Epidemic, or had you and Niels Vorsel already written the script to
Europa?

No, probably just the idea, and the title, which we already had.

There have been loads of films about the Second World War and
the period immediately following it. A lot of American and British
films, obviously, but also German, Italian ... and the wave of
Polish films from the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s. Even in
Denmark there have been films about the war and the Danish
resistance movement. How come you wanted to make a film about
Germany after the war?
Because there aren’t many films dealing with that period. The defeat
is interesting to deal with, the mechanisms that develop in the after-
math of a defeat. I was inspired to make Europa by several other
films, most notably Visconti’s The Damned, which I thought was a
fantastic film. The idea of the family and how it functions and the
internal relationships and conflicts all stem from that, really.

126
 +.

I also thought it would be interesting to make my main character

a sleeping-car attendant, building up his personality around a real
job. Niels Versel had worked on the German railways, not as a
sleeping-car attendant, but as a conductor, so he had inside knowl-
edge of the industry. We had a lot of fun going through all the rules
and regulations of the job, and they’re correctly cited in the film. A
lot of research went into Europa. I used to play with a model train
set when I was little, so I was fascinated with this world surround-
ing the sleeping-car attendant. Also this business of a topsy-turvy
conception of time, that he had to work at night and sleep during
the day in some strange place, then start all over again.
There are a lot of people living very tough lives. It must be diffi-
cult to maintain a normal family life, for instance. They live a
peculiar life. Some of them are terribly depressed, and they like
telling you stories about their terrible existence. Some are incredi-
bly grumpy. The idea of a conductor locking himself in his com-
partment and getting totally drunk, which happens in the film,
actually happened to me on a journey from Paris. He was a young
German, bald. Conductors like that are often a bit sloppy, but he
was incredibly punctilious. He asked for my ticket and passport
and if I wanted breakfast. He was extremely correct and gave a
very proper impression. Often you get a bit nervous handing over
your passport to a stranger, but with him I didn’t feel the least bit
concerned.
When he had been through the whole carriage and taken all our
orders, he locked himself in his little compartment, and we didn’t
see any sign of him for the rest of the night. Not until we came to
some little town in northern Germany, when two other conductors
had to break the door in. And there he was, completely drunk, and
they had to carry him out. It was an interesting experience. They
have access to quite a bit of drink, although the idea is probably
that they give it to the passengers...
The Swedish sleeping-car attendants I’ve come across have been
some of the most officious and unfriendly I’ve ever met, real jobs-
worths. I remember one trip from Stockholm, when I hadn’t man-
aged to get a first-class compartment — a compartment with only
two berths for Bente and me. So I bought three tickets for a sec-
ond-class compartment. We’d be able to be on our own without
anyone coming in to take the third berth. Stellan Skarsgard had

127
come with us to the train and helped me speak to the conductor,
because we wanted to fold up the middle bunk so that we only had
two bunks. But that didn’t work, not for Stellan or me. The con-
ductor refused. It was against the rules. I explained that we had
paid for all three places, but that didn’t make any difference. He
couldn’t do it. So when we were in the compartment I took out my
penknife and cut the strap of the middle bunk. Four and a half sec-
onds and it was done! ,

That sounds just like Ernst-Hugo Jaregard’s character in Europa...

Yes, exactly! Trains — above all, night trains — offer a lot of inter-
esting and exotic situations. Several peculiar things happened on
our trips to Poland in connection with Europa. The first time I
went to Warsaw we missed the connection in Berlin. We were late
arriving, I think. Warsaw is one of the stops on the Berlin-Moscow
route, and when we tried to get on the Moscow train it turned out
to be full. We went right through the train to the last sleeping car,
which looked a total wreck, but still seemed to have a few vacant
spaces. So we asked the conductor if there was a spare compart-
ment. He apologized and said that there wasn’t, but when we
pressed a few dollars into his hand he opened the carriage for us,
and it turned out to be completely empty.
We found out later that the carriage was owned by two broth-
ers, and that they had bribed the railway staff to connect it to the
train. The brothers used it as a sort of travelling brothel, where
passengers who had brought prostitutes on to the train could go
along to the last carriage where they could have a quick one. Couples
kept turning up during the night. It was bloody cold in there,
though. The two brothers hadn’t sorted out any heating at all.
There was coal in the corridor, so there must have been a stove
somewhere. But it didn’t help much. It was an incredible experi-
ence — an illustration of true liberalization at work.
During our research for Europa we looked at Hitler’s and
Goebbels’ private carriages, with their bullet-proof glass and three
bathtubs. They all had their own private carriages. It was good fun
to research, a sort of boys’ adventure — all this business with trains
and railways and so on. Like life-size model railways . . .

128
Trains and journeys are also very cinematic. There are loads of
films that are set on trains, of course.
Right, and the railway track looks a lot like a reel of film.

Like the opening sequence of Europa...

Exactly.

Europa is largely about power structures, something you went on

to cover in The Kingdom and Breaking the Waves. Here it’s eco-
nomic power, in The Kingdom the doctors’ power, and in Breaking
the Waves religious power. What are your thoughts on the concept
of power?
Well... (A deep sigh.) I haven’t really thought about it. I can’t say
that I consciously set out to deal with it as a subject, because I
don’t think like that. And that’s odd, because I used to belong to
the DKU [the Danish Communist Youth movement]. Peter Aalbeek
Jensen was also a member. But I’ve never had any ambitions
towards political analysis or analysis of the concept and conse-
quences of power — none at all. What interested me most in
Europa was how this sort of unformed, shapeless central character
ended up in this inflamed situation. Europa, as we’ve said, is the
third part of a trilogy, and the film really tells the same story as The
Element of Crime and Epidemic: how an idealist with the best
intentions ends up in a catastrophic and intractable situation, and
how he’s the one who unleashes the catastrophe. There! That’s the
story.
Katarina Hartmann in Europa also illustrates an interesting
theory, when she suggests that it’s the people who haven’t made up
their mind, the neutrals, who are the real villains. Looked at in that
light, you can see most humanists as villains, because of course,
they maintain a neutral position. For them, there’s no such thing as
pure goodness or evil, whereas people who fight see good in their
own cause and evil in their opponents’.

The subject is also discussed in the scene with the priest, where he’s
talking to Katarina and Leo. The priest says that God is on the side
of the combatant in war, and Leo points out that there are two

129
combatants — two adversaries. But the priest still has an answer. He
says that God is with those who really want Him to hear them.
Yes, God supports those who believe in their actions, regardless of
which side they’re on. He’s a democratic God, you could say. But
Leo can’t really understand that.
Erik Merk was very good as the priest. He managed to speak
German very well too, unlike several of the Danish actors.

I'd like to get back to this business of power...

Thanks a lot!

Well, I don’t want to leave it just yet, because even if Europa can't
be seen as a political film, it still illustrates, in an interesting and
intricate way, the connection between different power structures,
how economic power allies itself to military and religious power.
In that sense the film does have a sort of political content.
Well of course it bloody does! If the film has got any political con-
tent then it’s that it adopts an almost anti-American attitude. The
story takes place in the American zone, and we get to watch the
intrigues that take place there. The film makes quite a lot of insin-
uations in that direction.

But the film also deals with post-war Germany and the financial
corruption, or collaboration, between the Nazis and capitalists
during the war, which later led to the fantastic blossoming of the
German economy.
Yes, we did a lot of research into that, and spoke to a lot of histo-
rians. It turned out that a lot of German businesses were in Amer-
ican hands right through the war. There’s an interesting story
about the Coca-Cola Company. Before the war the Germans pro-
duced Coca-Cola in Germany under licence. But during the war
they didn’t dare continue making it. They couldn’t really drink
Coca-Cola while taking cover from American bombs. So they cre-
ated their own Coca-Cola and called it Fanta. And after the war
the Americans bought the brand from the Germans and turned it
into an orange drink. You can almost tell from the name that Fanta
has German origins.

130
Can you say a bit more about the research you and Niels Vorsel
undertook before you began writing the script for Europa?
Well, we contacted a Danish historian who specialized in German
history. Then we did some more research about trains and railway
lines. We also kept an eye out for absurd details. But the story is a
mixture of fact and complete fantasy. The characters and their
internal relationships came first.

Somewhere at the beginning of the film someone working for Zen-

tropa tells Leo: ‘Your task is almost mythological.’
That’s right! It’s the director of the sleeping-car division who says
that, and he’s the one who at one point says that he met the wife of
the legendary inventor of the sleeping car, the one and only Mr
Pullman. The director always went around with a bag of sweets in
his hand. To begin with we were going to give him chewing gum,
but there wasn’t any in Germany at the time. So he offers Leo a
sweet and says: ‘Crush it between your teeth, like it’s the custom in
your country!’ We had fun with that. God, it’s ages since I saw
Europa.

Do you normally go back and watch your old films?

Occasionally. I haven’t seen Europa for a long time. I saw Epi-
demic again about five years ago. Otherwise I don’t really look at
them.

Europa has an almost mythological character right from the start,

particularly the scene where they’re pulling the locomotive out of
the shed. The scene is reminiscent of the pictures of the construc-
tion of the pyramids, with slaves dragging enormous blocks of
stone.
Yes. The problem with that scene was that we didn’t think they’d
be able to pull the engine like that. It turned out to be far too easy.
So we had to put the brakes on and add some more weight so that
it didn’t look too easy.

But why did you want that particular image?

iea
I wanted to show that if there was anything they had a plentiful
supply of at that time, it was labour. Even if a large proportion of
the male population was dead, there were still a lot of people des-
perate for work. And there weren’t many trains, because they had
mostly been damaged or destroyed by the bombing. And it was
nice to be able to get in the railway director’s long eulogy about the
mythological aspect of the business.
We tried to get a fairly humorous tone to the whole script, but
the completed film never really showed that humorous lightness of
touch. Not like The Element of Crime.

But the irony is still there, not least in the dialogue.

Yes, in the oral examination. That's a complete parody.

There’s a lot of irony in the portrayal of the main character, Leo,

the idealist in the film, not least in the scenes when he meets Kata-
rina and the leader of the Werewolves, Siggy, played by Henning
Jensen.
Yes, and Leo’s forced to place the bomb on the train, of course. I
like that whole sequence of images surrounding the bomb, partic-
ularly the shots of Leo lying in the grass looking up at the stars.
Those scenes were inspired by Charles Laughton’s Night of the
Hunter, naturally. It was the only film Laughton directed, but it’s a
fantastic film. A masterpiece. And completely unexpected, particu-
larly its originality and brilliance of form. There were a lot of other
scenes that were inspired by Laughton, not least the underwater
scenes at the end of Europa. The image of Shelley Winters in Night
of the Hunter, sitting drowned in a car at the bottom of a river,
with her hair floating about her into the weeds, gave me the idea
for Leo’s death in Europa.

When did you first see Laughton’s film?

I don’t remember, but it was a long time ago, and it’s a film that
stuck in my mind. It really is a unique film, with its theatrical styl-
ization, and there are a lot of references to it in Europa. Also to
Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, with all its back projec-
tions.

132
You don’t often see a film where form and style are as integrated as
they are in Europa. It must have been something that you — and
Niels Voarsel — planned very carefully during your work on the
script. Can you say something about that?
I certainly had an idea of how I wanted to formulate the shots. But I
can’t say that I had any comprehensive visual idea. I had the idea of the
back projections: that was the most important visual element. And it
felt important to do it ‘properly’ like they used to, not with electronic
trickery. I wanted to create different focuses in the shots, so that the
actors could go in and out of different realities, like the scenes between
Leo and Katarina where one of them is in colour and the other black
and white. But my God, was it complicated! You’ve no idea...

There were two scripts for Europa: a first one that you wrote with
Niels Vorsel, then the shooting script that you wrote together with
Tomas Gislason. As I understand it, the first one concentrated on
the plot, whereas the second gives a more detailed description of
the visual side of the film.
Yes, the second was a visual script, more of a storyboard. And
that’s where it describes in more detail the connections between the
different scenes. They were quite complicated at times. Occasion-
ally we added a bit of text as well. ‘Werewolf’ and so on, when we
superimposed Leo in front of the text.

Or the scene with the bomb, where Leo is racing against time and
you see him running with a giant clock in the background.
Yes, we put a lot of emphasis on expressionistic shots like that.

And you mix black and white with colour. But colour only appears
very sparingly in the film. Do you remember why you wanted cer-
tain scenes — or parts of scenes — to be in colour?
It was more an aesthetic principle. I wanted to film scenes where J
could direct the colour. I added colour here and there to highlight
certain things.

There are scenes where colour is used to great effect, like when
Hartmann commits suicide in his bath and the blood flows out on

153
12 Jean-Marc Barr as Leo Kessler in one of Europa’s sophisticated back-
projections.

to the floor. Then there are more everyday scenes of conversation

between Leo and Katarina in the train, where you have one of
them in colour and the other in black and white. Was there any
special reasoning behind that?
I’m sure there was. The scenes were constructed in full shots and
close-ups, and also extreme close-ups, and I used colour in these
extreme close-ups. The colour gave a tighter, sharper sense to
them. The images had to be more readable and give a stronger
emotional effect. There was generally an emotional reason for
colouring a particular object or person.

Europa could be classified as expressionistic, through its highly

economical and studied visual style and narrative technique. I’m
not just thinking of the shots that display some sort of visual trick-
ery. Take a scene like the one at the start of the film, where Leo is
trying on his uniform. Someone comes in with a big mirror, and
suddenly you have three levels of activity in that shot: one with
Leo in the mirror, the second his uncle watching him, and the third
a person commenting on the scene.
' 134
There’s also a scene where there’s a close-up of a bullet that’s fallen
on to the floor of a train compartment. And behind it you see a
limited back projection. The bullet is very close to the camera, but
thanks to the back projection you get long focus in the whole shot.
We couldn’t have achieved that any other way.
Both those visual effects were planned in advance. The advan-
tage of working with a storyboard was that I knew in advance
what we could do and what we couldn’t manage. There was never
a case of trying to solve something on the spot.

An important person in this instance was Peter Aalbek Jensen, the

film’s producer. You said earlier that Europa was a financially risky
project, which took a long time to get finance for. Europa was your
first collaboration with Peter, something that has continued with
your later films, and you’ve set up a production company together,
Zentropa. Can you say something about your collaboration?
We first met in connection with an advert that Peter was produc-
ing. He’d just finished the production course at the film school,
and we got on well from the start. I asked him if he’d like to help
produce Europa. As I said, it took a long time to get the finances
sorted. Peter went round to all sorts of producers and financiers,
and eventually the film ended up with Nordisk Film. But Peter was
the film’s producer. After Europa he said that he’d like to continue
producing my films, but with a company of our own. So we set up
Zentropa, named after the company in the film. One of the proj-
ects we planned together was Breaking the Waves, which also took
a long time to get made.

Breaking the Waves was already being planned when you finished
Europa?’
Yes, at least in synopsis form. But while we were waiting for
Breaking the Waves to happen, we produced a whole load of fairly
feeble films and bought technical equipment which meant we
would be able to produce films ourselves.

You put together a complicated and eccentric ensemble of actors

for Europa. How did you cast the film? Ernst-Hugo Jdaregard, for
instance?

135 .
Peter had seen Ernst-Hugo in a Swedish television series called
Skanska mord [Murders in Skane]. And I had seen him in other
things on television, where he was a sort of dandy, a highly eccen-
tric performer. We contacted him and he came down to Copen-
hagen. He was very persuasive. He performed a monologue from
Strindberg in one of Nordisk Film’s studios. And when he’d fin-
ished it, he looked at me enquiringly. I remember going out to the
toilet, where I got a towel to wipe the table in front of him. He’d
soaked it with saliva during the monologue! Ernst-Hugo asked me
whether he ought to regard my gesture as positive or negative.
‘Definitely positive,’ I said.

What is it that you like most of all about Ernst-Hugo Jdregard as

an actor?
Well, to begin with, we’re very similar. He’s terrified of most
things. He’s an interesting and complex character. There’s still a
small child inside him, but at the same time he’s extremely aware,
very intelligent. And he expresses great aggression, in his being and
his manner. He’s so dynamic as a person, which gives him a
tremendous edge as an actor. The thing I care for least with Ernst-
Hugo is his technique. I’ve had to struggle with that.
He’s definitely got ‘star quality’. I’ve seen him on stage a few
times, and I know of few actors who can occupy a stage and cap-
ture the audience like Ernst-Hugo can. He’s also so easy to read.
You can read emotions, experiences, thoughts in his face instantly.
Sometimes this can be a bit problematic. Like in The Kingdom. If
an actor is less expressive, we can interpret his feelings and
thoughts in a given scene ourselves. And that was an advantage
with a lot of the actors in The Kingdom. They could carry and
keep secrets. In contrast to some of the other characters, Ernst-
Hugo’s role required him to give very precise delivery of his lines,
purely because his face is so expressive.
The only thing that Ernst-Hugo can’t do is play supporting
roles. In Europa, there’s a long scene where he’s standing smoking
a cigar in the background while Erik Merk is delivering a mono-
logue in the foreground. It was practically impossible to film when
we first tried it. Ernst-Hugo was almost blowing smoke out of his
ears out of sheer frustration. He managed to attract attention by a

136
whole range of little tricks. So everyone looks at Ernst-Hugo,
while poor Erik Mork is struggling with his long monologue,
which he actually did fantastically well. In the end I managed to
subdue Ernst-Hugo somehow, but it was pretty bloody difficult.
He can’t bear just being on the sidelines.

And the other actors?

I asked Udo Kier if he wanted to be in the film, which he did. And

Udo knew Barbara Sukowa and Eddie Constantine, who had both
been in several Fassbinder films. I travelled to Switzerland to meet
Barbara and persuade her to join us. She’s a feminist and had a lot
of political objections to the film.
Originally I was considering Gérard Depardieu for the role of Leo.
Then the French producers suggested Jean-Marc Barr, and I looked at
him in Luc Besson’s The Big Blue. After seeing it I was hesitant. I
thought he seemed too green for the part. But when we’d sorted out
the rest of the cast, I realized that he’d be ideal for the part, because
he’d be the only normal person in a collection of fairly bestial char-
acters. All the others were like wild animals waiting to pounce on
him. Jean-Marc contributed a sort of innocence and naivety that I
liked. He was also extremely pleasant and easy to work with.
Jean-Marc and Barbara Sukowa arrived a week or so before we
started filming to go through the script. We had some unbelievable
discussions! Barbara had quite a lot of objections and refused to
back down. So after three days I thought I was going to have to put
my foot down. I told myself that these three days were part of my
work, and seen in that way, you could call them three working
days. It was my duty as director to listen to her. But on a more
human level I have to say that I’ve never experienced three more
wasted days. She got completely furious and screamed and cried,
while Jean-Marc looked on speechless. She also wanted Jean-Marc
to leave the room, because she thought he was mad. She didn’t
want him to take part in the conversation.
But after that everything fell into place. Later on I found out that
this is a technique Barbara often uses. She drives people to the
brink of madness, before she manages to find a sort of equilibrium
and balance. Then you can get on with the work without any
problems at all.

137
13 Europa: The young Jew (Lars von Trier) whitewashes Max Hartmann
(Jorgen Reenberg) from any collaboration with the Nazis during the war.
Witnesses include Colonel Harris (Eddie Constantine), the family’s priest
(Erik Mork), Max’s two children, Larry (Udo Kier) and Katarina (Barbara
Sukowa), and Leo (Jean-Marc Barr).

Did the actors have any problems with the techniques you used in
the film? The back projections and the long and technically com-
plex shots?
Obviously it was difficult for them to go in and out in front of back
projections which sometimes represented the actor they were play-
ing opposite, because they were performing dialogue with some-
one who wasn’t there. That was part of the aesthetic concept of the
film. But it certainly wasn’t easy for the actors.

And you gave yourself the part of the young Jew...

Yes, ‘Schmuck of Ages’...

Why did you take that part?

I wanted to identify myself as part of the family I thought I belonged

138
to. As I mentioned before, I’ve always had a certain weakness for
all things Jewish. At the same time, it’s a portrait of a wretched,
faithless Jew who turns up to give false testimony. These ‘Rein-
heitsschein’ or whatever they were called actually did exist in
Germany after the war. They were commonly known as ‘Persil-
schein’, because they were proof that people had been white-
washed. It was a sort of psychological confession with a bit of
Catholicism thrown in. The questionnaire had been put together
by American psychologists. As long as you hadn’t been a member
of the SS or something like that, you could emerge from one of
these confessions as a worthy citizen again. But it meant being
acknowledged by either a member of the resistance or a Jew.

It was obviously in the Americans’ interests that the Germans they

needed for the continuation of trade and other financial business
were regarded as honourable and respectable people.
Yes, that’s what we imply in the film.

The fact that you took the part yourself seems to imply that you
think it’s fun to step out of the shadows and perform...
No, not really. It was more out of curiosity. In some way I suppose
I thought that I belonged in this film, that I ought to be in it some-
where. Europa was like my family, the whole film.

Europa often expresses a certain romanticism in its imagery, par-

ticularly in the scenes between Leo and Katarina. They’re some-
times reminiscent of Fassbinder, or maybe a director like Douglas
Sirk. I’m thinking of the night scene with Leo and Katarina on a
bridge, with the snow falling down on them. But there are also
other scenes where the expression of feeling is reminiscent of Sirk’s
elevated realism.
I’ve had a certain interest in Sirk, but I’ve always thought of him as
a director on the periphery. His films are largely melodramas, but
they never get sentimental. You never sit and cry during a Douglas
Sirk film. His work is so stylized that you never get that close to the
characters and their interactions. Fassbinder was fascinated by
Sirk.

139
The scene on the bridge in Europa is in itself romantic, but it’s
filmed in a way that means that we never have to get out our hand-
kerchiefs.
That’s right, because of the distance imposed by the stylization. I
wouldn’t have minded if the audience had got their handkerchiefs
out, but the scene needed that stylization to fit in with the form
and style of the rest of the film. Still, I think it’s quite a beautiful
scene.

The stylization in the film also creates a strong sense of claustro-

phobia...
That was one of the main reasons for doing it like that. It makes it
hard to get your bearings. Figuratively speaking, you’re shut in a
dark cellar somewhere in Germany throughout the film. I also
think that the film manages to capture that feeling of homelessness
or rootlessness you get when you travel in a sleeping car. In a hotel
room you can make it feel like you’re in a domestic setting, but you
can never do that in a compartment on a train.
There’s also a sense of melancholy in this sort of impermanent
lifestyle. I remember that when Niels Veorsel and I were research-
ing The Grand Mal in Berlin we took a trip on the underground.
The city was still divided at that time. A few of the stations were
shut up, but you could still see the signs from before the Second
World War. There were a few yellowish lamps left. It was incredi-
bly melancholic. It felt like we were on a ghost train in a funfair. It
was a weird experience.
Then the Wall came down while we were filming Europa, and I
happened to be in Berlin two days after it happened. That was
pretty interesting. Up until then, East Germany had always seemed
to be the most depressing place on the planet.
I was once at a film festival in Berlin, and I turned up wearing a
very thin suit. I was travelling home the same night and had rented
a small BMW. Suddenly a whole load of snow fell, and the car got
stuck. The first time this happened was in West Berlin, but I man-
aged to get the car going again and carried on along the transit
road through East Berlin and East Germany. I suddenly came upon
a police roadblock and braked sharply. But the road was icy, so the
car spun and ended up in a large snowdrift. The police came over

140
and gave me a fine, because my manoeuvre was regarded as very
dangerous. It was a pretty hefty fine, but they were so ‘amenable’
that I was able to pay in West German Marks.
So there I was in this snowstorm in my thin suit. I had no chance
of getting the car free again on my own. So J asked if there was an
emergency telephone I could use. Of course, that would be fine.
But it wasn’t something these policemen would recommend,
because it would take at least three days before a truck got out to
me. “What should I do?’ I asked. ‘Can I get to a farm near by and
shelter there?’ ‘Of course,’ they said, but if Idid that they’d have to
arrest me, because I only had a transit visa. My dilemma wasn’t
their problem — fortunately for them. So I sat in the car and waited,
while all the Mercedes rushed past on the autobahn.
It was snowing heavily and was getting darker. In the end I went
to the police and asked if they had a snow shovel. Yes, they hap-
pened to have a little spade that I could borrow. So I lay there in
my thin suit for about an hour digging the car out of the snowdrift.
I was frozen solid, and I also had to try to push the car out of the
snowdrift on my own. With no help. No, that’s not quite true. One
of the policemen agreed to help me, if I was prepared to sign a
statement that a Lada was a better car than a BMW! But I refused.
All of a sudden I was struck by a sort of pride, not national but
western.
There’s another story about Europa. Actually, there are loads of
stories about that film...
We were filming in Poland, in Wroclaw and around Szczecin,
and the time we spent there was awful. The work was tough and
the surrounding area was poor, and it was difficult to get food.
When we finished shooting, Peter Aalbzek was there as well, and
we set off for home. We were going to drive back through East
Germany. I was driving a camper van, and Peter was driving a car
with a caravan on the back. We had all the props for the film in
there. We had a voucher listing everything we’d brought into the
country and would be taking out again. We got to the border with
East Germany, and everything was fine. But four miles from the
border I looked in the mirror and saw Peter’s car go into a spin,
and the caravan went into a ditch. The connection had come apart.
We were due to catch the ferry home fairly soon, a couple of
hours later maybe. In the middle of this deserted motorway, we

I4I
 =

began madly pulling the props out of the caravan and throwing
them into my camper van. The props included two coffins with
corpses. We hadn’t got enough room for the coffins, so we threw
them into the ditch. There were also twenty machine guns. If an
East German police patrol had come past, they wouldn’t have
believed their eyes. When we’d finished loading up, we drove like
idiots and reached the ferry just in time. And I said to Peter: “Sod
the voucher, let’s just drive on.’ And he said, ‘Are you mad? We
could get put away for years for trying to take weapons out of East
Germany.’ But we put a blanket over them and went through cus-
toms. And they hardly looked in the back, although they must
have seen that there were things under the blanket. Peter was so
nervous that he started over-revving his engine. But the customs
people came and helped us to get on board!

Did you film all the exterior shots in Poland?

Yes, everything. It was pretty tough going. It was extremely cold,
and there were clouds of smog over the countryside. The first day
of shooting, we had three of the producers there: Peter and the
producer from Nordisk Film, and the French producer. After three
hours at -18°C they went into the camper van and went to sleep.
Then they went home, although they’d planned to stay in Poland
for the whole shoot. They obviously didn’t think it was much fun
there either.

How long were you in Poland?

About two months, then shooting the interior shots in Denmark
took about the same again. We filmed most of the backgrounds of
the film in Poland, a lot of the material we used later in the back
projections. We also had loads of extras there. Everything was ter-
ribly cheap there. We had a meal before filming to bribe the Polish
officials: starters, main course, dessert and everything. It cost
about 35 kroner per head.

On Europa you worked with two very experienced old Danish

film-makers, the cameraman Henning Bendtsen and the scenogra-
pher Henning Bahs. What did you think of working together, and
how do you think they saw you as a director?

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tie 4

I think they enjoyed working together. I think Henning Bendtsen

regarded Europa as a big, important piece of work. It was difficult
to film, not least because so much of the story takes place at night,
which meant a lot of complicated lighting. Henning wasn’t in
Poland with us. We worked with a Polish cameraman there, some-
one who’s worked with Wajda and Kieslowski, Edward Klosinski.
We often ended up arguing. He wasn’t used to sticking so closely
to a storyboard as we were doing. He wanted to find his own loca-
tions and compose his own shots. He was fairly critical towards us
and wasn’t happy with the way we worked.
I worked very closely with Henning Bahs, who had put together
some very expressive scenography. He also had a lot of experience.
One of the main things he did was construct a railway carriage
that was mounted on springs so that it would shake in a realistic
way. The camera was hung from the ceiling of the carriage and was
independent of the shaking. It was a very smart construction.

It sounds like you were often a hostage to events in Poland and

East Germany. You could say that Leo in Europa is hostage to the
plot.
I can identify strongly with the humanist in the story, which is
what Leo is, of course. And I feel a lot of sympathy towards
humanists and all the humiliations they have to suffer. At the same
time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they have to suffer the
things that they have to go through.

Why not?
Because humanism is based on a fairly naive concept. I still think
humanism is a good basis for possible co-operation here on Earth.
But there’s a lot of fiction in humanism. The idea that people will
take the trouble to co-operate and work for the good of their fel-
low man is deeply naive. That’s probably what Europa was trying
to express.

The film ends with Leo’s death scene. He drowns after unwittingly
contributing to the attack on the train and the bombing of the
bridge. It’s simultaneously a very grim and poetic scene. You don’t
often see a character’s death throes on film. The history of film may

143
be littered with death scenes, but they’re either very violent and
quick, or romantic and drawn out.

The narrator’s voice also provides a commentary on his death, pre-

dicting it and verifying it. That was to tie in with the theme of hyp-
nosis that the voice projects at the start of the film. We were very
fortunate with that scene, because Jean-Marc was able to hold his
breath for an extremely long time. He’d had a lot of training for
The Big Blue. We shot the scene in a swimming pool, and I could
watch the progress with diving equipment. It was fun making
Europa with all the constructions and special effects that it
required, but I don’t know if it’s as much fun to watch. I’m pretty
fed up of it, to be honest.

Why? Because you can see through the construction too well?
I think it was too polished. It lacks what I would call ‘natural mis-
takes’, the sort of thing that’s more obvious in Breaking the Waves.
They’re very difficult to put together. Europa is far too insipid and
vacuous in that respect.

144
 8
The Kingdom

SYNOPSIS

The Kingdom Hospital in Copenhagen is the scene of a succession

of strange and inexplicable events. Senior Consultant Moesgaard,
head of neurosurgery, has his hands full, mostly with his Swedish
import, the neurosurgeon Stig G. Helmer, who has just carried out
a less than successful brain operation on a little girl, Mona, and
who is now doing all he can to defend himself and destroy the evi-
dence, a narcotics report that the maternal anaesthetist Rigmor
Mortensen has produced. Rigmor is very attracted to the Swedish
doctor, and is fascinated by voodoo and Haiti. Professor Bondo is
obsessed by his studies into cancer, and junior doctor Krogshgj is
upset. His partner, Judith, is pregnant as a result of an earlier rela-
tionship, and her circumference is rapidly expanding.
Much attention is paid to Fru Drusse, a perpetually recurring
patient, and her attempts to solve the mystery surrounding a little
girl, Mary, who has been haunting the hospital lift. Mary died in
1919, the victim of an experiment carried out by her father, Dr
Aage Kriiger. At the same time, Operation Morning Breeze, Dr
Moesgaard’s well-intentioned attempt to improve communication
with patients, has caught the critical eye of the Health Minister.
Stig Helmer abandons Rigmor and travels to Haiti on his own,
while Judith gives birth to a boy bearing the unmistakable features
of Dr Kriiger.

Foe

With The Kingdom, you began experimenting with a more open,

freer form of film, something you would develop in Breaking the

145
 _
»

Pa
Waves. How did you arrive at this way of working? And what do
you think are its advantages over the stricter, more formally con-
scious way that you worked before? (This is obviously also a for-
mally conscious way of working, even if it looks as if you don’t
care about form.)
Mainly it means that I can work a lot faster. This way of filming is
also much more intuitive. I think that’s quite an important quality.
The speed, and the more intensive contact with everyone else, both
in front of and behind the camera, have meant that I enjoy my
work more. I can probably say that it gave me pleasure in my work
again.
The idea of the form came from Témas Gislason, who suggested
I watch the American television series Homicide, created by Barry
Levinson. The series had been a revelation to him. The first
episodes of the series were extremely interesting in terms of form.
The form has been modified somewhat since then. The episodes
became more comfortable, without the violent shifts produced in
the editing and the earlier disregard for the unwritten rules gov-
erning direction. I think the producers thought the programme had
become too out of control.
It was liberating to see those first episodes of Homicide, and
they were the main inspiration for The Kingdom and its style. I
consciously changed the actors’ position on the set between each
take, so that they came to perform the same lines from different
positions in the room. When I came to edit the scenes, you got the
impression that I had far more filmed material than was actually
the case. I went on to use that technique in Breaking the Waves,
where it was even more effective, because it was recorded in Cine-
maScope. But the technique itself gives the film a rare authenticity
and authority.

How did you get the idea for the plot — or plots — of The Kingdom?
Well, we had that bloody production company, Zentropa, and for
that to work, we had to make films. We were in touch with Dan-
marks Radio, who had asked me if I was interested in doing a
small television series for them. I said that I wasn’t interested in it
out of principle. I don’t do small things. If I’m going to do some-
thing, then it has to be big and on a grand scale! (Laughter.)

146
 ag")

Pd wanted to do a ghost story for a long time. Not a horror film,

but a story with ghosts. I always liked double exposures, with
transparent figures wandering around on the screen. You don’t
need any other special effects, just tricks done right in front of the
camera. Then I came to think of a French television series, Bellefe-
gour, the Phantom of the Louvre, which I had seen as a child. It
was about a ghost who lived in the Louvre. It was extremely fright-
ening and I used to watch it with my heart in my mouth. It was
probably the first television series I ever saw.
The advantage of setting a story like that in the Louvre was that
the museum was so labyrinthine and difficult to get a grip on. So I
started wondering if I could think of a similar setting. And I ended
up with a hospital, with all its wards and corridors and under-
ground passageways. Then I started thinking about Rigshospitalet
(the Kingdom Hospital) in Copenhagen. I found out from a doctor
who worked there that the hospital was called ‘Riget’ (The King-
dom) by the people who worked there. I thought it was a pretty
blasphemous nickname, but perfect as the title of a film.
It turned out to be a good cocktail, because the hospital setting
also has a lot of inherent value as the setting for a soap opera. Peo-
ple die and babies are born. Doctors in white coats casting glances
at beautiful nurses above their surgical masks. And all the aspects
surrounding medical science as well.

You wrote The Kingdom together with Niels Vorsel. But occasion-
ally you write the scripts to your films on your own. In which cir-
cumstances do you prefer writing together with someone — usually
Niels — and when do you prefer to write alone?
It depends what you think you’re good at, what limitations you
think you have. Niels is good at satire and more intricate plot con-
structions. But emotional and sentimental stories are definitely not
for Herr Vorsel. So I’ve ended up doing them myself.

How did you organize the huge number of characters and events
contained in The Kingdom?
We came up with something that I think was pretty smart. We took
a person we both knew as the model for a fictional character in the
film. In that way we could easily characterize him or her and work

147
out his or her story. Both Niels and I knew these people, so we
never needed to discuss much about them.
Fru Drusse, on the other hand, is inspired by a character in a
novel by Hans Scherfig, called Idealister (The Idealists). There
she’s a half-mad vegetarian who writes recipes for a health maga-
zine. Niels is a great admirer of Scherfig, and I also enjoy reading
him.
We wrote the first four episodes pretty quickly. And we drew up
a mass of different schemes of their activities and internal relation-
ships. In The Kingdom 2 the gallery of characters and intrigues
expanded, and the whole thing got a bit boring. (Lars yawns.)

What became more boring? Work on the script or the film itself?
The film. It was fun writing the second part, but not as much fun
to film. I’d never done the same thing a second time before. It isn’t
very inspiring — not for me anyway. The problem with continuing
the story is that all the characters are already there — and the actors
suddenly have completely different opinions about their charac-
ters. Now they had been able to look at the first part and see their
performances critically. I have nothing against actors having ideas
of their own, but it’s boring when you realize you’re stuck in a set
pattern.
Now we’ve got to write a third, concluding part. But I think
we're going to have to come up with a new and different strategy
for this one. I think the concluding episode is going to have a com-
pletely different character.

Can you say anything else about how you constructed the fairly
complicated plots and set up the conflicts between the different
characters?
We wrote the script according to the classic model. Neither Niels
nor I had written a television series before, so we worked accord-
ing to what I would characterize as dramaturgically correct meth-
ods. I’m no expert on dramaturgy, but every time we left an event,
or an element of plot, we did it with a question mark leading on to
the next character. The best bit was weaving the stories together
and leading them in different directions. We’re going to have a hell
of a job with the third part. We’ve got umpteen different threads

148
all woven together and we’ve got to untangle them somehow. It
would probably be easiest to put a bomb under the hospital and
blow it up. .

How did you cast the various roles? You haven’t just got some of
Denmark’s most popular actors, but also some of the most
renowned and experienced names within Danish film and theatre.
The most important thing when we chose them was whether or
not they had been in Matador [one of the best-loved and longest-
running series on Danish television]. But most Danish actors have
been in it. And then there was Ernst-Hugo Jaregard, whom I’°d
already worked with on Europa. He was an obvious choice.

Did you have Ernst-Hugo Jaregard in mind when you wrote The
Kingdom?
Yes, I did. I later found out that the name of his character, Stig
Helmer, is the same as Lasse Aberg’s character in a series of
Swedish comedy films. I hadn’t got a clue about that when I gave
the Swedish consultant his name. The name was inspired by a
character in books I read as a child, the ‘Jan’ series. The hero of
those books was called Jan Helmer, and his father was a police
chief — not a very nice one. So I always thought of Stig Helmer as
Jan’s father. And his first name? Maybe that’s because I know Stig
Larsson.
His name is Stig G. Helmer. And there’s a worn-out joke that no
one knows what the ‘G.’ stands for, but it definitely isn’t Good.

I assume that the research for The Kingdom must have been exten-
swe.
It was mostly Niels who went round hospitals meeting doctors. I
didn’t have a lot to do with it.

You must have had quite a lot to fall back on, with your hypochon-
dria and consequently your extensive knowledge of different ill-
nesses and symptoms.
Of course! But I try to avoid hospitals.

149
14 The Kingdom: Ernst-Hugo Jaregard as Dr Stig Helmer is initiated into
‘The Sons of the Kingdom’. Holger Juul Hansen, as Senior Consultant
Moesgaard, puts a lemon in Dr Helmer’s mouth. e

But The Kingdom still gave you the chance to deal with some of
your imagined illnesses?
God, yes! In The Kingdom 2 we give Stig Helmer some of my
hypochondria, so he examines his own faeces. I’ve started doing
that as well. Doesn’t Bergman do that too? Didn’t he have his own
private toilet at Filmstaden, the studios in Stockholm, which no
one else could use? J read an article about toilets in a British mag-
azine. They'd looked at toilets around the world. And the only
country where they have toilets where the shit lies there like it’s
being presented on a tray is France. There, you leave your shit on
a little ledge before flushing it away. Now there’s a country that
really likes to admire what it produces...

Ernst-Hugo Jaregard seems to be something of a father figure to

you.
You could say that. No, on second thoughts, because I don’t feel
there’s any great age gap between us, so I wouldn’t want to call
him a father figure. But we spoke regularly. We had very good

150
contact. Ernst-Hugo wae a very good friend. I probably regard
Bergman as more of a father figure. So it’s entirely logical that we
don’t talk. I did film studies at university, and almost an entire term
was spent studying Bergman. That’s why he occupies such a large
space in my film memory. I’ve seen all Bergman’s films, even the
adverts he made for soap. And it’s good that he hasn’t given up yet.
Larmar och gor sig till (In the Presence of a Clown) is a remark-
able film. I think Bergman is the only director in the world who
could get away with suddenly sending a white clown into the plot
in a sort of dreamlike light and still make it work. At any rate, we
as the audience immediately accept what happens.
Above all I admire Bergman as a scriptwriter. He really knows
how to write dialogue. I can’t really say whether he’s good at
directing people. But all the actors who’ve worked with Bergman
seem to have appreciated him in that role. He probably acts as a
father figure in those circumstances. It’s as though a power struc-
ture is established, one which the actors perceive as positive. The
acting isn’t particularly natural, but mostly very theatrical: you can
tell that both Bergman and his actors have a background in thea-
tre. I recently saw Scenes from a Marriage again, which is said to
be very realistic. But the film is terribly theatrical. Which is fine. I
just became more aware of it when I saw it again.
It’s odd that the film and the television series became so popular.
I spent a lot of time in Sweden for a while and was living in Stock-
holm. I had quite a few Swedish friends there, and they thought
Bergman was extremely childish. You could probably say that most
artists are. But Bergman’s psychology holds itself at a popular level,
which might explain the success of the film and of his other films.
It’s not a criticism, just a something I'd noticed. Here I can see paral-
lels between Bergman and a Danish author called Leif Panduro.
Panduro wrote a series of very good scripts for television dramas,
with a mixture of psychology and middle-class anxieties, a bit like
Bergman. There were six or seven of his dramas recorded in the
19708 and ’8os. They were incredibly popular and everyone used to
talk about them. They had quite a lot in common with Bergman.
They were middle-class dramas in comfortable surroundings where
keeping quiet and having secrets were the most obvious dramatic
ingredients. That sort of television drama doesn’t get made any
more. Now you have to kill people to get attention.

I51
 &

You mentioned power in connection with Bergman and his actors.

Have you ever felt yourself to be in a position of power over your
actors?
My relationship to my actors has changed a lot. I think it’s been a
pretty interesting process of development. I’ve got a lot better at
involving the actors in a collaboration. This culminated in The
Idiots, even if — contrary to what you might think — the film fol-
lowed the script very closely. But, to return to Bergman one last
time, I think that a so-called demon director can only work in very
close collaboration with his actors. You can be an unpleasant
director if you maintain your distance, like Hitchcock. I can imag-
ine that. Steven Spielberg is said to be a bit like that, from what I
understand from Stellan Skarsgard, who worked with him on
Amistad. He hardly said a thing to the actors. Woody Allen is said
not to have much contact with his actors when he’s directing. A
director who leaves his actors to their fate is, in my opinion, more
demonic and unpleasant than a so-called demon director like
Bergman. Hitchcock is supposed to have been pretty cruel and to
have made fun of the actresses in his films.
But exploiting actors ... You could probably say that I’ve done
that, when I’ve made actors stand and act in cold water, which
seemed to happen all the time in my first films. But that’s superficial
exploitation. If you really want to exploit actors, it has to happen in
close collaboration, which for my part seems to be happening more
and more. Exploit, as a word, has so many negative connotations,
but in essence it’s something positive. You could say you’re exploit-
ing them if you’re trying to bring out their special talents.

You've travelled a long way since The Element of Crime in terms of

your attitude to your actors.
To begin with I wasn’t at all interested in the actors. In my first
films the actors are more like chess pieces to be moved round a
board. They had to stand in one corner and say a few lines, then
move a couple of steps and say some more lines — no more than
that. They just had to do the bare minimum. It was something of a
reaction against what was regarded as correct behaviour in Danish
film at the time. You were supposed to have a close relationship
with your actors and discuss psychology and love them and so on.

152
15 The Kingdom: Kirsten Rolffes as the telepathic Fru Drusse.

I might have fallen into that pattern now, though. It’s interesting,
and it gives more. My development has gone from control to... I
don’t want to presume it’s the opposite, exactly. But I’ve relin-
quished that sort of control and exchanged it for something you
could almost describe as a game of chance.

153
So it wasn’t the case that you were scared of actors when you
started making films? There are directors who are more than hest-
tant about entering into a dialogue with their actors.
I don’t think so. It was just that everything else, the technical side
of things, was more important at the time. I just wasn’t interested
in actors. I didn’t want their opinions about things. I ended up
arguing with several of them because of that.

After you’ve chosen the actors for a film, do you discuss much with
them before you start filming?
In my old age I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important
thing is that the actors really want to be part of the film. I’ve
worked with a lot of actors who really couldn’t be bothered. And
the results are predictably poor. So I never try to get a star that I
might somehow be able to persuade, the sort of actor who
demands that you rewrite the part to suit him or her, and who you
have to flatter to get them to take part. No thanks, fuck that! Bet-
ter not to bother. The important thing is that they want to take
part. That’s the absolute prerequisite. That’s why it turned out so
well with Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves. To begin with we
asked Helena Bonham-Carter, who didn’t want to be involved
when it came down to it. If ’'d made the film with her, with her not
believing in the project, it would never have been any good. The
same with The Idiots — most of the actors in that had never made
a film before. But they threw themselves into the project and that’s
why they’re so bloody good. You enter into a sort of relationship
with your actors, a marriage almost. And when someone doesn’t
want to be together with you, then the relationship breaks down.

Did you feel that willingness when you made The Kingdom?
Yes, that’s why it was fun to do. We wrote the script without hav-
ing any idea of how we were going to make it. I’ve generally
always had an idea of the style of a project right from the start.
Then I discovered, with Tomas Gislason’s help — as I’ve already
mentioned — a new form for the film. And through that I found a
new way of behaving towards the actors.

154
 ad
t<7"e

In that respect The Kingdom seems to have been something of a

liberation for you. Can you say anything more about how you
managed to free yourself up with the actors?
To begin with it was obvious to me that this film required me to get
something different out of the actors. I succeeded in doing that by
distancing myself completely from the stylization that I was so
attached to before. And that meant giving my actors more free-
dom. I developed the basic idea that I got from Homicide. For
example, I asked the actors to adopt new motivations, and new
positions, when we did a new take on a scene, which led to inter-
esting results when we came to edit together the different takes. It
was brilliant fun! In The Idiots we went a step further. We were
able to film shots that were forty to forty-five minutes long, which
we later edited down to two minutes. We ended up with a com-
pletely new but very interesting set of rules. But basically it comes
down to giving actors optimal possibilities. And that’s obviously
something they like.

But might it not be risky shooting a scene again and letting the
actors adopt new motivations? An actor invests a lot of time and
energy on preparing a character before filming starts. Isn’t there a
risk of conflict if you ask them to diverge from their character in a
given situation:
There weren’t such big variations in their performances as I’m per-
haps suggesting. It was never the case that they couldn’t justify
their character’s behaviour and reactions in any given scene. But a
lot could still happen. We don’t always react the same way in dif-
ferent situations. A lot can happen within a specific framework.
But we set it up as a game, as a theatre-school game. Thanks to
these variations we were able to make a number of psychological
leaps when we edited the scenes. And IJ think they were pretty
interesting. Since The Kingdom, editing has become more impor-
tant to me. In my earliest films editing was almost a formality to be
endured once recording was finished. We had already decided on
the finished product in the storyboard we had drawn. Editing on
Avid is also fantastic. It happens so quickly, and offers a wealth of
possibilities.

T$5
Certainly, speed is one advantage. But it also means you can easily
try different variations. You can pick and choose between different
scenes. Everything is there in thé computer. But I still miss the old
editing tables, with the reels of film and soundtrack. The tactile
sense of feeling the film and holding the frames up to the light.
That feeling of workmanship.
I know what you mean, but sometimes you could clip that bloody
working copy so many times that it hardly held together. Then you
had to order a new copy to work with. But of course it was nice to
feel what you were working on with your fingers.

What did the actors think of this new way of filming?

I remember filming the first scene involving Ernst-Hugo Jaregard.
He started saying his lines, then the camera suddenly panned away
from him. And he stopped in the middle of a sentence. ‘Sorry,’ he
said, ‘but the camera just disappeared.’ ‘Yes, that’s how we’re
going to work on this film, Ernst-Hugo,’ I explained. ‘Are we!’
He’d never been involved in anything like that, where the camera
wasn’t on him when he was speaking. But he soon got used to it.
And he thoroughly enjoyed himself. But that first take was a bit
tough. He’d prepared his monologue so carefully, and now he
didn’t get to say it all in shot!

And the other actors, who must have been more used to a more
conventional method of filming?
The technique was adapted to suit a group. Naturally some indi-
vidual actors could use the technique better than others. Even
those with more traditional training and experience soon adapted
to the new method. The flexibility and adaptability it offered also
fitted in with the whole acting situation of the time. Take two
actresses like Katrin Cartlidge in Breaking the Waves or Paprika
Steen in The Idiots, who’ve been trained in this improvisation
technique. They’re perfect for this way of working. Paprika Steen,
who plays the estate agent in The Idiots, is a very good example.
She was only with us for one day, but she immediately grasped the
style and technique, and she performed her role with marvellous
presence and precision.

156
16 The Kingdom: Little Mary in the glass container.

There’s a horror story built into The Kingdom: that of the little girl
who’s haunting the hospital, the daughter of a demonic doctor,
Kriiger, and the victim of one of his experiments.

T57
Yes, but I didn’t think that story worked very well. It’s been very
difficult to balance, particularly in The Kingdom 2. When satire
takes over it’s hard to make the horror elements convincing. The
Kingdom 3 will have to be a lot more evil. The film will have to
reclaim some of its danger. It was great fun letting go and writing
The Kingdom 2, but now we’re going to have to pull in the reins a
lot in the conclusion. The Kingdom 3 has got to be seriously dan-
gerous.

With your films you’ve contributed to building up a Danish pro-

duction company, Zentropa. For what would you like to use the
resources that Zentropa now possesses — both for yourself and for
other people?
I don’t really know . . It’s suddenly grown into quite a sizeable
company. I’d mainly like to see it functioning as a lively and cre-
ative environment. The producer, Peter Aalbek Jensen, has
already set up a whole series of production activities. Through my
own connections with the company I hope Ill be able to have a bit
of fun and experiment with the new media techniques that the
future offers. And naturally it’s nice to feel the support of a com-
pany like that, and to know that I’m going to have complete con-
trol of whatever I want to do in the future.
 MANIFESTO — DOGME 95

DOGME 95 is a collection of film directors founded in Copenhagen

in the spring of 1995. DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of coun-
tering ‘certain tendencies’ in the cinema today. DOGME 95 is a res-
cue action!
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while,
but no real changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors
themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it.
The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the
foundation upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois
perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism
from the very start and thereby . . . false!
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!
Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be
the ultimate democratization of the cinema. For the first time, any-
one can make movies. But the more accessible the medium
becomes, the more important the avant-garde. It is no accident
that the phrase ‘avant-garde’ has military connotations. Discipline
is the answer .. . we must put our films into uniform, because the
individual film will be decadent by definition!
DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of pre-
senting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF
CHASTITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticized
to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has
exploded. The ‘supreme’ task of the decadent film-makers is to
fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what
the ‘100 years’ of cinema have brought us? Illusions via which
emotions can be communicated? By the individual artist’s free
choice of trickery? Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the
golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters’ inner
lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not ‘high art’. As never
before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiv-
ing all the praise. The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an
illusion of love.

T$9
 To DOGME 95 the movie is not illusion!
Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the
elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at
any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly
embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can
hide behind.
DOGME 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an
indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.

The Vow of Chastity

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and con-

firmed by DOGME 95:

Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be

brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a
location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
The sound must never be produced apart from the images, or
vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the
scene is being shot.)
The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility
attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take
place where the camera is standing; Shooting must take place
where the film takes place.)
The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable.
(If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or
a single lamp must be attached to the camera.)
Optical work and filters are forbidden.
The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders,
weapons, etc. must not occur.)
Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is
to say that the film takes place here and now.)
Genre movies are not acceptable.
9 The film format must be Academy 3 5mm.
Io The director must not be credited.

Furthermore, I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I

am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a ‘work’, as

160
I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My
supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and setting.
I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any
good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my vow OF CHASTITY.

Published in Copenhagen, 13 March 1995

Signed by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg

I61
 2,
Breaking the Waves

SYNOPSIS

The early 1970s. The innocent Bess McNeill lives with her mother
and Dodo, the recently bereaved widow of her brother, in a small,
strictly religious community on the west coast of Scotland. Bess is
regarded by most people as an overgrown child, with the ability of
childish faith to communicate directly with God. She marries the
older and more experienced Jan, who works on an oil rig out at
sea. The marriage is regarded critically by many in the Puritan
society. The sexually inexperienced Bess is overwhelmed by the
secrets and pleasures that the more experienced Jan introduces her
to. For a short and happy time the newly-weds live out their love
for each other.
When Jan has to return to his oil rig for a new shift, Bess is dis-
traught. Long telephone calls do nothing to calm her. She prays to
God that Jan should come back. Her prayers are soon answered,
but not as she wanted. Jan comes home paralysed and afflicted by
life-threatening head injuries after an explosion on the platform.
Jan realizes that he will never be able to sleep with Bess again, and
he asks, or rather commands, Bess to take a lover. Bess rejects his
demand, but when she comes to realize that this might renew Jan’s
will to live, she throws herself into increasingly promiscuous
behaviour. When she thinks that she can see some signs of
improvement in Jan’s condition, she subjects herself to ever more
degrading situations, despite criticism from her family and the
church. She believes that a miracle will give Jan back to her. For the
sake of his and their love she is willing to put her life at risk.

163
Breaking the Waves took five years and 42 million kroner to make.
Where did the original idea for the film come from¢
I prefer working with extreme ideas, and I wanted to make a film
about ‘goodness’. When I was little, I had a children’s book
called Guldhjerte (Goldheart), which I had very clear and happy
memories of. It was a picture book about a little girl who goes
into the forest with some slices of bread and other stuff in her
pockets. But at the end of the book, when she’s got through the
forest, she’s standing there naked and with nothing left. And the
last line in the book was: ‘“But at least I’m okay,” said Gold-
heart.’ It seemed to express the ultimate extremity of the martyr’s
role. I read the book several times, in spite of the fact that my
father thought it was absolute rubbish. The story of Breaking the
Waves probably comes from that. Goldheart is Bess in the film. I
also wanted to make a film with a religious theme, a film about
miracles. And at the same time I wanted to make a completely
naturalistic film.
The story of the film changed a lot over the years. To begin with,
I wanted to shoot the film on the west coast of Jutland, then in
Norway, then Ostende in Belgium, then Ireland, and in the end
Scotland. It’s probably no coincidence that a lot of the film is set on
the Isle of Skye, where a lot of painters and writers went during the
Romantic period in Britain in the 1800s. I worked a lot on the
script of Breaking the Waves over the years. I’ve been a bit like
Dreyer, cutting bits out, condensing and refining it. But then just
before we started filming, I lost my enthusiasm for the piece. It had
taken so long to get the film made that I was tired of it. ’'d already
moved on from it.

I can understand that. It can be difficult holding on to the same

idea for so long. All the time you’re getting new ideas for films and
other projects.
Yes, and there’s a risk of adding new material to the project to
freshen it up, which isn’t always a good idea. You run the risk of
losing what you originally had, forgetting what it was you wanted
to depict to begin with. But it did take a long time to get financial
support for the film.

164
17 Breaking the Waves: Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson as the young
couple Jan and Bess.

That’s odd, because it feels as if Breaking the Waves ought to have

been more commercially attractive than your earlier films.
Yes. There’s a funny story about that. We got financial support for
the script from something that I think is called the ‘European
Script Fund’. There were lecturers who read script proposals, and
they were getting a lot of criticism. So to protect their position,
they constructed a computer programme out of about ten projects
that had been suggested to them. The idea was that the computer
could work out the artistic and commercial relevance of a project.
And Breaking the Waves got top marks! That was fun. It must
have had all the right ingredients: a sailor, a mermaid, a romantic
landscape — all the stuff the computer loved!

Did you get the idea for the film’s very particular technique, with
hand-held camera and the CinemaScope format, at the same time
as the idea for the story?

165
No, that came from my experiences on The Kingdom. In this film
there are some of the same clichéd elements as in The Kingdom,
which is why I thought it was important to give the film as realis-
tic a treatment as possible. A more documentary style. If I had
made Breaking the Waves with conventional techniques, I think it
would have been unbearable.
I think it’s important to decide upon a specific style for a story if
the project is going to be at all practical. Normally you choose a
style for a film that’s going to emphasize the story. But we did the
opposite. We chose a style that contradicts the story, giving it the
least possible emphasis.

Yes, if you'd chosen to give Breaking the Waves the ‘Merchant-

Ivory treatment’ it would probably have been regarded as far too
romantic or melodramatic.
The film would have been far too sickly. It would have been
unbearable. What we did was take a style and lay it like a filter
over the story. It’s like decoding a television signal when you pay
to see a film. Here we encoded the film, and the audience has to
decode it. The raw, documentary style that I imposed on the film,
which actually dissolves and contradicts it, means that we can
accept the story as it is. That’s my theory, at any rate. It’s all a bit
theoretical. Then we manipulated the images electronically. We
transferred the film to video, and worked on the colour, before
transferring it back to film again.

Like Medea, which you shot on video, then transferred to film

before copying it to video again.
No, that was a much more basic process, where we filmed direct
from the television monitor. In The Kingdom the transfer process
was a bit more advanced. And here it was even more refined. It’s
interesting to transfer Panavision to video and then back to film
again. Maybe it makes it a bit too attractive . . . In between there
are some completely digitally produced panoramic shots that
introduce the different sections in the film.

They’re also a bit reminiscent of a classic English novel, with chap-

ter titles and headings that indicate the chapters’ content.

166
I collaborated on these images with a Danish artist, Per Kirkeby,
who has developed a form based on romantic painting. He’s an
expert in his field, and the results are very interesting. There are so
many ways of expressing romantic painting. There are the pictures
that people hang on their walls, then there’s the more genuine arti-
cle in galleries. Our pictures might have become a bit more
abstract than IJ planned at the start.

In 1995 you published a manifesto, Dogme 95, with the aim of

‘countering certain tendencies in the cinema today’. The manifesto
attacked illusory cinema and promoted naturalistic cinema with a
series of rules, like filming everything on location, using hand-held
cameras without any special lighting, and with directly recorded
sound. The last rule is that the director mustn’t be credited. Apart
from the film’s large budget, Breaking the Waves largely follows
the manifesto.
Yes, which was fortunate, really . . . But the manifesto goes a step
further, which was important to me personally when I planned to
make a film according to the rules. As you can see, Breaking the
Waves doesn’t follow the rules exactly. I wasn’t able to resist tin-
kering with the film’s colour and technical appearance. Maybe I
shouldn’t have done, if I was going to be faithful to my own theory.
But I felt a need to restrict myself, and that was the spirit in which
the manifesto was created.

You also break the rule about the film being uncredited. Breaking
the Waves is undoubtedly ‘a film by Lars von Trier’. A French
author, Paul Valéry, said that ‘the decline of art begins with a sig-
nature’. In other words, a work will be judged in relation to its cre-
ator. Do you see this as positive or negative?
I see it as positive. I haven’t got any problems with that. When I was
younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for instance. He’d man-
aged to construct a complete mythology around himself. It was as
important as his music. If Bowie had composed music that didn’t
need his signature, maybe he could have learned to do something else.
I don’t really think it’s important not to acknowledge a work’s origi-
nator within the relationship between an artist and his audience. The
important thing here is the process in which the work is created.

167
 The manifesto is purely theoretical. But, at the same time, the
theory is more important than the individual. That’s what I wanted
to express. Somehow or other the identity of the director will
always get out. It will be obvious who has directed each Dogme
film.

Of course, I think that most serious film-makers will be recogniz-

able whether or not their signature is there in black and white.
Yes, I’ve always thought it was important that you can tell just by
looking at a film whether or not I made it.

What do you think is unique about your signature? What is it in a

film that means that we can see it’s one of yours?
This will probably sound pretentious, but somehow I hope people
will be able to see that every image contains a thought. It probably
sounds arrogant, and it might not be true. But I think that every image
and every edit is thought through. There’s no coincidence at all.

Breaking the Waves has a strong religious background. What made

you include that in the film?
Probably because I’m religious myself. I’m Catholic, but I don’t
pray to Catholicism for Catholicism’s sake. I’ve felt a need for a
sense of belonging to a community of faith, because my parents
were committed atheists. I flirted with religion a lot as a young
man. In your youth you’re probably attracted to more extreme
religions. Either you disappear to Tibet or you seek out the strictest
faith available, with total abstinence and so on.
I think I’ve developed a more Dreyeresque view of it all now.
Dreyer’s view of religion was primarily humanist. He also tackles
religion in all his films. Religion is attacked, but not God. That’s
what happens in Breaking the Waves.

In the film, religion is described as a power structure. The mechan-

ics of power and its problematics is something you’ve tackled in
several of your previous films.
My intention was never to criticize any particular faith, like the one
in this Scottish setting. That doesn’t interest me at all. It’s too easy,

168
and it’s not something I want to get involved in. Cultivating a point
of view that’s easily accessible and generalized, it’s like fishing in
shallow water. In many ways I can understand people who are
obsessed by spiritual issues, often in a very extreme way. It’s just that
if you’re going to create a melodrama, you have to include certain
obstacles. And religion struck me as being a suitable obstacle.

Bess’s conversations with God have a directness and an intimacy

that gives a human voice to the religious theme.
Bess is also an expression of that religion. Religion is her founda-
tion, and she accepts its conditions without question. In the
funeral scene at the beginning of the film, the priest condemns the
deceased to eternal damnation in hell, which is something Bess
finds completely natural. She has no scruples about that. But we,
on the other hand, do. Bess is confronted with a lot of other power
structures, like the power exerted by the hospital and the doctors.
And she has to adopt a position using the inherent goodness that
she possesses.

To a great extent the film takes the actors as its starting point. Do
you think your attitude towards actors changed and developed in
Breaking the Waves?
You could probably say that it did. But I also used a different tech-
nique in Breaking the Waves, a technique based upon a relation-
ship of trust between director and actors, a classic technique really.
I probably got closer to the actors in this film. But it’s easy to sug-
gest that I’ve finally learned that as well! In my earlier films it was
more a conscious matter of not getting too close to that actors.

How did you come to cast Emily Watson in the role of Bess? She
gives a fantastic performance, despite at the time being a novice
when it comes to film.
One of the problems of financing this production was that we
didn’t have any big names in the leading roles. We realized that
early on, when we couldn’t find any big names who wanted to be
involved. They were scared of the character of the film.

169
 18 Breaking the Waves: Bess (Emily Watson) and her sister-in-law Dodo
(Katrin Cartlidge).

Was that because of the sex scenes?

It was probably the story as a whole. It’s a strange mix of religion
and sex and obsession. The well-known actors we approached
didn’t want to lay their careers on the line, like Helena Bonham-
Carter, who pulled out of the project at the very last minute. So it
felt important to find actors who really wanted to be involved.
And I think it shows, that the actors we chose in the end are whole-
heartedly committed to the film.
aa
We auditioned several actresses for the role of Bess. Then I
looked at the video of the auditions together with Bente [Lars’
partner], and she thought it was obvious that Emily Watson ought
to get the part. I was also very taken by Emily’s acting, but it was
mainly her enthusiasm that convinced me. I remember that Emily
was also the only one who came to the audition without any make-
up and barefoot! Their was something Jesus-like about her that
attracted me.
Emily had no previous film experience, which meant that she
was more reliant on me as director. Our work together was
extremely relaxed. The funny thing is that with Emily’s scenes I

170
chose to use the last take of each scene, fairly consistently. Whereas
with Katrin Cartlidge, I almost always went for the first take. The
difference was in their individual styles of acting. We improvised a
lot, forgot all about continuity and gave the actors more freedom
in their performances. As far as Katrin, a more experienced
actress, was concerned, the intensity of her performance dimin-
ished for every new take. In Emily’s case I gave more exact instruc-
tions, which meant that she refined her performance in each take.

And the other actors, how did you choose them?

I was considering Gérard Depardieu as the male lead, as I had for

Europa. I met him in Paris, but he was far too overwhelmed with
work and not particularly interested in the role. The character was
more like Depardieu when I began writing the script. But it devel-
oped in a different direction, and Depardieu would have been too
old for the part.
Later on, Stellan Skarsgard was the natural choice. He also had
the physique that was right for the part. And he was excellent. He’s
also a very nice person. I shall probably always have him in mind,
if there’s a suitable part for him.

And Katrin Cartlidge? I know that the role of Dodo was originally
intended for Barbara Sukowa.
That’s right. That was because we’d worked together on Europa.
But for various reasons it didn’t work on this occasion. Katrin was
someone I originally auditioned for the role of Bess, but she wasn’t
quite right for that — or rather the part didn’t suit her. She was an
incredibly talented actress, and extremely intelligent. But I offered
her the role of Dodo, and she wanted to do it. They were a fantas-
tic trio, Emily, Stellan and Katrin. And I think Jean-Marc gives one
of his best performances in Breaking the Waves.

The way you edited the film is fairly unorthodox, and breaks all
the rules. Did it take long to do?
No, the editing was very easy. We’d shot very long scenes and none
of them was like any other. The actors were allowed to move in the
scene if they wanted to, and never had to follow any precise plan.

gas
When we edited the scenes, our only intention was to strengthen
the intensity of the acting, without worrying about whether the
picture was sharp or well-composed or if swe were riding
roughshod over the invisible sight axis. That resulted in great
jumps in time within the scenes, which might not be perceived as
jumps in time. They almost give a feeling of compression. I basi-
cally developed the things I learned from working on The King-
dom.

If you had to choose a single image from Breaking the Waves that
you think represents the film, which would you pick — and why?
Well, you know very well, as a director, that one of the reasons you
make films is that one image isn’t enough. At the Cannes Film Fes-
tival we had a completely black poster, because we couldn’t decide
on a single image to represent the whole film. We had a poster with
a plain black background. It had just the title and a few names. It
looked a bit like a concert poster and was printed on some sort of
velvety material, and I liked it a lot. So without wanting to be neg-
ative, I have to say that I can’t pick any image that I think repre-
sents the whole film.

One image from the film that’s often used, which you must have
picked out from the hundreds that were taken, is a close-up of
Emily Watson, looking directly into the camera and thereby out
into the audience. Why did you choose that one?
This business of stills is often pretty haphazard. There isn’t always
a still-photographer around, and the stills don’t always match the
scene in the completed film. That close-up of Emily is where she
first comes into direct contact with the audience. But I’m not that
keen on the picture. If there’s a point in the film where I think
there’s a certain artifice in Emily’s acting, it’s there. I remember the
moment we shot that very well, and we had to try a whole load of
different ways of getting that shot. Maybe because it’s not a scene
with any interplay of acting, it’s more of a planned scene, which is
subordinate to an idea.
Seeing Emily in the film always makes me glad, but that picture
really isn’t a favourite of mine.

172
But if you had to pick another picture of Emily...
That I liked? Then I'd probably pick the confrontation between
Bess and the young doctor, Dr Richardson (Adrian Rawlins), at the
end of the film. It was a scene we shot very early on, and it’s a very
emotionally rewarding, but very difficult, scene. That’s somewhere
I feel that Emily exhibits an almost sublime presence.
If I had to pick separate shots of Emily that I was particularly
fond of, I’d probably pick shots from the short montage sequence,
accompanied by music by T. Rex, where she’s dancing about.
They’re playful scenes, a bit ‘New Wave’, and I like them a lot.

Breaking the Waves is full of dramatic events, and it expresses

strong feelings and thoughts — love, passion, faith, betrayal — but it
also pays a lot of attention to detail. The interior of Bess’s home,
for instance, with the pictures of the dogs and cats on the wall, or
the hospital, where during one dramatic scene you can see a
woman in the background sitting beside a hospital bed in the cor-
ridor consoling her husband. Can you say something about how
that was done?
Breaking the Waves is a film where a lot of things happened by
accident. The art director, Karl Juliusson, who I think did an excel-
lent job, had decided how the different locations should look. But
what we ended up seeing in shot was a complete coincidence —
which happens, of course, when you work with a hand-held cam-
era. There were loads of details in the décor that we never see in
the film, and others that appear more clearly. But we did have a lot
of fun with those dog pictures in Bess’s home. They’re pure kitsch,
and we did wonder if it was a bit too much. But on the other hand
they suit the situation. They strengthen the sense of authenticity.
As far as the scene in the hospital is concerned, and others like
it, we were trying to create a credible location, most of which was
later edited out. The things that all the extras are doing around the
actual scene were mostly there to create a convincing atmosphere
for the actors. The fact that the couple by the hospital bed ended
up in shot was a complete coincidence, and not particularly impor-
tant. The important thing was what was happening with the actors
in the scene. In my earlier films I spent more time worrying about
that sort of detail, and less on the actors. That’s all changed now.

173
 I think it’s nice to get glimpses of details like that in the edge of
the picture, because it gives a sense of there being a wider world
outside the reality that we’re concentrating on. ~

How did you choose the pictures for the chapter illustrations? Can
you say something about some of these pictures and their back-
ground? One that has stuck with me in particular is the one illus-
trating the film’s epilogue, the bridge over the stream.
Most of those panoramic shots were described in the script, but
several of them changed quite a lot. I travelled round Scotland for
a long time together with the photographer Robby Miller and
Vibeke Windelov, and we took loads of pictures, and even some
film footage of the landscape. This was long before we started film-
ing. At a later stage we contacted the painter Per Kirkeby, who
worked on them and retouched them on his computer. What I par-
ticularly wanted was for Per — who’s both an artist and a theorist —
to find different ways of expressing the romantic landscape. I had
the impression that this romanticism ought to betray a deeper
banality, but Per’s first suggestions were a long way from that idea.
The finished result could be described as a diplomatic mixture of
his and my ideas. What he did to the pictures made them consid-
erably more interesting and ambiguous. Perhaps I was aiming
more towards the grandiose.
The picture of the bridge was actually the first chapter illustra-
tion we did, and it was created before Per got involved. The bridge
was on the Isle of Skye, but it was in the middle of a village. So we
took the bridge out of context and put a mountain behind it and
had a waterfall rushing beneath it. Per did some more work on it
later. He put his special sense of lighting into the picture. The idea
was to collect more intense light under the arch of the bridge in the
centre of the picture. And there’s no naturalistic light illuminating
the distant landscape.
I’m very fond of that picture. You can read as much symbolism
into it as you like. You can see the bridge as a link between life and
death. And the water representing eternity. And so on. But I
haven’t really thought about it. Everyone can interpret any per-
ceived symbolism as they like. But I think it’s an expressive picture.
And I think it works well with David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’.

174

my
 I like some of those chapter illustrations better than others, espe-
cially the one of the bridge. But I’m also very fond of the one of the
silhouetted city and the rainbow.

What did the landscape of Skye mean to you?

I just know that a lot of painters and writers associated with
British Romanticism visited Skye. The landscape there is extremely
romantic. It’s nothing like Danish Romanticism. It’s a lot more
grandiose. I was particularly struck by the contrasts in the land-
scape. In the midst of a range of bleak mountains there would be
crevasses with luscious vegetation.
When you visited us on location, we were filming on the hill
above the place where we put the cemetery in the film. We actually
wanted the cemetery higher up on the hill, but we couldn’t manage
that. We’d measured a plot and started constructing the cemetery
when people came and protested and were almost prepared to
start throwing stones at the team. So we had to move the cemetery
down to a more sheltered position nearer the water. We managed
to find a wonderful spot with exactly the same dimensions we were
planning higher up.
The cemetery is still there. The man who owned the land wanted
to sell the gravestones and other props to the BBC, but he hasn’t
managed to yet. So it’s become a tourist attraction; people go and
look at it and take picnics. But they wanted to clear it away.
Because it is, after all, a cemetery — and almost all the production
team is buried there! We had to put names on the gravestones, so
the team used their own names on them.

You’ve often mentioned Dreyer as a source of inspiration. Do you

think that’s the case even on this film?
Yes, I can see that films like The Passion of Joan of Arc and
Gertrud have probably been significant for Breaking the Waves.
Dreyer’s films are naturally more academic, more cultivated.
What’s new for me is having a woman at the centre of the story.
And of course, all of Dreyer’s films had women as their main char-
acters — women who are suffering, as well. The film’s original title
was actually going to be Amor Omnie (Love is in Everything), the
epitaph that Gertrud wanted on her grave in Dreyer’s film. But

175 r
19 Breaking the Waves: Bess (Emily Watson) is ostracized from church and
community.

when my producer heard the title, he exploded. He had trouble

imagining that anyone would want to go and see a film called
Amor Omnie.

At the end of Breaking the Waves, in the scene where the wounded
and expelled Bess comes into the church, she contradicts the
church council’s rule that women must remain silent in the congre-
gation, and says: ‘You can’t love the Word. You can only love a per-
son. That’s a line that could be interpreted as both an hommage
and a response to Dreyer.
That might be taking it a bit far, but it’s actually one of the few
lines that I rewrote on location. In the script there was something
far more wordy and generally unformed. The idea of her outburst
was to pick up something that the members of the congregation
said and stood for — and to contradict it. The priest talks about
loving the Word and the Law. That was the only thing you had to
obey. That’s what would make a person complete. But Bess twists
the concepts and says that the only thing that can make a person
complete is loving another person. This is really the formulation of
the film’s moral.

176
 But the line was rewritten just before shooting. In the script it
said that Bess should say: ‘Dear God, thank you for the divine gift
of love. Thank you for the love'that makes a person a person. Dear
God .. .’ Emily Watson discussed the lines with me and said that
she didn’t understand them. And I can appreciate that, because
they were pretty poor. And according to the script, no one in
church had said anything before that. No, the revised script was
much better. It’s also better that she got into a debate with the
priest. So what you could say about Bess is that she represents fem-
inism against the extremely misogynist priesthood. And her sister-
in-law, Dodo, does pretty much the same.

Yes, not least at the end, at Bess’s funeral.

Yes, where Dodo rebels against the establishment, the male hierar-
chy.

One concept, one element that links most of your previous films is
a sense of irony. There’s not a lot of irony in Breaking the Waves.
When I was at film school they said that all good films were
characterized by some form of humour. All films, apart from
Dreyer’s! A lot of his films are totally ‘vacuum-cleaned’ of humour.
In a sense you could say that when you imbue your film with
humour, you’re establishing a certain distance from it. You create
a distance. With this film I didn’t want to distance myself from the
emotions contained in the plot and the characters.
I think that this strong engagement with emotions was very
important for me, because I grew up in a home — a culturally radi-
cal home — where strong emotions were forbidden. Those mem-
bers of my family whom I’ve showed the film to have been very
critical about it — both my brother and my uncle [Berge Hest, Dan-
ish director and producer of short films and documentaries], who’s
also involved in film. My brother thought the film was indifferent
and dull, and my uncle saw it as a total mistake from beginning to
end. But otherwise, with my earlier films, he’s been extremely sup-
portive. Perhaps Breaking the Waves is my teenage rebellion...

Breaking the Waves was a success all over the world. It was
awarded the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes, and garnered numerous

177
awards at different festivals all over the world. The critics were
overwhelmingly positive and audiences flocked to it. After a while,
though, there was a counter-reaction, both in Denmark and in
Sweden, where the film was criticized by feminist commentators.
They reacted against the portrait of Bess sacrificing everything,
even her life, for her husband. Breaking the Waves was accused of
misogyny and of shameless manipulation.
I haven’t come into direct contact with those accusations. Every-
one is entitled to formulate their own opinion of the film, of
course. The only thing I would say is that I’m surprised that it took
so long for this particular strand of criticism to appear. I’d
expected it sooner. Even at the synopsis stage, when we were try-
ing to get financial support for the film, and later on, when we
were casting the film, we were confronted by this sort of criticism.
Most of the women who read the story reacted in the same way,
and just as strongly.
But later on, the film managed to create its own authority. What
was provocative in the script wasn’t as provocative in the finished
film. If you condense the film’s story into a few words, obviously it
looks provocative. In Denmark none of the film critics saw that as
a problem. Even Information, which is a radical and academic
daily paper, praised the film, which was remarkable given that
they’ve always been extremely critical towards my work. But then
they published the opinions of a group of fairly agitated feminists,
a debate that I wasn’t interested in joining in with. I understand
that quite a bit of this was reproduced in Swedish criticism of the
film.
One idea of the film was to try out this extremely provocative
and completely incredible plot, and I thought that if we got the
audience to accept it, if we could make it palatable to an audience,
then we would have succeeded. But without manipulating the
audience, which I never wanted to do. I think that Breaking the
Waves is a beautiful story, but the reaction to it hasn’t surprised
me. And in that sense the film has worked again. It ought to be
manna from heaven for people involved in the debate. Feminists
and other people ought to be delighted to find a work that can
instigate this sort of debate and lends itself to their arguments so
readily.

178
A female American professor of art history, who started the debate
in Sweden, summarized her criticism with the younger Alexander
Dumas’ advice to budding writers: ‘Make your heroine suffer!’
But, for God’s sake, most American films follow that advice .. .!

In one response to that, Maria Bergom-Larsson, who is both a rad-

ical feminist and a Christian, described the film as the story of a
modern saint, and proposed the hymn of the Virgin, the Magnifi-
cat, as a motto for the film: ‘He hath put down the mighty from
their seats, and exalted them of low degree.’
It’s a beautiful thought, one that I wholeheartedly agree with.
Danish feminists, on the other hand, would hardly offer religious
interpretations. A hymn is something that they would instantly
attack. It’s just something that would make them even more angry.
Mind you, Danish feminists have probably become better behaved
over the years. A decade ago they had more gumption. They’d
probably have liked to see me castrated then.

179
 10
Psychomobile #1: The World Clock

DESCRIPTION

The world clock consists of nineteen rooms, housing fifty-three

actors. In each room there are four lamps, one red, one green, one
yellow and one blue. A video camera is positioned above an ant hill
in New Mexico. Ona screen in the exhibition space you can watch
the ants running around inside the ant hill. Beside it is a map of the
nineteen rooms. On the video screen are nineteen squares, each
one representing one of the rooms. When the ants have crossed one
of the squares seven times, a different lamp in the corresponding
room is lit. When the colour of the room changes, all the perform-
ers in that room have to change character and mood. Each of the
actors taking part has been allocated different characteristics
linked to the four colours. The actors can move freely between the
rooms and perform improvised conversations and meetings, which
take their character and colour from what the lamps - i.e. ulti-
mately the ants — dictate.

LARS VON TRIER: The artists’ association in Copenhagen suggested

that I work on an installation in conjunction with Copenhagen
being declared European Capital of Culture in 1996. I was more
than willing, but when it came to it, I only had time to sketch out
the concept of the installation. Then other people, Morten Arnfred
and a scenographer and others, constructed the actual installation,
or performance, or whatever it should be called, themselves.

This is a huge project, involving a lot of people. Can you tell me

181
 how you got the idea for the concept and for the basic conditions
of the ‘happening’ that developed from it?
Other film-makers have also been called1 into artistic situations,
often in connection to installations ofv i kinds. I spent a long
time wondering what to do. I thought I ought to do something
involving people, characters in some sort of cinematic context,
something I could work with. If it wasn’t going to become a thea-
trical performance — and that wasn’t the idea — then I wanted to
create something where chance played a central part. Chance con-
trols our psyches. That’s where the title came from, Psychomobile.
Mobiles were something that artists spent time creating in the
early 1960s, of course. Isn’t there a huge mobile by Alexander
Calder outside the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm? Mobiles
were an interesting and slightly old-fashioned phenomenon. I
‘thought it would be fun to merge the concept with a group of peo-
ple. A work of art is often very close to an idea, so I thought it was
probably enough if I was responsible for the concept. And I con-
tributed a description of the sets, and also the list of characters.
The project didn’t need any real direction, because it was depend-
ent upon an external impulse that coincided with total improvisa-
tion. The ‘stories’ that appeared didn’t require the presence of a
director. So the work of art is the idea in this instance. The execu-
‘tion of the idea is a reproduction that can take many forms. I
wanted to hand the project over to Morten Arnfred and the others.

Have you seen the installation?

No. e

Don’t you want tof

Yes and no. Naturally I was curious about how it would work. The
whole performance is dependent on ants running about in an ant
hill in New Mexico, and I would have liked to see how that
worked from a technical point of view.

How did you get the idea of using ants?

We had to find something that was compatible with the actors. If
the lamps that indicated a change of emotion were lit too often, the

182
effect wouldn’t have been much fun. Morten had the idea of the
division of the video screen into different squares, and the condi-
tion that an ant had to pass a square seven times before the light-
ing was changed. But the idea of the ants was entirely my own.

Why ants in particular? And why New Mexico?

There was a good visual parallel between humans and ants, if you
look at it globally. And I thought there was something mythologi-
cal about New Mexico. It was a good place. I also thought it was
exciting to have a link like this with New Mexico. It sets your
imagination going. Obviously the psychomobile could be gov-
erned by loads of other things. A satellite picture of clouds could
govern it, or anything else that’s out of our control. Naturally we
could have used a computer of some sort, but I preferred the idea
of a ‘superhuman’ power.

But you were responsible for the types of room and the different
characters you wanted to put into Psychomobile?
Yes, I described the rooms I wanted included, and described and
named the different characters. But the most important thing was
deciding the relationships between them. We had a huge plan,
where you could refer the characters to each other. A lot of them
had no relationship to most of the others to begin with. They got ~
that as things progressed. But at the start each character had ten or
so relationships with other characters; they were related to them or
whatever. We divided them into close and distant relationships. So
there was a reasonable framework for everyone involved from the
outset.

But in the programme to Psychomobile there are no clues about

these relationships. There, only the actors are presented, with the
name and age of their character. We in the audience have to work
out everything else ourselves. ®
The original idea was probably to make the plan available at the
exhibition. But for whatever reason, that didn’t happen.

You could see the installation as one big, simultaneous soap opera.

183
Of course, there’s a large element of soap opera in it. But I think it
could be a very entertaining one to follow.

It could. I remember getting attached to a couple of the characters

and trying to follow them from room to room. One of the more
entertaining was a young woman called Mimi, played by a Norwe-
gian actress. She had a short, black leather skirt and was a drug
addict. Her character was pretty provocative, and her performance
was best observed in the room called ‘The Gallery’. There, the
actors were in an enclosed room and the audience could watch
them through rectangular openings in the walls. We became pic-
tures that they could look at. And this Mimi had a few choice
things to say about these ‘portraits’ whose appearance was con-
stantly changing. It got quite lively. Then I followed her to a couple
more rooms before I lost her in the mass of spectators standing in
the way.
The idea was that in certain places it would be very easy to get
from one room to the next, but that in other places it should be
more complicated, so that the viewer would have to switch their
attention from one character or event to another. There was also
an inaccessible room that the audience couldn’t get to, that was
only visible on a monitor.
Psychomobile might fulfil the curiosity that most people proba-
bly have, the desire to look into other people’s lives and act like a
Peeping Tom. I also like the interaction that the performance
offered. The idea that you could choose to follow a character or a
plot in one of the rooms if you wanted to, or how the relationships
between the characters developed. The choice was yours.

Chance is an important factor, and it directs our lives to a great

extent. We’re always getting into situations where we have to make
decisions that will have consequences for us. Here we’re presented
with a host of choices, and it’s very entertaining to see how they
have to be solved immediately.
Certainly chance is important, but there’s also a superior, divine
order represented by the ants. The ants direct the lives of the char-
acters, which is quite fun.
You could describe Psychomobile as a completely new genre. It’s

184
a hybrid form of improvisational theatre and theatrical sport. I
don’t really want to call it a ‘performance’, because that’s not what
it is. It’s just an example of what you can do with the patterns and
characters and rooms and scheme of movement that we created.
You could lay out the setting in 17,000 different ways. When you
get past the novelty value of the mechanism and the systematics of
it, it can be repeated in other places and in different ways. And you
could probably start judging the quality of different installations.
It would be fun if other people around the world started making
psychomobiles.

In Psychomobile you abdicated from all future control of an

exhibition you set up. You often come back to your need to feel
in control.
In my life, like so many other people’s lives, this business of control
and a lack of context is very important. And it’s largely what life is
about. What you have control over and what you don’t. That’s
something that this installation is about, at least in part. It’s ‘divine
power’ which is in control here.

What’s your opinion of the control you have to assume and exert
during a film shoot? There, of course, it isn’t ‘divine power’ that’s
in control. Divine power is something the director himself has to
possess.
I haven’t got a problem with that. If you take Ernst-Hugo Jaregard
as an example, he’s a very anxious person. So am I. I get very nerv-
ous and have trouble sleeping. So the other day, when I was speak-
ing to Ernst-Hugo, I said: ‘You can always console yourself by
thinking that since we’ve spent every bloody night practising to
die, we’re going to be bloody good at it when it actually happens.’
Then you get the chance to be really frightened.
What the hell, Ernst-Hugo is always frightened, except when the
spotlight’s on him, because then he’s in control. He knows what
he’s doing there, enchanting a group of people who are just watch-
ing him. As soon as they look away, he gets frightened again. It’s
the same when he’s alone in a room.
When I’m doing something I know I can do — it might be one of
several things, film-making, for instance — I don’t feel frightened.

185
There I’m in control. But I only feel that in those few instances, in
work situations. On Breaking the Waves | had a particularly good
time with the editing, because there you really are in control of the
situation. And it was fun to do, it was bloody good fun. Breaking
the Waves was the most enjoyable of all my films to edit — largely
because I edited quite a lot of it myself. We did the editing on Avid,
on computer, and it’s much easier to explain what you want to do.
You just bring up the scene you want to edit, and show what you
want to do. Avid’s a great invention, in my opinion.

Did you feel the same on your first film, this feeling of security and
control and freedom from fear during recording? Or were you
more scared to start with?
No, I’ve never really been scared in professional situations. But I’m
always worried that I’m going to get ill or somehow be hindered
from working. I’m scared of things I can’t control. But I don’t feel
the slightest bit anxious about things I know I can control. Work is
sheer pleasure. In that respect I can quote Bergman, who on one
occasion said that he had probably never had as much fun as
when, on one shoot, he was able to command a couple of dozen
policemen through a megaphone and see that they obeyed his
every command. That’s when he realized what ‘power’ was. And
when I made Europa I got to give orders to Red Army soldiers,
which was pretty interesting...
At the same time it’s nice to abdicate from power, or to share
some of that power. It’s an important insight. I did that with some
of the actors on Breaking the Waves, for instance. My need for
control was stronger on my first films. To an increasing extent, I’ve
learned to relinquish some of that control. And with Psychomo-
bile ve let go of it completely. I just provided the basic idea and a
concept that has been developed by other people. You get an awful
lot back if you dare to give that up. Breaking the Waves would
never have been the film that it is if I hadn’t relinquished some of
my control over the actors. It isn’t just that the technique we used
led to greater freedom of movement; it’s also that I was more pre-
pared to accept the actors’ own interpretations of their roles than
I used to be.

186
You've also relinquished control in your collaboration with
Morten Arnfred, who was your assistant director on The Kingdom
and Breaking the Waves.
That’s right. Things went well with Morten, but it still wasn’t easy
to give up some of that control. It’s easier to give up a certain,
clearly defined part of it. If you say, for instance, that you can take
over here — I’ve done my bit, you’re responsible for the next bit of
the film. Having a co-director is a complicated way of working, in
the sense that you aren’t entirely sure of what you’ve let go of and
what you’re still in charge of.
It’s like a marriage. You have to get to grips with a whole load
of new things when you have a wife. She uses the dishcloth in a
completely different way. But when you get married, it might be
that you’d like to do something completely different with that
dishcloth. Even though you have to force yourself to do it, because
like everyone else, you’re a creature of habit. But with Morten I’ve
had to force myself both to relinquish some things and make cer-
tain demands to get the collaboration to work. He’s also had to
adapt in various ways.

Can you give any examples of that?

Well, it’s mostly a question of taste. Morten and I don’t have the
same tastes. Everyone has different tastes and preferences, of
course. We think differently, about what the crux of a scene is, for
instance. Or about what’s funny. Everyone has a different opinion
of what’s funny and what isn’t. That’s something you have to
accept when you direct together. Morten and IJ have had very few
disagreements in our work together. I think we’ve used one
another in. a good way. I hope that it’s been inspirational for
Morten as well. I think it has.

How come you chose to collaborate with Morten Arnfred?

It was partly complete chance. I was making an advert for an
insurance company for French television, La rue. It was an
extremely complex production. I hadn’t written it myself. But the
whole film was going to be one single long shot, going along a
street in Paris, starting with a 1940s’ atmosphere and ending with

187
a contemporary feel, ic. 1994. And we follow a few people
through the years and along the street. It was a pretty sentimental,
nostalgic trip.
The film was highly regarded and is still shown every now and
then, from what I understand. I’ve been to Paris a couple of times
and have met people from the Ministry of Culture. When I men-
tion The Element of Crime or Europa, they pat my shoulder and
say how nice they thought it was. But if I happen to mention that
I made La rue as well, they get very excited. ‘No! Did you do that?’
Perhaps that says something about how they see their work.
It was in connection with that advert that I came into contact
with Morten. I needed an assistant who was talented and disci-
plined, and had experience of film work. And Morten’s certainly
got that. He’s both talented and disciplined.
We constructed the entire street in a factory outside Copen-
hagen. I hate travelling, so instead of going to Paris, we moved
Paris to Denmark. We worked with so-called motion control. Dur-
ing the walk along the street the actors’ appearance changes and
they get older, get married, have children, the children grow up,
and so on. With motion control we could pull the film back and for
every five-year period change the set, the facades of the houses,
through the use of overtones. And in the foreground the actors dis-
appear behind a car or a lamppost or something else, then emerge
on the other side with a different appearance and clothes. And
they’re accompanied by music that changes as well.

Had you seen any of Morten’s films before then?

Yes, I think I’d seen his first film, Mig og Charlie (Me and Charlie).
I haven’t seen Johnny Larsen, but I have seen Det er et yndigt land
(It's a Wonderful Country). That’s not a film that I feel very
attached to, I have to say.

Someone else you’ve worked with who must mean quite a lot to
you 1s Vibeke Windelov, who was co-producer of The Kingdom
and Breaking the Waves, as well as your later films.
Yes, Vibeke is above all a wonderful facilitator. She’s got the abil-
ity to put her arms around her poor director — both physically and
metaphorically — and make him feel that he doesn’t have to worry

188
about anything. It’s so obvious that it doesn’t really need an expla-
nation.
Vibeke reads the scripts, just like Peter Aalbek Jensen. If they
like them, I listen to them, but if they don’t, I don’t listen to their
opinions at all. If they don’t like my ideas, I just get more stubborn.
It can take a while until they manage to get enough enthusiasm for
a project. But it usually happens. Enthusiasm is something you can
work on.

189
 sey
%

pal
Change, Music Videos and Adverts

LARS VON TRIER: Change is a music video I made sometime in the

early 1990s. A nice experiment. I think we had a list of fifty or a
hundred different directions to get everything to work, directions
governing when things should happen, when the background
should change, when people should come in and out of shot, and
how things should move on set.

How long did it take to make?

We had one day of shooting, but the preparatory work took
longer. So a few days or so.

I can see how you made the film, but it’s still pretty amazing how
well timed it is. It must have been incredibly difficult to get every-
thing to coincide the way that it does.
Yes, we were bloody lucky. And in a few places the timing was per-
fect. What was good about this was the practical and technical
challenges it posed. Shooting it as a single fixed shot, which some-
how works.

Change shows a side of you that’s quite revealing. This desire to

experiment, to try different ways of doing things, to explore and
test the limits of the medium you’re using, whether it’s film or tele-
vision or video or whatever. You’re fairly driven by that, aren’t you?
Yes, a great deal! I can’t do anything unless I really want to. You
can see that very plainly in Change. It was great fun to make. I

I9I
think that’s pretty evident. It was tough on the poor singer though.
Because we shot the whole thing backwards, he had to learn to
sing the song backwards. Just learning those strange words and
sounds, and still keeping the rhythm. But he’d been a drummer
before that, so he managed it pretty well.

In between your feature films you’ve made several music videos

and adverts...
Yes, mainly for the money. I have to earn my living, to pay the
standing expenses. But I have to admit, I’ve mostly only chosen the
things I thought were most fun. That French advert I was commis-
sioned to do, La rue, wasn’t so much fun, but it did pay better.
Compared to the money you get from a feature film, those French
adverts are incredibly well paid. But I don’t really like doing them.
Just every now and then.

But haven't these jobs allowed you to experiment with the medium
a bit more?
No, not really. But, with Change, I had the chance to decide things
myself. And mess about a bit. But commissions are nearly always
pretty fixed. In France and Germany, which I know most about,
the ideas have already gone through storyboards in some advertis-
ing agency and been accepted by the customer. Then they go out
and find someone who can do the work and make the film. The
advertising agency don’t want anything creative beyond what
they’ve already come up with. The whole thing is their idea, and
that’s the idea they’ve managed to sell. So often it’s a pretty ridicu-
lous situation. You just have to turn up — then you get a load of
money.

But La rue seems to have been fairly experimental . . .

Hmm, I don’t know about that. It was the first time I’d tried
motion control, which was interesting. I think the film ended up
being quite poetic in spite of everything.

You made a series of very funny adverts for the newspaper Ekstra-
bladet with Ernst-Hugo Jaregard ...

192
The good thing about them was that they only took a couple of
hours to shoot. We made five films, which we got through one
morning before lunch. They look a lot fresher as a result. We'd
arranged much longer for the shoot. But we were finished so
quickly that I asked Ernst-Hugo to say to the agency that sadly he
couldn’t manage doing any more so that they didn’t get upset with
us.

Did you write the scripts for them?

We started with a text that I’d prepared, but soon digressed from
that, because Ernst-Hugo couldn’t really do anything with it. So
we changed a lot of it and improvised those monologues or out-
bursts about Denmark. ‘What else shall I say?’ Ernst-Hugo asked.
‘Look out of the window,’ I said — he was in an office looking out
over Radhuspladsen, the square by the City Hall — ‘and say, “Ynk,
ynk, ynk!” That’s what you think of Denmark, isn’t it?’ So he
turned round and looked out in three directions and said, ‘Ynk!’
and it was extremely effective. It’s become part of the Danish lan-
guage now. During some recent industrial action by nurses, they
had big banners saying ‘Ynk, ynk, ynk!’ And it’s been used in
newspaper headlines as well.
I don’t know if all the adverts were as much fun. But the idea
was for Ernst-Hugo to have a go at the newspaper and voice his
contempt for the country, which was fun.

And Pkstrablader liked te plins?

Yes, they were incredibly positive, even though the text was com-
pletely different to what they had originally approved. One of the
original ideas was ‘I love to hate Ekstrabladet’. But I said we’d
never get Ernst-Hugo to say that. No, he’ll just have to hate it all.
He’s not supposed to love anything.

And you get a picture of Ingmar Bergman into a corner as well.

You noticed that! Yes, he’s a part of the archetypal idea of Sweden
that Ernst-Hugo eulogizes. Bergman and Bjorn Borg and Dala
horses.

193
 12
The Kingdom 2

SYNOPSIS

At Kingdom Hospital in Copenhagen everything is as it was, yet

somehow nothing is the same. Senior physician Stig Helmer has
returned from Haiti, and is soon consumed by worries. Partly there
is the legal investigation into his unsuccessful brain surgery on
poor little Mona. And his beloved colleague Rigmor is trying to
entice him into marrying her. He is also afflicted by serious
hypochondria. Fru Drusse is fatally wounded by an ambulance just
as she is leaving the hospital. In the waiting room to the Kingdom
of Death she is called back to life to help in the fight between spir-
its and demons taking place in Kingdom Hospital. Judith
Petersen’s child, Lillebror (Little Brother), is growing incredibly
quickly and is fighting for his life. Professor Bondo is also fighting
for his life after becoming his own experiment by injecting himself
with cancer cells. The triangular relationship between the medical
students Mogge, Sanne and Christian seems to take up more time
than their studies. And is there really no one behind the wheel of
the apparently unmanned ambulance racing along the motorway?
Considering all the intrigues and conflicts raging within The King-
dom, it’s hardly surprising that Senior Consultant Moesgaard has
had to seek psychiatric help.

eee er, 3

After the first part of The Kingdom and the great success of Break-
ing the Waves, one might have thought that you would have
entrusted the continuation of The Kingdom to another director.
What was it that made you want to do The Kingdom 2 yourself?

195
Well, deep down .. . (Long pause.) It’s difficult to say. But I’d writ-
ten the story myself, together with Niels Vorsel, so . . . 1can’t really
remember how we came to the decision. But the idea was always
that I’d do it. I think it’ll probably be the same with the last part of
The Kingdom as well. I have to see it through, in a way. But at the
same time, it’s a bit dull doing something again, I have to admit.
I’ve never done anything a second time before. But you could also
say that I’ve changed my mind about that.

The Kingdom 2 is a lot lighter in tone than The Kingdom t. Is that

because you know the characters in the story better now, and
because you have an almost friendly relationship with them?
I think it’s more to do with the general attitude. I think dialogue
that approaches comedy is fun. At the same time, I think it’s fun
that the pace is more forced. There are also a lot more comic
scenes.

What was it that interested you in this sequel? Developing the plot
or developing the characters?
That’s a difficult question. But The Kingdom 2 is much faster
paced than the first part. The episodes are twice as fast compared
to the first series. Whereas then we might have had five parallel
story lines on the go at the same time, now we have eleven or
twelve. So in that way you could say that the web that Niels and I
have woven is twice as complicated. The separate stories are on a
different level, a much more superficial level this time. And it has
to move a lot faster if we’re going to get anywhere near the end of
the story. That’s why we put a load of secondary threads that need
tying up to one side. s

So you've already got an idea of how to finish it and how to tie

everything up?
Yes, I know how we’re going to tie it all up. Obviously.

Regarding Dante’s Divine Comedy, you've said that he thought

it was great fun writing ‘Hell’, but a lot harder to write ‘Paradise’.
Is it the same with The Kingdom for you? Is it easier and more fun

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 s
to write for the wicked characters and their hell than the good
characters and their light and optimism?
Yes, it was like that before. Evil is so much easier to depict. It sug-
gests a lot more visual interpretations, whereas goodness doesn’t
really offer any particularly good images at all. Visual goodness
easily gets banal, in terms of imagery. You know, you light up peo-
ple and have situations with sunlight. It’s far too emotive and
banal. I realized how easy it was to risk ending up in that situation
in Breaking the Waves, where I really tried to avoid images like
that. I used that sort of expression in the chapter titles, however,
that excess of romanticism.
There are so many chords to play on when you’re depicting evil.
I'd have to qualify that by saying that I’ve never been interested in
the psychology of evil, not in the slightest. I’m probably not really
interested in evil per se, but in people’s dark sides. People are what
interests me, but to get inside a person it’s not unlikely that you’re
going to have to look at evil from a psychological point of view.
But I’ve only ever been indirectly interested in that.

You mention “The Swedenborg Room’ in the film. Are Swedenborg

and his ideas something that interests you?
No, I don’t really know much about him. We just wanted to give a
name to the room, this anteroom to the Kingdom of Death. I think
I’d heard some name for the room you go into before you’re trans-
ported further. But we couldn’t find out anything about it. So we
came up with Swedenborg.

The Kingdom is actually a good illustration of Swedenborg’s philo-

sophical rationalism and mysticism.
Niels Vorsel probably knows something about his ideas. But, of
course, Swedenborg would probably like having a room named
after him, a carpeted room with two chairs and two doors and a
picture of a landscape with a tiger and a snake and a few birds...

A lot of your films depict the struggle between two extremes: chaos
and order, good and evil...
It’s not something I think about consciously, but you tend to use

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 hen
Py

20 The Kingdom 2. It all begins to tell upon Judith (Birgitte Raaberg)

classic oppositional pairs in films like this. They’re also something

that characterizes workplaces like the Kingdom Hospital, with ill-
nesses and nursing and soon...

In The Kingdom 2 you created a character who personifies this

conflict between good and evil — Lillebror. He seems to embody the
conflict, both physically and psychologically.
Yes, albeit in a slightly comic way. But I think that those scenes with
Lillebror have space for philosophy and a bit more engagement.
Actually, speaking of that, I wanted to use the film’s premiére to
publicize my first real political manifesto, which was about a new
law on fertility treatment here in Denmark. A very, very strange
law appeared, forbidding lesbians from receiving fertility treat-
ment. I thought that was outrageous, especially from a Social-
Democratic government. If two women can’t prove that there’s a
man in the relationship as well, it would be a criminal offence for
them to have children together. Regardless of what I think of gays
and lesbians — people can do what they like — I think that law was
very easy to find holes in.
So I wrote to Danmarks Radio and said I wanted to arrange a

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premiere to support a foundation helping childless lesbians. But
they said no. So we didn’t do it with the premiére, just one of the
other screenings instead. It was a pretty good opportunity to do it,
because of The Kingdom being set in a hospital. And you could set
up a foundation that would somehow be illegal. That was an
unusual thing for me to suggest, because I don’t usually get
involved in political issues like this. But I thought it was a remark-
ably retrograde step.

The Kingdom is set in the Kingdom Hospital in Copenhagen.

What's your relationship with doctors and the medical profession?
Well, it’s not great...

And your hypochondria?

That just gets worse and worse. Since we last met, in March, I’ve
got through four or five different sorts of cancer which have
completely paralyzed me. It’s amazing how many different cancers
you can worry about when hypochondria really sets in.

In The Kingdom 2 you give Ernst-Hugo Jaregard’s character, Stig

Helmer, a whole load of hypochondriac worries.
Yes, so you could say that these episodes are a bit more satirical.
There’s satire on a lot of different levels. In the earlier episodes
there were funny scenes, but the satire was a bit aimless.

There are several Swedes in the story. Not just Ernst-Hugo

Jaregard as the Swedish senior physician, Stig Helmer, but also
Stellan Skarsgard as Stig Helmer’s defence lawyer. And at the end
there’s another Swedish surprise. Is that because you feel that you
can use these Swedish characters and actors to criticize and com-
ment on Denmark and Danish concerns in a more effective way
than if you were using Danish characters?
No, I only set up a Danish-Swedish conflict at the end, a conflict
that we perhaps ought to think about a bit more. Because the
Swedes are now thinking about shutting down Barseback [a
nuclear power station on the Swedish coast facing Copenhagen],
we can’t fight about that any more.

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But the decision hasn’t been confirmed, and there’s still an ongoing
debate about it, so if you’re lucky it will take a bit longer...
Yes, but we’ve still got a few Swedish cards up our sleeve . . . I
think The Kingdom 3 will probably be a fairly strongly spiced
smorgasbord. There’ll be more humour in the next sequel, some
pretty good satire.
I have to say that I haven’t got much more to say about The
Kingdom 2. It’s something I’ve already moved on from.

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 ad

13
The Idiots

SYNOPSIS

A group of people in their twenties and thirties have withdrawn

from the world to challenge the norms and values of bourgeois
society in various ways. They play the fool in different social set-
tings — to test the tolerance levels of the defenders of convention,
and perhaps also to test and challenge their own self-imposed lim-
itations. The Idiots depicts how the rules of the game became a
game of rules. Provocation becomes pure art.
A young woman, Karen, the last person to join the group, is our
guide through the activities we are confronted with. In a central
scene she questions the purpose of the collective’s challenging
behaviour. The self-appointed leader of the group, Stoffer, sets
things straight for her. He says that they all have to look for and
discover their ‘inner idiot’, i.e. a sort of existential base for their
most genuine feelings. Being an idiot is a luxury, he explains. In a
society that keeps on getting richer, while its inhabitants keep get-
ting poorer and more unhappy, an idiot is a far-sighted person.
Karen continues to question the implications of the group’s
peculiar mission and also has to ask herself why she is continuing
to share her life with the collective. When one day she lets go of her
repression and lets her ‘inner idiot’ have free rein, she gets her
answer. She can happily hand herself over to the group, who
receive her with warmth and tenderness.

In 1995 you and your fellow director Thomas Vinterberg published a

manifesto, Dogme 95, which called for a completely new type of film

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~ and a whole new way of looking at film: the production of films
with extremely low budgets, made according to very strict rules — as
you called it, a film-maker’s ‘vow of chastity’, which amongst other
things meant that films had to be shot on location, with hand-held
cameras, direct sound recording only, no music (unless it was fully
integrated into the scene), and so on. And one final, important rule of
chastity was that films mustn’t be credited, so the creator's or direc-
tor’s name shouldn’t appear in the opening or closing credits. Why
did you and Thomas publish the manifesto at that point in time?
I can’t really remember the exact reason. Actually, yes . . . Dogme
95 was published before the financing for Breaking the Waves was
sorted out. I was very tired of waiting for decisions about whether
we could make the film. And I’d just finished the first part of The
Kingdom, and I felt that we had to try to start something com-
pletely different.

So Dogme 95 wasn’t a protest against the current state of Danish

film and film production?
No, I stopped protesting about Danish film a long time ago. If you
want to protest about something then the thing you’re protesting
about has to have a certain amount of authority. And if you believe
that something lacks authority, there’s no reason to protest against
it. If there’s anything in the film world that has authority, it’s the
American film industry with all its money and its incredible domi-
nance on the global market. I’m not really into protesting; I’m
fairly liberal on that point. I’d rather make suggestions instead,
and that was our intention with Dogme 95. I actually sent a copy
of our Dogme manifesto to Bergman and suggested that he make a
Dogme film as well.

Did you get a reply?

No, of course not. But I see Bergman rather as my spiritual father.
And he had problems with his father, of course. Nor has he had
much response from his spiritual father, God. God never
responded to Bergman, so it’s entirely logical that Bergman doesn’t
respond to me. And it must be hard to get any response from the
man who made The Silence!

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But with Zentropa, the production company you own together
with Peter Aalbek Jensen, Dogme 95 became a reality. The Idiots
was subtitled Dogme #2.
Yes, the first Dogme film, Festen, was made by Thomas Vinterberg,
and after The Idiots came films by Seren Kragh-Jacobsen and
Kristian Levring. +

Were you pleased with the results?

Yes, the interesting thing is that all four films are so different in
character, even though they all follow the rules of the manifesto.
The idea was that we would engage several different film-makers
on projects and see what we got. It’s an experiment that’s worked
well, in my opinion, because the films are so different.

Can you explain how they differ?

Well... Id prefer to talk about their similarities. The strange thing
is that all of them are ensemble pieces. All four films are about a
group of people, oddly enough. And that happened without us
having any general discussion of our projects. But it’s possible that
the idea behind Dogme 95 tends to encourage that sort of story.
I could probably say that Thomas, being a bit younger than the
rest of us, has a more youthful approach to his story.

But don’t you think that you have a youthful approach to your
story in The Idiots?
No, or if I do, it’s a old man’s sort of youthfulness. You know, that
sort of built-in idea that everything was much better before. I hope
that The Idiots is a modern film, but at the same time it’s also a
nostalgic film that expresses a yearning for the French New Wave
and everything that happened in its wake. It’s impossible to deny
that Dogme 95 is largely inspired by the New Wave. It was a fan-
tastic shot in the arm. Maybe we won’t be able to do the same, but
we might be able to provide some sort of preventive vaccine.
Both Thomas Vinterberg and I think this was the most fun we’d
had with films so far. It was great fun working within this concept
and according to the rules that we set ourselves. That sounds a bit
evangelical. You know, ‘following the Bible brings you such joy’!

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21 The Idiots begin to get frisky in readiness for a ‘gang-bang’

But it really was like that.

You’re supposed to have written The Idiots in four days .. .

Yes, I did say that. I got the idea for the film as we were writing the
script. I had the idea of a group of people who chose to behave like
idiots — no more than that. Then this embryonic idea developed
into a story over a long period of time. I went about thinking of all
the opportunities the story offered. I started to fantasize about the
different characters in the story, and eventually they began to react
and live their own lives in my imagination. So when I eventually
came to sit down and write the script, the story was more or less
ready. So, yes, I did write it in four days.

In the documentary De udmygede (The Humiliated) by Jesper

Jargil, you say that the idea for the film comes from Rudolf Steiner
and a suggestion of his that ‘mongoloids are heaven-sent’.
I don’t know where the hell I got that Steiner quote from, but he
had some theory that mongoloids were a gift to humanity, that
they were like visitors from another planet or from heaven. I
thought that was a lovely idea, seeing people who are different as

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a gift. The activities of the group in The Idiots were inspired by
that idea. The last thing you’d expect would be to use that idea as
a sort of therapy, based on finding yourself. Finding the child or
the animal within. But you might also find something that would
make other people happy, in the same way that mongoloids are a
gift — not to themselves, but to,the world.

At one point in the film someone says that ‘idiots are the future’.
Yes, you can see them as a counterweight to the rationality sur-
rounding Aneta is something I think is based in anxiety. If
you’re afraid of chaos, if you’re afraid of living life, with all its
conflicts and contradictions, then you grasp rationality as a
defence. That’s what happened to me with my background. In my
family most things were looked at from a rational point of view.
I’ve always had a weakness for the irrational. Film work
embraces a whole load of irrational qualities. The Idiots isn’t
merely a defence of Steiner’s thesis. That’s just one of the points of
departure for the theories expressed by Stoffer, the leading figure in
the group. The idea has been corrupted by him, you could say, in
the same way that he tries to corrupt the other members of the
group. You can draw parallels to politics or to people who, for var-
ious reasons, work in groups.

One important scene is when Karen asks Stoffer, ‘Why do you do

this?’ As I understand it from Jesper Jargil’s film, this was a scene
that caused quite a few problems. First it was filmed inside the villa
a couple of times, before you shot the final version during the trip
to the forest.
The scene is important, and it was difficult to get it to work. I had
my suspicions in advance, because I thought the scene was too
explicit in the script. That was confirmed when we tried to shoot
the scene indoors. Karen and Stoffer were sitting on the floor in
one of the rooms, and neither of them had enough space to react
to what they were saying and hearing. One problem was that
Karen asked a couple of very down-to-earth questions, and Stoffer
replied on a completely different level. In the end I had him give
equally down-to-earth replies to her questions. And they weren’t
that bad, even if they weren’t as precise as the first version. And I

205% .
 >

think moving the scene outside helped. It gave them much more
freedom of movement. It was great to get out into that Fellini-style
forest.

And Stoffer replies to Karen by saying it’s about finding “your inner
OL inc =
The idea was that the idiot is just as nuanced an individual as a
rational person. That there’s a personality hidden beneath our per-
mitted personalities which is just as unique and nuanced. It’s an
interesting idea, I think. And worth defending, as far as you can
anyway.

Have you been in therapy yourself?

Yes, I’ve tried loads of different things.

When?

God! All the time, over the years. But it’s like hypnosis. It’s hard to
get anything out of it if you’re constantly trying to see through the
techniques. And I have great trouble throwing myself into some-
thing if I can’t see how it’s done. I suppose I mean IJ have trouble
letting go. It’s that control thing again. So maybe the results
weren’t all they should have been.

But The Idiots must have been a therapeutic experience. I watched

one day of filming, and you seemed unusually relaxed in the com-
pany of your ‘idiots’ in front of the camera.
Yes, it was certainly a very intense experience.

The finished film also gives an incredibly liberating impression.

I think so too. I think it was an important experience for everyone
who worked on it. There was a feeling of psychodrama about the
whole thing.
This business of film going beyond fiction at the moment of
shooting is something I’ve aimed for in all my films. Even in The
Element of Crime. What used to happen on the technical side is
something I’m trying to transfertoa more psychological level.
,

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a o—

Do you ever feel abandoned when a film shoot is finished?

Anxiety, you mean? Yes, I suppose I do. But at the moment my
anxiety is entirely taken up with phobias about cancer. I’m suffer-
ing from umpteen different types of cancer. It hasn’t happened like
this before, when I could get panic attacks about all manner of
things. Now it’s very concrete. So I’ve started taking Frantex. It’s a
drug that’s supposed to suppress anxiety a bit.

You have a new family now, you and Bente and the twins, and your
two daughters from your first marriage. Doesn’t that give you the
security to hold these anxieties at bay?
It’s almost the opposite. In my new relationship there’s more space
for anxiety.

In the diary you wrote during the shooting of The Idiots you men-
tion film as a game on several occasions. In one place you wrote
that ‘it’s nice that it’s my game we’re playing’. And at another point
you wrote: ‘It’s a tiny, little game that tiny, little Lars has set up.’
That’s an almost exact Bergman quotation! He said the same thing
at some point, that he sees film as a game. Yet at the same time he
wrote that he’d never had as much fun as the time he had twenty
policemen in front of the camera. He was so intimidated by their
authority, and now all of a sudden he was the authority figure. I
really can’t understand why Bergman keeps popping up.. .
But I remember when I used to make films as a child it was
important that the whole thing was my game. And, of course, it
was. It was my ideas and my games that I made my friends join in
with. It gave me a sense of satisfaction, but it also gave me respon-
sibility. You have to make the game work, after all.

It wasn’t hard to persuade them to join in your game? ‘

It probably was. But I usually managed it. And I got hurt if any-
one didn’t want to join in, in the same way that I felt hurt if an
actor didn’t want to be in The Idiots. Which happened, of course.
They didn’t want to join in my game.

How did you find your actors, your playmates, for the film? Most

207,
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*
of them aren’t very well known for their work in film, and several
had never worked on films before.
No, that’s probably true of most of them. The exception was Anne
Louise Hassing, who played the lead in Niels Malmros’s Karlekens
smarta (The Pain of Love). I thought that was a great film. Malm-
ros’s best film, and probably one of the inspirations for Breaking
the Waves. But the other actors hadn’t had much experience of
film. Most of them were from the theatre, and I didn’t know any of
them beforehand. I think we auditioned about 150 actors. I had a
very good casting director, Rie Hedegaard, who selected them.
Then we had a number of large casting sessions, where a lot of
actors performed at the same time. I wanted to see how they
worked in a group situation like the one we were creating in the
film. We had a director who did improvisation exercises with
them, and these were recorded on video. From those videotapes I
chose the actors for the film. Then we added a few other actors,
like Erik Wedersge and Paprika Steen, who have important sup-
porting roles in the film. It was wonderful to work with all these
young actors, who all felt such a strong desire to express them-
selves.

What did you think of the very close collaboration you had with
everyone who worked on The Idiots?
It was very liberating. This technique is a dream come true for
actors. We never had to set up any lights, and there were no
lengthy technical preparations. We just set out some basic scenery
and let the actors get on with it. We didn’t have a big production
team either. During the actual takes, it was really only me, doing
the camerawork as well, plus a sound technician who followed
them as they performed.
It was also a challenge for them to express themselves in a com-
pletely different way. They had to live their characters rather than
act them. Perhaps it didn’t turn out exactly as I imagined to begin
with, but it was fun to try that way of working. I also got to test
various experiments that I had wanted to try.

Such as?

208
 *

Well, trying to get closer to the actors’ anxieties and sorrow and
internal conflicts. The sort of thing you dream of doing but never
have time for. But here we had time. I could spend a whole day sit-
ting down with a couple of the actors, talking to them about their
childhood and upbringing and memories and experiences. It was
incredibly exciting, but also difficult for the person taking on the
role of therapist.

If I’ve understood correctly, this happened with one of the most

central, tender and moving scenes in The Idiots, the one where
Karen confides in Susanne. They’re sitting in a window recess, talk-
ing, and you get extremely close to them, both visually and emo-
tionally. It must have taken several days to get that scene.
Yes, it’s the emotional heart of the film, if I can put it like that. It
was very hard to get what I wanted. Bodil Jorgensen, who played
Karen, finds it very easy to get access to her sorrow. She’s been
through personal tragedy, and has the capacity to access that and
make use of it. And Anne Louise Hassing, who played Susanne, is
extremely good at delivering her lines, very natural and relaxed.
The problem was that when these two were supposed to talk to
each other, it just didn’t work. Anne Louise didn’t manage to con-
vince me that her character was seriously interested in Karen. The
idea was that Susanne would command such an excess of under-
standing that she could absorb Karen’s problems. She was sup-
posed to be expressing sympathy. But on every take Anne Louise
seemed to be strangely distant and, to my eyes, not really credible.
Then my therapeutic self suggested that if Anne Louise could see
her own problems in Karen’s then she would be able to express the
sympathy that was lacking. You can’t show sympathy for some-
thing you can’t share. Sympathy requires imagination. And you
can’t take imagination for granted. My starting point was that, if
we could get Anne Louise to experience or remember a similar sor-
row to the one Karen tells her about in the film, about losing a
child, then she would be able to perform the scene in a way that
expressed the emotional weight it needed.
So we set up a purely therapeutic situation, where Anne Louise
ended up sniffing about events in her childhood. In Jesper Jargil’s
documentary about the shooting of the film, there’s a long

209
22 The Idiots: Bodil Jorgensen as Karen and Anne Louise Hassing as
Susanne.

sequence where we see her wandering, red-eyed, through the

rooms. It was very intense. And on the verge of sadism. That’s how
I see it, anyway.
The scene was very good in the end, very believable. It could
have been a lot longer in the finished version. We cut it quite
severely, because it could have become painful, and it would have
weighed down Karen’s character with too much sorrow. We had to
finish the scene with a little smile, an assurance that Karen
belonged to the group and that she could continue living as part of
it. If ’'d kept a longer version of the scene, Karen would have
risked looking like a cry-baby.
For me the scene was credible, and that was important. I was
very strict about that, even if Stellan Skarsgard has teased me by
saying that a lot of the scenes aren’t credible. It’s typical of him to
exploit my weaknesses like that! Stellan thought the scene where
Stoffer runs naked through Sellered had no logic or psychology to
it. Ican accept that, but I don’t know if it’s a bad scene in spite of
that. I like the lack of psychological relevance there. I think the
outburst is in line with Stoffer’s character.

Do you think that in earlier films you were able to be as careful

210
and consequential? I mean, did you have the chance to work on a
scene until you were completely happy with it? Or did you have to
make compromises that you later regretted?
That happened a lot. The great advantage of The Idiots was that
we could keep going until we were happy. The film was shot on
video, of course, so technical costs were very low. We also shot the
script in order, which I’d never had the chance to do before.

What was the biggest advantage of that, do you think?

That we could see how it was working. You can do that with sep-
arate scenes during a normal shoot, but here we could follow the
development of the characters in a more natural way. We knew
how they had reached a certain point in the film and where they
were in their own development, and the actors could adjust their
performances accordingly. When you shoot a film by the conven-
tional method, short sequences here and there from different
places in the script, according to a shooting plan, you can get hor-
rible surprises when you come to edit the film. You can find out
that there’s no psychological consistency. I’ve found out that if you
shoot a film conventionally, like a big jigsaw puzzle, you often
have to tone down the acting so that it doesn’t get exaggerated and
inconsistent. Here we could highlight clearer lines of development
for the actors and let them react accordingly.
I think this is apparent from the diary I wrote during filming,
which has been published, together with the script. I sat down
every day after shooting and spoke into a little tape-recorder for
fifteen to twenty minutes, recounting everything that had hap-
pened that day. Whether or not you like the result, it does give a
unique insight into this way of working. It has no literary preten-
sions. I handed it all over to a journalist, Peter Ovig, who wrote it
out and edited it so that it made some sort of sense. I haven’t cen-
sored his work at all. I haven’t even read it through.
I haven’t seen a book like that before, but it’s something I wish
Bergman had written, day by day, for the whole length of a shoot.
What Bibi said, and why and how he could get Bibi to act this way
or that way. And why Bibi didn’t want to do it that way, and why
she was stupid, and so on. In the autobiographies he’s written in
his old age, the descriptions are more anecdotal and therefore

211
more generalized. They’re a bit like Bufuel’s memoirs, My Last
Sigh, which is great fun to read. A lot of it must be lies, but it
doesn’t matter. You can always elaborate your memories if it suits
you.

From the diary it looks as though shooting didn’t get off to a good
start. You shot a scene at Amalienborg Palace that didn’t make it
into the film.
It was terrible! Absolutely impossible! It was strange, because we’d
spent the fortnight before we began filming preparing and rehears-
ing. And everything was working really well. But then we had the
camera there, and all of a sudden it was for real. And they were all
struggling to give a performance. That was after I’d given a long
speech to the cast before we started filming and stressed that the
whole point of this film was not to perform. It was about forget-
ting most of what they knew about acting technique and perform-
ance. But the actors had been to drama school and had been taught
that here was a story, and that a story needed to be told. In The
Idiots they weren’t supposed to be telling anything. They just had
to exist and react in certain situations. Then, afterwards, I would
construct the story and tell it. After rehearsing with them for a
fortnight I thought we could let them loose. But they all started
acting crazy in such an exaggerated way that the results were
dreadful.

The thing that struck me most when I visited the shoot was the
feeling of euphoria that everyone involved seemed to have been
infected with. The work seemed characterized by a contagious
lightness. It almost made me feel like joining in and getting
involved.
It wasn’t always like that, of course. What day were you there, do
you remember?

It was the scene where Josephine’s father comes to take her home.
Right, that was an example of everything working at its best. It
was towards the end of the shoot, and the group had gelled and
they were working together well. The only one who wasn’t part of
the group was Anders Hove, who played Josephine’s father. As an
actor he was a bit irritated at feeling excluded, and he was able to
use that in his role. I was later criticized because he had a copy of
the newspaper Politiken in his pocket. A lot of people thought that
was far too obvious a cliché. But Anders Hove actually had it in his
pocket when he arrived. Not as part of his character, but because
he had been reading it on his way to the shoot. According to the
Dogme rules, I wasn’t allowed to give him any props. But when he
suggested taking it out of his pocket, I told him not to bother.

The script for The Idiots is pretty extensive. Did the freer attitude
you had towards this style of shooting make it harder to stick to
the original script?
Naturally there were a few lines here and there that disappeared. I
had a huge amount of material to work with, 130 hours’ worth of
footage. But every time we made changes between takes, we
referred to the script, and mostly followed it fairly closely. The fin-
ished film follows the script very closely, which is interesting,
because we weren’t actually trying to.
It’s well known that when you let actors improvise, you have to
start with a fixed idea and direct the improvisation in a certain
direction, otherwise it doesn’t work. Nothing happens —- apart
from using up loads of film. You have to sow the seeds. You create
characters out of dust and blow life into them. You have to have
some sort of plan, a plan that you impose on the actors, whether
they’re conscious of it or not. Then they can carry on working on
the characters that you’ve given them.

One thing that wasn’t in the script is the interviews with the cast.
How did you get that idea?
It was actually in the script that we would insert these interviews,
but not where or when. So it was actually planned. Later on they
went into the film, then got taken out again. I kept editing them in
and out. The idea of the interviews has been used in a lot of films
before this. I can’t remember a case where I thought that these
inserts worked. But the fact that they ended up in the finished film
indicates that I thought they worked here. They were completely
improvised. The actors answer for their characters, and at the

7aie)
 Pa

same time they defend their characters. You can’t write those sorts
of answers beforehand, because they’d look false and constructed
at once.
The breaks caused by the interviews havea_kind of distancing
effect. But they’re also an affirmation. This whole idea of a few
people running round playing at being idiots gained a whole other
significance because of the interviews. If the members of the cast
could sit down afterwards and talk about their experiences, then it
must have meant something to them. And that validates the inter-
views, as well as giving impetus to the plot and the film as a whole.

Did you shoot the interviews after the end of filming?

Yes. They were done over three days, and I suppose we spent a
couple of hours on each character. At one point we had the idea of
doing a longer version of the film for television, because I’ve got
more than enough material. But I don’t think I have the energy to
do that any more.

You shot a lot of the film yourself. How much were you respon-
sible for?
About ninety per cent, I’d say.

And how did it feel?

It was great, really wonderful. It’s the best way to make a film.
Especially in this case, where the camera is inquisitive, invasive. I
was only aware of what was going on in front of and around the
camera. The camera movements that we ended up with are the
result of my own curiosity. I, and my camera eye, could move from
one situation and the people in that situation to something taking
place outside my field of vision. I was a sort of listening camera.
You end up with a sense of curiosity that I chose to retain in the
editing.

Have you come across any disadvantages of filming in this way?

The film was originally going to be shot on 35mm. That’s what it
says in the Dogme regulations. But a 3 5mm camera was obviously
too heavy and unwieldy to use in these circumstances. So 16mm

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23 ‘It was great, really wonderful to do the filming myself!’: Lars von Trier
like a fish in water behind the video-camera for The Idiots.

was suggested, under the loose interpretation that the rules only
meant that the film had to be distributed in 3 5mm. But in that case
we might as well shoot it on video, then copy it on to 35mm film.
That had the advantage that if you ended up editing an hour of
film down to two minutes, it’s a lot easier to maintain the same
concentration of expression if it’s shot on video. You can squeeze
a lot of energy into those two minutes. And that’s precisely what I
think The Idiots has got. It crackles with energy. That was very
important to me.

In your earlier films, like The Element of Crime and Europa, aes-
thetics played an important role. You gave up on that entirely with
The Idiots, after testing it and tinkering with it in films like The
Kingdom and Breaking the Waves. What do you think of that
development?
The Idiots was a liberation from aesthetics. According to the rules,
the film had to be shot in colour, but you weren’t allowed to
manipulate the colour in a laboratory, for instance. It felt good
not to have to consider that at all. With my earlier films I spent a
long time in the lab trying to get exactly the right colouring and

215
temperature for the film. Now I wasn’t allowed to do that, to
change the lighting or the tone or the colour at all. I didn’t have to
make any decisions at all. That was extremely liberating.
Quite often we edited scenes with regard to the sound, the dia-
logue, without worrying about the images, a bit like making a doc-
umentary. That was also a very interesting aspect of it.

The free style you used to film The Idiots has strong links to the
French New Wave and the developments that took place in film
during the early 1960s — New American Cinema, represented by
John Cassavetes, Bo Widerberg in Sweden, new Polish and Czech
cinema, and the British realists led by Ken Loach.

I don’t really think The Idiots matches my perception of that

period. The film is more about my longing for that period, which I
obviously wasn’t able to experience and take part in. But it was an
era that promoted freedom and liberation on every level. We went
into that wholeheartedly. Those nude scenes were fairly liberating!
They were extremely important. And fun!

You mean the actors in front of the camera weren’t the only ones
taking off their clothes?
Of course not! Behind the camera we stripped off as well. Me and
Kristoffer Nyholm, who was filming as well and is a bit older than
me. We loved it!
Another aspect of it is that you can keep control of your face;
you know which side is best and which angle is most flattering. But
you don’t have the same control with tits and willies. You just
don’t have that control when you’re naked. You have to give up
your vanity, one hundred per cent. That’s not a bad realization,
and it’s something you can make use of when you’re making a film,
even if the film in question doesn’t require any nude scenes.

There was a Swedish director who proposed similar ideas, Vilgot

Sjoman. There’s a line in one of his films that could be a motto for
the whole of his work: ‘When you undress people, they’re all the
same,
I don’t know if nudity lets you see someone as they really are, but

216
it does provide them with a useful tool. Relinquishing control, hid-
ing who they are. Because no matter which theory of creation you
believe in, you have to accept that man started his historical devel-
opment without clothes. So if we want to try to get back to that
starting point, you have to use nudity to get there.
In my naivety I thought the actors would end up fucking. But
they didn’t. They probably would have done in the r960s.. . Well,
there are always improvements to be made! But three of the mem-
bers of the group managed toget erections during shooting, which
wasn’t such an easy thing to do under the circumstances. So it
wasn’t a complete flop. But we had to seek professional help for
penetration.

Did you gain any experiences that you'd like to develop and use
again? Or do you see the film more as an interesting experiment?
I think it’s probably something I'd like to come back to every now
and then. Making a new Dogme film. I’ve never regarded any of
my films as an experiment that I’d like to develop and use for
something else. I do them for their own sake.

You've said that The Idiots is your most important film, particu-
larly with regard to your search for authenticity.
Yes, authenticity! This is authenticity in the guise of comedy. And
comedy isn’t really something you associate with authenticity. But
The Idiots had the same impact on me as The Element of Crime.
The Idiots was an all-encompassing experience for me, which is
how I felt about The Element of Crime, even though they’re com-
pletely different in character. But they were both serious milestones
for me.

The Idiots was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival,

along with Festen. You went to Cannes and took part in the festi-
val. What did you think of the reception there, particularly with
regard to both Dogme films and the Dogme manifesto?
Obviously the Dogme manifesto was noticed, because both of the
films were in the official programme. Everyone was talking about
Dogme. Dogme’s a good word, as well, in the same way that

S17
Communism is a good word. A lot of people thought it was a load
of rubbish, of course. But we managed to start a debate, which I
think was a good thing. It’s a long time since we had a debate
about why we make films, about what they should contain and
how they should look.
It’s interesting that Festen was such an immediate success. After
less than two months in Danish cinemas, 200,000 people have
seen it. And after three weeks, The Idiots is doing pretty well. It’s
nice that both films have been fairly popular.
I also met Martin Scorsese, who was chairman of the jury in
Cannes. He was very positive. What struck me most was that he
was so short. I realized then that the film wasn’t going to get a
prize. ’ve never had any luck at Cannes with short directors or
directors with an Italian background! First Polanski, then Cop-
polas

218
 14
Dancer in the Dark

SYNOPSIS

It’s the middle of the 1960s in a small industrial city in the state of
Washington. Thirty-year-old Selma has emigrated here from
Czechoslovakia with her son, who is now twelve. Selma works in a
factory making kitchen equipment, but she also does as much work
elsewhere as she can to save money for her son’s future. She still
finds time to rehearse a musical with the local amateur dramatic
group. Selma’s best friend, Kathy, is a constant source of support
and encouragement. Selma also socializes with Bill and Linda, her
neighbours in the trailer park where she lives. Bill has lost his job,
but he is keeping this from his wife. Now he wants to borrow
money from Selma, but she refuses. She can’t touch her savings.
One day Bill steals all her money. Selma can’t and won’t expose
him. When she loses her job as well, she asks Bill for the money. He
refuses to give it to her, claiming that it’s his money. In desperation
Selma shoots Bill. She is arrested and accused of murder and theft.
She can’t prove that the money was hers or that she was acting in
self-defence. She now awaits the trial where her fate will be decided.

+ + &

You had plans to make a musical for some time. Finally you made
Dancer in the Dark.
Yes, to begin with I wanted to call the film Taps. But that’s a pro-
tected title. So it was renamed Dancer in the Dark. It couldn’t be
called Dancing in the Dark, which was another idea, because
that title was taken as well. The musical is the third part in my

219
‘Goldheart’ trilogy, following Breaking the Waves and The Idiots.
First Bess and Karen, now Selma.

How come you ended up making another trilogy? First you had
the trilogy about Europe, with The Element of Crime, Epidemic
and Europa, and now the ‘Goldheart’ trilogy.

It’s probably the fault of you Swedes! Bergman and his trilogies . . .
But it’s fairly practical as well. It’s like being in a department store
and buying three pairs of socks in one pack. That’s how films are
sold these days, in packs of three. If a distributor wants one good
film, he has to buy two bad ones as well.

It also makes it easier for the critics as well. They can always
devote a column to comparing the three films in the trilogy. They
can write at length about the role of the heroine in each film. You
don’t think it gets a bit...
Boring?

No, just easier to compartmentalize the films? It’s not unusual in

other art forms, after all — painting, for instance, where artists go
through different phases and styles in their art, or within music.
It’s the idea of allowing yourself to repeat yourself, like Monet
when he painted the same bloody thing all the time. He kept on
and in the end they accepted him. He kept going, refining his art.
Using the word ‘trilogy’ indicates that there’s a theme that’s shown
in a new light in each film. Or that you’re trying to expand on an
idea. It turns into an excuse for concentrating on the same thing
once more. Hopefully it won’t be like this for the rest of my life.

When you were writing this third chapter in the ‘Goldheart’

trilogy, did you start with the female lead or with the story she’s
part of?
The female character came first. That was the case with Breaking
the Waves, and to an even greater extent in the new film [Dancer
in the Dark}.

And Karen in The Idiots?

220
I think she just happened to be passing. On her way from one film
to the other she stopped off in Sellerad.

There’s also a recurrent theme in your films, of idealists who fall

victim to their own beliefs and who, as a result, have to sacrifice
themselves.

(Laughter.) Yes, that’s probably a fair description. I don’t know

where it comes from. But it is noticeable. I can see that myself. And
there’s certainly a large chunk of naive idealism in Selma.

We might also draw comparisons to Medea. There you’ve got a

heroine who sacrifices her children. In Dancer in the Dark the
main character sacrifices herself for her child.
Well, the difference isn’t that great. I don’t think Medea’s life gets
much better after the sacrifice she felt herself compelled to make.
Not the way the story is interpreted in Dreyer’s version, at any
rate. After all, people are always sacrificing themselves completely
in Dreyer’s films — and in mine. It must be a particularly Danish
characteristic!
So what can we say about sacrifice? I can’t stop myself thinking
at least ten times a day about how pointless life is. You make your
entrance, then bow and disappear again. And I suppose you also
have time to get a bit of food inside you while you’re here. But
someone who sacrifices himself or herself is at least giving their
existence some sort of meaning — if you can see a meaning in doing
something for others, for an idea, a belief. The characters in these
films are struggling to bring meaning to their time on earth. It must
feel easier to die if you’re doing it for something you believe in.

Were you hoping to transform and recreate the musical genre with
Dancer in the Dark?
I was trying to give it the same freshness that I think the Dogme
films have, or Breaking the Waves, for that matter. But I prefer not
to start with a form or a style any more. I’d rather start with the
content of the story.
When I was writing the last draft of the script, I got a new idea
about the relationship between Selma and her son, which is pretty

221
 n

24 Dancer in the Dark: Bjork as Selma

important to the story: the idea that they both suffer from an
inherited disease that will eventually lead to blindness later in life.
In order to stop this happening, Selma is saving money for her son.
So when, towards the end, she is asked why she did what she did,
she replies that it’s because she wanted to hold a child in her arms
so badly!
I got the idea for this from a cartoon — a completely impossible
and terribly sentimental film. It’s set in New York, where a police-
man finds a doll in a rubbish bin. He gives it to an Italian woman
that he’s evidently quite fond of. She gives the doll to her daughter.
At one point the girl drops the doll on the floor, and as she’s trying
to find it again she feels her way along the floor, and only then do
you realize that she’s blind. It’s an extremely effective scene. As the
film goes on the girl talks to the doll constantly — just like Bess in
Breaking the Waves! She goes around the city with the doll, and it
acts as her eyes. But the film ends with the girl able to see her
mother for the first time in her life. It’s a ridiculously sentimental
but incredibly driven cartoon.
Blindness is a wonderful melodramatic tool. I also came to think
of Douglas Sirk and Magnificent Obsession. That’s a completely
incredible story. Jane Wyman is blinded in a car accident caused by

222
 ae,
Rock Hudson. He trains to become a doctor so that he can cure her.
Then they get married, of course! God, that’s pretty heavy stuff! I’ve
tried not to use such coarse strokes in Dancer in the Dark.

The film is set in the mid-1960s. Was that to draw associations to

the old American musicals?
No, if ’'d wanted to do a pastiche, I’d have gone further back, at
least to the 1950s, when several of the genre’s highpoints were cre-
ated. An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain and The Band
Wagon. That one was great, with Fred Astaire. And Singin’ in the
Rain, of course. I put a song from The Sound of Music in Dancer
in the Dark, ‘My Favourite Things’. It works well in the context
it’s in. It’s fun hearing Bjork’s version of it. But the real era of the
musical was already over by the time The Sound of Music was
made, though now and then something still turned up, like West
Side Story. And Cabaret, come to think of it.

Cabaret, of course, is a film that shows just how much you can do
with a musical. It’s interesting, not least because of its political
content and message.
That’s true, but now I’ve seen it so many times I’ve started to get
tired of it. But I was completely blown away by it when it first
came out. The problem with most musicals is that they’re so hor-
ribly American. Not even Cabaret managed to escape that. That’s
probably why West Side Story is my absolute favourite, because it
deals with such an archetypal American subject. West Side Story
also seems to me to be the most successful musical on film in most
respects, possibly also because it took the musical out into the
streets more than most others did.
Out of the old film-studio productions, Singin’ in the Rain is
probably the one I’m most fond of, not least because of Gene Kelly.
Fred Astaire was a tremendous dancer, but Gene Kelly was more
than that; he was also a leading choreographer, imaginative and
innovative, a bit like Bob Fosse later on. Incredibly clever! He was
badly hit by the McCarthy blacklists and had more and more trou-
ble finding work in Hollywood.
Gene Kelly is one of the things people think of when they think
of America, but he was radical in a lot of ways. But he disappeared

2S
almost completely from the screen. Well, he turned up in Jacques
Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, with Mademoiselle
Denewwe=-2

You took tap-dancing lessons yourself when you were younger...

Yes. I tried to learn how to tap-dance. I’ve studied more recent
techniques now. Tap-dancing has changed a lot over the years. It’s
partly been influenced by flamenco, and partly by what’s become
known as ‘Riverdance’.

Were you any good at tap-dancing?

No, it’s bloody difficult. But it was fun trying. It’s really a very
bizarre form of dance, especially in its American form. It’s a form
of artistry as well as dance. You can hardly call it classical dancing.
In flamenco it’s more integrated, more powerful. American tap-
dancing is seen more as an offshoot of that, with its roots in black
culture, barbershop dancing. It’s a strange form of dance, which
really doesn’t belong in musicals.

Tap-dancing is often highly static and doesn’t need a lot of chore-

ography, like in some of the routines in Singin’ in the Rain, where
Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor stand in
a row and tap-dance. There was one exception among the tap-
dancers: Ann Miller. Do you remember her? She used to rush into
scenes and race through a tap-routine that stole the scene. She was
a real virtuoso.
Yes, was she that dark-haired dancer with long legs? Who was
always grinning like an idiot? Yes, she was great. But Gene Kelly
also choreographed a lot of wonderful solo routines for himself.
The scene with the newspaper getting stuck to his shoes in Singin’
in the Rain, for instance. I also like the dance routines where every-
thing becomes completely abstract. There are scenes like that in
Singin’ in the Rain, and even more so in The Band Wagon, where
reality disappears and fantasy and dreams take over.

Dancer in the Dark is set in Washington state in the USA in the

mid-1960s. Why Washington?

224
 on

I'd never been there, but I chose Washington because they used to
execute people by hanging them, and hanging is one element of the
film. Yes, hanging can still happen, but the convict can choose a
lethal injection if they want to. And I was also inspired by the
American expression ‘tap-dancing at the end of a rope’.
I got a video from the prison where these hangings take place.
It’s a very strict, macabre ritual. Amongst other things, the knot in
the rope has to be tied in a special way. Whenever I’ve seen West-
erns, I always thought the knot was tied in a special way to make
it slide better. But here the knot’s supposed to break the convict’s
neck.

Have you seen Nagisa Oshima’s film Death by Hanging?

No, but I recently saw In Cold Blood by Richard Brooks, which is
a very good but incredibly unpleasant film. Execution scenes work
very well on film.

The fact that Selma comes from Czechoslovakia, was that because
you wanted to give her an Eastern European background?
Yes. And IJ think Selma’s a nice name. After all, I’ve got a daughter
called Selma! The name has its origins in that part of the world. I
also wanted an East European country as a contrast and counter-
weight to the USA. It’s all a bit Joe Hill. That’s a good film as well.
Do you remember the ending? With the bird flying past just as Joe
Hill is about to be shot? If Iremember rightly he doesn’t see it. He’s
got a blindfold on. He just hears it. A nice touch.

Dancer in the Dark includes a lot of Americana, the sort of thing

we associate with the USA, and with American films especially: the
courtroom scenes, for instance.
Yes, that’s a classic setting.

And the fact that Selma lives in a trailer park.

Yes, that’s a typical American way of life. But I got the idea from
an old film by Werner Herzog, Stroszek, with the actor from The
Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Bruno S. That’s another film I like a lot.
Herzog is a very original talent.

22.5
 £

What do you think was the most positive thing about the making
of Dancer in the Dark?
The most positive . . .? Well, when you refine the script to the
extent that I did, or simplify it to the extent that it almost becomes
a soap opera, then you get very good, clear scenes that are very
good to work on with the cast. They contain fairly basic conflicts,
because you’ve peeled away almost everything surrounding them.
There’s someone who’s going to die, there are two people in love,
and so on. The cast are also presented with portraits that are
almost outlines, which ought to be more interesting for them than
being given characters where everything’s cut and dried. That’s one
reason why it was an enjoyable film to work on.
Dreyer used to use that way of working as well. He worked
towards achieving ever greater simplification. But the difference
was that he never let the actors make any additions or elabora-
tions. That’s the complete opposite of what I try to do. I want to
give the actors the freedom to build on their own ideas. It’s a bit
like a children’s game of cops and robbers, where the characters
and conflict are clearly defined right from the start. So you can
move on from there.

But was there a written script that you and the cast followed?
I followed the same principles that I’ve used in my more recent
films. In the first takes we stick as closely to the written script as we
can, then for each new take we get further and further away from
it. It was incredibly interesting for me to work with Catherine
Deneuve, for instance. She’s wonderful at improvisation. Yet from
what she said, she’d never done it before. She saw it as a challenge,
and she was bloody good at it.

Catherine Deneuve said that she had found it inspiring to work

with a director who was so open to all sorts of discussions with the
cast.
I think I was, as far as I could be. But I was still surprised at how
open-minded Catherine was about our not entirely conventional
ways of working. One thing that might have been disconcerting
was that I sometimes give instructions to actors in the middle of a

226
aii

25 Dancer in the Dark: Selma (Bjork) with her friend and factory co-worker
Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). Deneuve contacted von Trier herself about the
part.

take. I shot most of the film myself, and quite often I gave direc-
tions in the middle of a scene, like in The Idiots. But all of the cast
accepted it without any problem.

Had you decided right from the start that you were going to film
Dancer in the Dark yourself?
Yes, because I'd already filmed The Idiots myself, and I wanted to
use the experience I had gained there. I wasn’t entirely happy with
the photography on Breaking the Waves, because we had a cam-
eraman who was far too skilful on that. The images were far too
beautiful, in my opinion. It’s difficult for a professional to do a bad
job!
Besides, it’s a completely different experience when you’re doing
the filming yourself and letting your curiosity steer the camera. I
think that’s important. I use the zoom a lot in Dancer in the Dark,
for instance. Quite suddenly, intuitively, on the spur of the
moment. I can zoom in at precisely the moment that something
unexpected happens in front of the camera. That’s my improvisa-

227
tion, my contribution to the improvisation. And it’s bloody good
fun!

You filmed some extremely long scenes with the actors improvising
in front of the camera, just as you did for The Idiots. I saw a scene
on the editing table that was maybe twenty minutes long, with all
the main characters, Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare,
David Morse and Cara Seymore, and Bjérk’s son in the film,
Vladan Kostig, a scene where he’s trying out his new bicycle. In the
finished film the scene lasts something like two minutes, and it
looks like you returned the scene to what was originally in the
script while you were editing it. Did you work like this throughout
the film? You let the actors improvise, but the final result is still
very close to the script?
Dancer in the Dark has a fairly strange structure, or rather an
extremely clear structure. To begin with you don’t know what’s
happening. Gradually all these loose threads come together and
then the drama continues in the traditional way. I like the first part
of the film a lot, the bit that’s more loosely structured. But even
here events have to be kept within certain boundaries. So maybe it
is like The Idiots, and maybe I have edited my way back to the
script again. But at the same time I hope I’ve succeeded in retain-
ing some of the gifts I was given while we were working. Such as
one line Peter Stormare comes out with in the scene on the bridge
you just mentioned: ‘Russian women are the same. My father said
Russian women are the same,’ and everyone laughs. And then he
says, ‘I don’t know what he meant though.’ I think that’s a funny,
mysterious line.
Later in the scene Bjork says to her son, ‘I’m not that kind of
mum.’ And her son replies, completely improvised: ‘Can’t you be
that kind of mum then?’ That’s a line I could never have written or
come up with myself. So you get given a lot of unexpected treas-
ures this way.

This rather haphazard way of introducing the characters means

that you force us to become active viewers. We have to think about
who these people are and about the relationships between them.
Hopefully the audience becomes more involved in the characters

228
and their fate as a result. If you give the protagonists clear, unam-
biguous characteristics right from the start, and lay out the condi-
tions for the drama, the story becomes one-dimensional. It’s better
to introduce your main character in situations that are completely
different, of a more transitory nature, so that she becomes more
human and understandable to the audience. Your palette has to
have both light and dark colours when you’re trying to paint a
portrait. And this is very consciously done in Dancer in the Dark.

It seems that with this method — and in the song-and-dance scenes

with one hundred fixed video cameras — you’re trying to find the
unexpected.
You could say that. The advantage of those hundred cameras is
that we got everything we expected from the scene, but at the same
time we also got a load of shots that were governed by chance,
images with a random effect, captured by fate, which could be
extremely expressive and telling.

How did you get the idea for the hundred cameras?
It was actually my old friend Tomas Gislason, the editor, whom I’d
fallen out with a long time ago, who came up with the idea. We
were sitting and chatting about how a musical ought to look. We
were talking about all sorts of things. And we agreed that the mod-
ern musical’s greatest strength should be the fact that it’s trying to
get away from everything artificial. I could compare it to filming a
scene with a juggler. Either you hire a real juggler who knows his
stuff, or you get an actor who stands and makes juggling move-
ments in the air, then you copy in a number of balls technically.
Both of these scenes can end up looking almost identical. But they
still wouldn’t feel the same. If someone’s standing there juggling
for real, we experience it in a completely different way to if we’re
watching someone pretending. It’s the same with stuntmen.
There’s a big difference between a stuntman jumping from a great
height, and throwing a doll instead.
That’s why we decided that all Bjork’s musical numbers in the
film should be live, that everything should be live transmission, a
direct broadcast of a performance. Unfortunately that turned out
to be impossible for various reasons. But the basic idea was that

229
the singing should be live, and when we shot those scenes, that’s
what we set out to achieve.
The majority — and best — of the musical numbers in the classic
film musicals were filmed using extremely mobile cameras. But at
the moment I’m at a point in my life where I’ve had enough of ele-
gant camera movements. But I’d always wanted to make a musi-
cal. If Iwas going to do it the classical way, I’d have used a camera
crane and a dolly and sophisticated camera choreography, and
song-and-dance numbers that had to be recorded in a studio. But
that’s just what I didn’t want to do.
That’s why it felt important to film those scenes in static shots. It
‘underplays’ the sense of musical. That’s how I see it, anyway. I’ve
also got a weakness for luxury. And luxury to me is not using a
camera crane when it would be natural to do so. It’s a pretty per-
verted luxury. So it felt very luxurious to set up one hundred cam-
eras to capture one scene. But if we were going to try to give the
impression of live transmission, then it had to be covered by as
many cameras as possible. Whatever happened on stage, it would
be documented. We weren’t able to follow that exactly in every
musical scene, which J think is a great shame. But in a couple of
places we got as close to the idea as we possibly could have.
Dancer in the Dark wasn’t a Dogme film, so I didn’t feel compelled
to follow any fixed rules. But the intention was always to give an
impression of live performance.

So only a couple of the cameras were manned by cameramen?

Yes, mostly to make sure we got close-ups of Bjérk. And they
would have been tricky to get any other way in the large locations
where we recorded the musical numbers. The main advantage of
these song-and-dance numbers was the presence of Bjork herself.
Mind you, we could have done with a thousand cameras in those
scenes! I said two thousand to Vibeke Windelov, the producer,
with the millennium in mind.

And then you would have got into the Guinness Book of Records
as well?
Exactly.

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Did you find it difficult editing the musical scenes?
Yes. What I always try to find in situations like this is some sort of
generally applicable system. And I was in part forced to find that
system after filming was finished. The scenes where the system was
most thought out in advance are also the ones that I think work
best. Like the song-and-dance number right after the murder. That
was also the easiest to edit, because there we had hung up all the
cameras rather like surveillance cameras. That gave a very partic-
ular atmosphere to the scene. Other scenes that weren’t so well
thought out from the start were a bit trickier to edit. But I’ve
learned a lot from it.

So what was the general system as far as editing the musical scenes
was concerned?
Well, the system was that there shouldn’t be a system! Just that we
should have so much comprehensive material on film that we
could do whatever we wanted with it. The problem was that the
separate images of the montage became too short, in my opinion.
I would have preferred considerably longer shots. But you can’t
have that with this method of filming. The cameras were posi-
tioned in such a way that the images wouldn’t hold for longer.
I wanted to be able to smother myself in close-ups of the people
in the musical numbers. They’re Selma’s fantasies, after all, and
she’s populating them with the people around her. And they are
themselves in these musical scenes; they act in accordance with
their roles in the realistic part of the film. That’s why I wanted to
be able to show them in greater close-up — but these shots, of
necessity, were far too short.

But thanks to the amount of filmed material and the wealth of

images you were also able to fashion a sort of choreography from the
editing, such as the first big song-and-dance number, in the factory.
That was probably the most problematic scene. I wanted to have
machinery in the foreground all the way through, but that wasn’t
possible. And more real sound, but that was difficult to modulate,
what with the singing and the music as well. I don’t know if it ben-
efited the film, but it might have done.

231
 The musical number on the train was more planned out from
the start. And that was also something of a mistake, because that
wasn’t the point of all those hundred cameras. Now you can see
quite clearly that a large number of shots were consciously com-
posed. Coincidence and chance aren’t as important here. The
advantage of the hundred cameras in the train scene is that we
were able to film it in just two days. If we’d used traditional meth-
ods it would have taken us a month to complete.
So the system never worked as well as it should have. Maybe we
should have had a thousand cameras. That would have been pos-
sible. Cameras aren’t particularly expensive, and they’re getting
smaller and smaller and easier to hide around the set. We hid ours
or, in certain cases, edited out the ones that ended up in shot.

Dancer in the Dark was shot on video. What were the advantages
and disadvantages of that?
I can’t see any real disadvantages: quite the opposite. Dancer in the
Dark was shot on video, in Panavision format. The transfer to film
worked really well, it really did! The images have got a very cine-
matic feel to them, even though you know that they came about
through a transfer from video. Excellent quality! In a couple of
years most films will probably be shot on video, and even now you
~ can see the possibilities of that.
I’m still very fond of old video footage, like the clip of Neil Arm-
strong walking on the moon. The shot with that strange object
along one side, something that looks a bit like a tripod. We sat up
all night watching those bloody pictures over and over again. They
look like they were shot in a studio. Of course, there are also
rumours that they were filmed in a studio somewhere on earth.

But the method you chose for Dancer in the Dark gave a mixture
of stylization and strong realism.
Yes, that was the basic idea of this film, a collision between man and
abstraction, or... how can I put it? The human and the artificial,
truth and untruth. Because the songs are born in Selma’s head, and
Selma is a humanist more than anything else. She values things that
people generally don’t see any value in any more: noises and human
frailty. And this is all turned into music and dance — by thought.

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26 Lars von Trier dons cans on location for Dancer in the Dark

How did you find the film’s choreographer?

One of the first preconditions for the film was Bjork herself. And
she was going to write music that would fit the idea of the film; in
other words, music that would express both Selma’s humanity and
the inhumanity of the musical genre. I think she captured that bril-
liantly. The idea was to express something similar in the dancing.
I'd looked quite closely at something called ‘stomp’, which seems
to be popular at the moment. It’s a style of dance where you use
anything you like to create a rhythm. First I was going to have an
older choreographer, an old hand who had worked in the old
musicals and who might enjoy helping to break the mould. But it
was hard to find someone like that, especially as ’m not really an
expert in the subject. So I started looking through a lot of music
videos. One of the few videos that had impressed me before and
that I thought was both attractive and challenging in terms of its
choreography was the video for Madonna’s ‘Vogue’. Vincent
Paterson was the choreographer on that. He’s also choreographed
a couple of Michael Jackson videos. So I thought if we were going
to have one of those video people, it ought to be him. And he was

233
 “ FS :& ,

incredibly good. He tried to create choreography that matched

what I thought about dancing. I was very impressed with him.

At one point in the film Selma says that she likes musicals because
‘in musicals nothing dreadful ever happens’. You prove that wrong
pretty categorically in Dancer in the Dark.
Yes, in some ways I suppose so. What I was trying to do was to
give the musical a more dangerous function. Not in a stylistic way,
though. I wanted to create a tighter atmosphere and arouse emo-
tions that the musical genre usually holds at a distance. The classic
musical is a sort of descendant of operetta. Opera, on the other
hand, allows itself an entirely different register and range as far as
emotions are concerned, and it was that sort of intensity I was
after.
Even so, I think I probably made it easier for myself by making
it clear that what we see are Selma’s daydreams and fantasies. But
I saw that as the only way of accepting the musical interludes in
the film. Maybe it was naive or cowardly. Because I think it ought
to be possible to develop the film musical considerably in this
respect, and be more adventurous. But that would require the
development of film, and greater sophistication in the audience:
back to the situation where you could sit and let the tears gush
' while some great interpreter of Wagner or Verdi is singing as hard
as he or she can and practically falling forward into the prompt
box. If we could reach that level of abstraction, then a whole new
world would open up to us.

Is this one of the reasons why you opened your film with an overture?
Ive always liked the grandiosity of overtures. Like in 2001 or
Lawrence of Arabia or West Side Story. Opening the film in that
classical, operatic way.
In cinemas that still have curtains, I wish they would play the
overture with the curtain closed, and only open them when the
film starts. One problem with that is that the curtains cover the
speakers. But that could be solved somehow. I'd like to lull the
audience into a particular atmosphere. That’s something I’ve
always tried to do — setting the mood before the film has properly
got going.

234
Something else that’s unusual in the film is that all the musical
scenes occur in connection with extremely unsettling situations,
and — for the central character — highly dramatic scenes.
That was consciously done. I wanted to introduce the musical
numbers into crisis situations for the protagonist, or into scenes
that could be regarded as turning points in the drama. This is true
even of the first numbers, even if the situation there is less pointed
than later on. I’m a novice at this, of course, but to me it seemed to
make sense to position the musical numbers like this.

The first musical number, the one in the factory, comes a long way
into the film, about three quarters of the way through.
That was the point, as I saw it. Well, in so far as there was a point.
But I like that idea: you know that you’re going to see a musical,
but it takes a while before anyone bursts into song.

The musical numbers have a strictness that contrasts in a very

dramatic way with the character of the rest of the film. We’re sud-
denly thrown abruptly into the situation at the very first scene of
the film, with the amateur dramatic group’s rehearsal.
I like the abrupt shift from the rather reserved overture to a situa-
tion that is also about the creation of music, albeit on a more mod-
est and less serious level.

Bjork’s performance is remarkable, and admirable considering her

lack of previous acting experience.
Yes, her portrayal was practically created in spite of herself. She
acted out of pure emotion, and that was naturally very painful for
her. And for a lot of the rest of us as well . . . It’s interesting,
because I had never tried to work in that way with an actor before.
When an actor is offered the part of a particular character in this
particular medium, they usually express great joy in the work. A
joy in the challenge that the role presents.

It’s easy to compare Bjérk’s role in Dancer in the Dark with Emily
Watson’s in Breaking the Waves...

235
Of course, but with the decisive difference that Emily acts her part
whereas Bjork feels hers. Which of them is best under the circum-
stances is difficult to say, but their working methods are entirely
different.

Selma’s daydreams, her musical fantasies, are reminiscent of Bess’s

conversations with God in Breaking the Waves. Was that a con-
scious decision on your part?
Well, it’s true in so far as both situations involve a dialogue orches-
trated by the lead character. You could probably say that they’re
directing their own dramas in their respective films. I’m not sure if
it works in quite the way that I imagined it would. Things never
turn out the way you imagine they would, which is perhaps just as
well.

In connection with the premiére of The Idiots you made your own
singing début. You recorded a single with the cast of the film as
backing singers.
It was a spontaneous idea we had, that I and ‘the idiots’ — i.e. the
cast of the film — would record something together. I’ve liked that
song by Peter Skellern, ‘You’re a Lady’, for a long time. So I
thought that I could do that, and the others could do something
else. It was a lot of fun. It’s a good feeling, singing.
I took singing lessons for five weeks beforehand. My teacher
said something good. She said that you have to lean into the music.
You imagine that you’re facing into the wind, and you lean into it.
It makes you feel as if you’re floating. You don’t remain standing.
That’s something I don’t think Bergman has done. Made a
record. But that feeling of being able to float in your art, I’m sure
he’s experienced that.

236
 THE SELMA MANIFESTO

Selma comes from the east. She loves musicals. Her life is hard, but
she can survive because she has a secret. When things get too much
to bear she can pretend she’s in a musical . . . just for a minute or
two. All the joy that life can’t give her is there. Joy isn’t living . . .
joy is there to make it bearable for us to live. The joy that she is
able to conjure up from within is her spark of happiness.
Selma loves The Sound of Music and the other big song-and-
dance films. Now she’s got the chance to play the lead in an ama-
teur version of The Sound of Music ... At the same time she is
about to fulfil her life’s greatest goal. It looks like dream and real-
ity are going to melt together for Selma.
So, popular music and famous musicals are what fills the spaces
in her brain. But she isn’t just a dreamer! She is someone who loves
all of life! She can feel intensely about the miracles that every cor-
ner of her (fairly grim) life offers. And she can see all the details...
every single one. Strange things that only she can see or hear. She’s
a genuine watcher . . . with a photographic memory. And it’s this
double-sided nature that makes her an artist: her love and enthusi-
asm for the artificial world of music, song and dance, and her keen
fascination for the real world . . . her humanity. Her art consists of
the musical interludes that she takes refuge in when she needs to
... fragments of Selma’s own musical . . . like no other musical . . .
it’s a collision of splinters of melodies, folk songs, noises, instru-
ments, texts and dances that she has experienced in the cinema and
in real life, using the components that she — because of her gift —
can find there.
This isn’t pure escapism! . . . It’s much, much more . . it’s art! It
stems from a genuine inner need to play with life and incorporate
it into her own private world.
A situation might be incredibly painful, but it can always pro-
vide the starting point for even a tiny manifestation of Selma’s art.
It can be incorporated into the little world that she can control.

237
 ABOUT THE FILM

In order to tell Selma’s story the film must be able to give concrete
form to her world. All the scenes that don’t contain her musical
fantasies must be as realistic as possible as far as acting, décor and
so on are concerned, because the scenes from Selma’s daily life are
the model for what she adds to her musical numbers . . . and these
have to be true to life. What she sees at the cinema is flawless . . .
painless . . . in other words, entirely at odds with real life . . where
it’s the flaws and the pain that make it shine. The intimation of
humanity ... of nature .. . of life!
So the events that form part of the story will partly be expressed
by the finest, most beautiful music, recorded according to unam-
biguous methods — and mixed with all the muddles and mistakes
that reality can contribute. These two orchestras will play together.
This is also the principle for Selma’s musical. Punk is the word I
would use to underline the whole thing: as I see it, punk is a collision
between tradition and nature. It isn’t destructive . . . it isn’t solemn,
because it’s trying to get back to basics . . . by confronting the system
with a modern, more honest view of life . . . and forcing life into
something that has become stale and enclosed . . . using violent
means. This is probably the only violence that Selma participates in?

The Music

The musical elements that include instruments and melodies come

from the musicals that she loves. They might be fragments that are
incorporated into different contexts . . . or instrumental sounds
that are used in unusual ways. Selma loves the cheapest musical
effects: riffs and other clichés . . . and she uses them in ways that
have nothing whatever to do with good taste . . . but these ele-
ments are mixed with the sounds of life, and through this she
becomes far from banal. She loves the simple sounds of living
expression . . . hands, feet, voices, and so on. . . (the sighs caused
by hard work?) . . . the noise from machines and other mechanical
things . . . the sounds of nature . . . and above all the little sounds
caused by chance . . . the creak of a floor when a floorboard

238
Wie

develops a defect. Her music extols dream on the one hand, life on
the other. She uses her own daily life to create music. Mostly to use
this positively .. . but occasionally to sing out her pain . . . It’s
important that he artificial is allowed to remain and sound artifi-
cial . . . we have to be aware of where things come from . . . the
clichés from musicals . . . and even more important: the sounds
from the real world... . they should never be ‘refined’ . . . the closer
to reality the better . . . we prefer a rhythm created by hand using
a rattling window than a sampled version of the same thing . . . if
sampling is to be used here, then it must take its place on the arti-
ficial side. The music should sway from one side to the other . . . let
there be occasions when only natural noises reign (stomp).
In any case, there will be an explosion of feelings and above all a
celebration of the joy that fantasy can bring. The sounds of reality do
not only come from machines and daily routine . . . they also come
from creative people like Selma who can use anything and everything
in every scene as an instrument! This is an area where Selma is supe-
rior. She can weave gold from mud. She can hear music in noise. . .
and when she shows it to us... . we can also hear . . . that the noise
contains life and it is as beautiful as any traditional, celebrated mas-
terpiece from the stage. Both sides are there . . . alike and not alike.

The Dancing
The principle is the same: Selma exploits and loves grand effects:
poses, homogeneity ... glamour . . . but she combines all this with
real people . . . with real movements and faults. With the chaos of
life. With acting. Efficiency and inefficiency. Her use of effects is a
challenge to good taste . . . and her consideration of life’s vicissi-
tudes is immense. Every arena is utilized. She can see possibilities
in every unexpected thing. The dancers can use whatever they like
in their dance and their music. She has worked in a factory for a
long time and takes pleasure in the slightest human gesture. She
knows what a body can do... when it does its best to attain per-
fection in dance, like in the big films, and she knows how the joy
and pain of everyday life can be expressed in movement. Selma
dances like a child. . . for herself . . . in ecstasy . . . it might look
terrible . . . but suddenly, in a fraction of a second, the whole room
is in harmony ... and she is its queen.

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 The dance has no facade . . . it faces every direction . . . it has no
boundaries . . . a fingertip touching a surface is dance! (If we
should need explanations or preparations for a shift from reality
... we can show it in the non-musical episodes.)

The Songs
The songs from the musicals provide the bass . . . and they’ve got
rhythm! They’re primitive . . . they’re Selma’s naive way of telling
a story through a song . . . but sometimes her fascination with
sounds, rhythms, words and rhymes fights through . . . then she
starts to play with it and forgets everything. The songs are Selma’s
dialogue with herself . . . even if sometimes they are put in other
characters’ mouths, who express her words, her doubts, fears,
joys, and so on. They are naive songs, with all the well-used words
from popular music .. . but often things don’t work for her . . . and
certain deeper truths seep out . . . When that happens Selma is
quick to turn it all into a game again... playing with words . . . or
fragments of words . . . like a child! . . . sheer astonishment at let-
ting sounds come out of her mouth!
And remember she enjoys mimicry . . . she can sound like a
machine or a violin. A mistake can suddenly also be used as an
effect ... a mispronounced word can gain its own meaning when
thirty people pronounce it the same way!

The Décor

Super-realism! Neither more nor less. No one should be able to say

that this is a film that wasn’t made on location . . . and that these
places have never been documented by a camera before. Every-
thing in these places and that is used in dance or music . . . must be
there because of the story or the location or the characters. We are
working against the principle of musicals entirely here . . . there are
NOT suddenly ten identical things to use in a dance. The same
applies to costume . . . there shouldn’t be a troupe of dancers wear-
.ing the same clothes. The costumes are also an expression of real-
ism, and they say something about the person wearing them.
And, as usual, it’s the sudden gaps in logic that make things
credible and alive! That make everything human! And this all has
its origin in Selma . . . She is the person seeing and speaking!

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 15
Dogville

SYNOPSIS

The beautiful fugitive, Grace, arrives in the isolated township of

Dogville on the run from a team of gangsters. With some encour-
agement from Tom, the self-appointed town spokesman, the little
community agrees to hide her, and in return, Grace agrees to work
for them. However, when a search gets underway, the people of
Dogville demand a better deal in exchange for the risk of harbour-
ing poor Grace, and she learns the hard way that, in this town,
goodness is relative. But Grace has a secret and it is a dangerous
one. Dogville may regret it ever began to bare its teeth...

* + &

LARS VON TRIER: I like the idea of calling Dogville a ‘fusion film’.
Unfortunately fusion is a really dull idea, but I can’t think of any-
thing better. You know the term ‘jazz fusion’? It’s pretty terrible, a
big mixture of different styles forced into the same monotonous
beat. Like fusion cookery, which is a sort of mix of a whole load of
different dishes. In the absence of anything better, I would still
characterize Dogville as a fusion film.
The most reactionary attitude to art has always been the ques-
tion ‘What is art?’ Followed by the statement “This isn’t art!’ Lim-
iting it, labelling it. In the same way, people have tried to contain
and limit film — and literature too, for that matter. I’m trying to
challenge that now by creating a fusion between film, theatre and
literature. That doesn’t mean filming a performance in a theatre,
though. Dogville lives its own life, according to highly specific
value criteria within the genre which, as of now, can be called

241
‘fusion film’. It’s important not to get bogged down in questions of
what is cinematic or non-cinematic, because it seems like we’ve
reached a position where everything is possible. The cinematic has
been purified to the point where it has all become completely lack-
ing in interest. There, a bit of cinema philosophy!
Naturally, everyone is going to abandon conventional film-mak-
ing now and start making fusion films! This is the only sort of film
that will be made from now on! So it’s good to have a name for it
. But, joking aside, that’s what I was trying to explore in
Dogville.

But this time you didn’t write a new manifesto before you started
filming?
No, it’s something I’ve worked out only recently, once the shoot
was already finished. But the real essence of the whole thing is that
the elements that have been taken from theatre and literature are
not just mixed up with the forms of expression offered by film. The
whole thing has to function as a cohesive fusion, thoroughly
blended. It isn’t just a case of mixing exotic spices into a Danish
dish to give it a bit of oomph. It should be a thoroughly blended
and harmonious emulsion.

There are elements in Dogville which are reminiscent of classic

Anglo-Saxon literature, from Fielding to Dickens, with the omnis-
cient narrator’s voice and the division into chapters, where the
chapter headings give an idea of what is about to happen.
That’s true, but it’s more likely I had a book like Winnie the Pooh
in mind when I was writing the screenplay. There, at the beginning
of each chapter you read things like, ‘In which Pooh and Piglet go
hunting and nearly catch a Woozle’, for instance. Things like that,
which really get your imagination going. One of my favourite films
is Barry Lyndon, which is also divided into chapters, although I
don’t remember if there are any clues as to what the chapters are
going to contain. The screenplay of Dogville is divided into scenes.
It might say, “The scene where this or that happens. . .’ ‘Scene’ is a
word with a lot of meanings, and I chose it on purpose. But later
on we switched to calling the scenes chapters, partly because of the
word’s literary associations. mi
*

242
 a

27 Dogville: Nicole Kidman as Grace

There are also certain smart dramaturgical reasons for using this
narrative technique. You give your audience certain expectations
concerning what is about to happen, but then something different
to what it expects happens. The introductory words help to build
the arc you have to set up if you’re going to conjure up a cinematic
experience. It becomes part of the framework.

If we look at the parallels to the theatre instead, Dogville is very

reminiscent of Brecht and instructional works of his like The Good
Woman of Setzuan or Mother Courage.
The film was certainly inspired by Brecht. I would prefer to call it
second-hand inspiration, though. My mother was really keen on
Brecht. She left home when her father broke her Kurt Weill records,
old 78s. She was only sixteen then, but Weill was her great musical
passion and she couldn’t bear what her father had done. Brecht was
something of a domestic god when I was growing up, whereas my
generation has tended to view him as a rather old-fashioned genius.
Fashions and tastes are constantly changing, of course.
But of course Dogville is inspired by Brecht. One of the starting
points was actually Pirate Jenny’s song in The Threepenny Opera.

243
I’ve mostly heard it in a version composed only recently. The erst-
while Danish pop star and musician Sebastian composed some
new music to the songs in The Threepenny Opera a few years ago,
where you can still feel Weill’s influence, although there’s a good
deal more noise. I listened to that a lot and was really seduced by
the great revenge motif in the song: ‘And they asked me which
heads should fall, and the harbour fell quiet as I answered “All!”’
I was really taken by the Danish version of the text. But seeing as
Dogville was going to be made in English, I watched the English
version, and it’s really lame. A lot weaker, missing a lot of the dif-
ferent nuances. In the Danish version Jenny is washing glasses —
‘Pas pa dit glas, mit born’ (‘Watch your glass, my child’). In the
English version, I think she’s mopping the floor.
It was those words in the Danish version of the song that gave
me the idea of the Henson family in Dogville being involved with
glass. So I kept that in, even though the film is in English and there’s
no mention of glasses in Pirate Jenny’s song in the English version.

There’s a distancing effect in the way you so clearly state ‘this is a

film’. You get that right from the first caption in the film, and at the
end the narrator says, “This is how the film ends, not ‘This is how
the story ends.’
Yes, that’s something I really wanted to underline. I don’t know why.
Maybe because of Brecht’s influence. I experienced Brecht’s dramas
at a fairly young age and have never returned to him or his work.
They exist in my memory mostly as feelings and atmospheres.

Can you say a bit more about how you got the idea of Dogville,
apart from Pirate Jenny’s song?

I think the idea came about one day when I was in a car with Jens
Albinus, the actor who played the lead in The Idiots. We happened
to be listening to that song, and I said I could see myself making a
film about revenge. I thought the most interesting thing would be
to come up with a story where you build up everything leading to
the act of vengeance. And of course these days I’ve got this notion
that I can only make films that are set in the USA, maybe because
I was criticized when Dancer in the Dark came out for making a
film about a country I’ve never been to. I can’t really understand

244
that sort of criticism. (But one reason for it might be that I criti-
cized the American justice system in the film.) And I daresay |
know more about America from various media than the Ameri-
cans did about Morocco when they made Casablanca. They never
went there either. Humphrey Bogart never set foot in the town.
These days it’s hard not to pick up information about America.
I mean, ninety per cent of all news and films comes from the USA.
I reckon it ought to be interesting for Americans to see how a non-
American who has never visited the USA regards their country.
And Kafka wrote an extremely interesting novel called Amerika,
and he’d never been there either. So from now on I only want to
make films that are set in the USA. For the time being, at least.
Dogville is also set in the Rocky Mountains, a landscape that
has always seemed to symbolize the USA for me. A powerful land-
scape, run through with deep ravines.

Did you get the idea for the form of Dogville at the same time as
the film’s plot?
No, when I wrote the screenplay I saw it as a conventionally
formed film. But it felt boring. Then I went on a fishing trip to
Sweden, and wasn’t having any luck! Suddenly I had the idea that
you could see the whole of Dogville as though laid out on a map.
That the whole story could be told on an unfolded map. I’m pretty
fascinated by the limitations that unity of space can give you.
Another source of inspiration was one of the best things I’ve seen
on television: Trevor Nunn’s adaptation of Dickens’ Nicholas
Nickleby with the Royal Shakespeare Company. It looked like the
actors were allowed to improvise from the text. It was a magnifi-
cent production. It was during the 1980s, if I remember rightly.
Everyone watched it! And it’s still as fresh today.
What was special about the performance was that it was sup-
posed to look as though it had all taken place on a stage. Nunn
edited in shots of the audience now and then, and used other dis-
tancing effects too, like the actors occasionally assuming the role
of narrator, or the scenery and props being changed in full view. I
can also see the influence of one of the classics of American thea-
tre, a play that just about every American schoolchild gets to know
at some point, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

245
 A long while before filming of Dogville got underway, we did a
fairly comprehensive series of test shots. After these tests I decided ;
that it shouldn’t look like we were filming a theatre stage but that
the whole thing should be stylized to such an extent that it couldn’t
take place in a theatre, although it should still have a sense of thea-
tre to it. But still a stylization. Consequently you can do whatever
you want to, of course, so you have to set limits to what you want
to do. You haven’t seen the finished film yet. You’ve seen a film
where you hear the actors’ voices and the narrator’s voice, but
there aren’t any sound effects yet. There’s still a lot of work to do,
because on the sound side of things there isn’t going to be any sort
of stylization: quite the reverse. The sound that you hear in the fin-
ished film will be completely realistic. You'll be able to hear the
crunch of gravel underfoot, for instance, even if there isn’t any (vis-
ible) gravel on the studio floor. And the way the actors have played
their scenes is nothing like theatre either.

There is also a suggestive tension in the mix of those big, wide

shots, where you see all the actors at once, and the very tight close-
ups of Grace (Nicole Kidman) and the other lead characters, par-
ticularly Tom (Paul Bettany).
The idea was that the actors would perform in a very realistic
way, even though the scenery and external set-up are far from
realistic. They’re real in the same way that a child’s drawing is
real. If you give a small child some crayons and ask him or her to
draw a house, you’ll get a house made of a few simple lines.
That’s how our scenery works. We’re establishing an agreement
with the audience under which these circumstances are accepted.
If that agreement is clear enough then I don’t think there are any
boundaries to what you can do. I haven’t had the slightest doubt
about that.
You can do almost anything on film now. With the help of com-
putersI can insert a herd of elephants into a scene, or create an
earthquake. But that doesn’t interest me. I’d rather draw the shape
of a dog on the studio floor to mark that there is a dog there, or put
a crate of beer in a corner to indicate a bar.

The plot of Dogvilleis largely driven forward by a narrator’s voice,

246
28 Dogville: Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) and Grace (Nicole Kidman)

rather in the style of old English novels. Was this the intention right
from the start, when you first got the idea for the film?
It was there right from the very start. As usual I wrote the screen-
play very quickly. It was a fairly large script, about 150 pages, but
once I have the idea for a story and start writing it down, the
words fall over each other and the writing process itself is quickly
done. I haven’t read much classic English literature. But I’ve read
Wodehouse, for instance, who uses the same sort of subtle, know-
ing tone that I’ve tried to get across in the text. After one screening
the artist Per Kirkeby (with whom I’d worked on Breaking the
Waves) said it reminded him of Dickens’ Great Expectations. I’ve
seen the film, and it too has a rather ironic narrator’s commentary
that reveals some of the characters’ underlying motivations.
It was an incredibly tiring shoot. Dogville was filmed in about
six weeks. That’s fast. Unnecessarily fast. I could have taken
longer, but at some point before we got started I recklessly
declared that I’d have the job done in no time. It was tough work
as well. I was running about all day long with that bloody camera
on my shoulder. It might strike some people as a confusing way.of
using the camera, but this is how I want it. I can’t defend the
247
29 Dogville: Grace (Nicole Kidman) and Chuck (Stellan Skarsgard)

technique apart from saying that I think it’s the best way to shoot
my films.

It’s a technique and an aesthetic you've used since The Idiots.

Yes, since then I’ve become more and more egocentric.

And have wanted to control your films more and more .. .?

Well, I don’t know about that. Well, maybe. But I think I get bet-
ter contact with the actors when I’m the one behind the camera. I
can communicate with them in a completely different way than
when I’m standing next to Anthony Dod Mantle and he’s the one
moving the camera — which happened once or twice.

Whatedid all these American Hollywood stars with whom you’ve

adorned your film make of this technique? It must seem very
strange to them.
I don’t know about that. I’m sure they’ve had a lot of opinions
about my way of working, but I think they’ve been pretty happy,
in spite of everything. I know Nicole (Kidman) was completely in

248
tune with what I was doing. I was asking her to do things in front
of the camera that were pretty demanding, and she just did them.
She «ae ly realized that a lot of thought had gone into this way
of working, and that there was a point to doing it this way.

When did Nicole Kidman become involved in the project?

She was there right from the start, because I wrote the screenplay
with her in mind as the female lead. I had seen her in Far and Away,
which wasn’t a particularly good film, and I had read an interview
where she said she would like to work with me. So I thought, ‘OK,
Pll write a film for her.’ I hadn’t met her at that point. I didn’t have
any idea that she was as tall as she is. She’s gorgeous.

You hadn’t seen her in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut?

I don’t think so. Isaw Eyes Wide Shut fairly late on. I think I’d fin-
ished the script by then. She’s incredibly good in that, though.

Yes, the film deteriorates once she’s out of the picture. And you
miss her presence throughout the rest of the film.
That’s right. We had to wait a while for her. She was busy with
other film projects when we were ready to go into production, so
we postponed the start of the shoot to suit her. There are bound to
be problems when you write a story with a particular actor in
mind, and she isn’t available. But we waited for Nicole, and ’'m
glad we did. I think she’s incredibly good in the film, a real asset.

And the other actors? Did you choose them all, or were they sug-
gested by your casting director?
It varied. I knew some of them from before, of course, like Stellan
Skarsgard. And I’d dreamed of working with Ben Gazzara for a
long time. The same with Philip Baker Hall, whom Id seen in
Magnolia. Some of them got in touch asking to’ be involved, like
Jeremy Davies and Chloé Sevigny. That was great, because they’re
both really good. We’ve been lucky. But what a bunch to try and
keep in check! Good grief, you can imagine! It's like'a children’s
nursery, only twenty times worse!
t wes

249
You filmed Dogville in sequence. What are the advantages of doing
that, do you think? e
I’d sooner talk about the disadvantages first, because they’re
clearer. Often it takes me a while to get into a new film, to find the
right style and form for it. When you film scenes out of sequence
you don’t notice the problems so much. But here the weaknesses
were much clearer. I think, for instance, that from the point of
view of the acting the film is weaker at the start, but the intensity
of the acting gets more pronounced the further you go. Of course
that’s also due to the story, which gets more dramatic and critical
as it develops. The acting is also better when the actors are relaxed,
and I probably wasn’t in a position to create the necessary calm,
supportive atmosphere at the start of the shoot.
But I’m so bloody ambitious. My ambition in this case was not
just that the entire film should take place on a black floor almost
entirely without scenery and include a number of Hollywood stars,
but also that it should be filmed in the shortest possible length of
time. Filming was finished in six weeks, and that’s sheer madness.
It was something I had made up my mind about, and I was ready
to do anything to make sure it happened. I demand far too much
of myself, and in the end it becomes a question of honour. That’s
why I think it makes good sense to make three films in a row in
exactly the same way, so I’m not forced to turn every cinematic
concept upside down yet again. Maybe it makes things a bit more
relaxing for me.
But the advantages, to move on to them, are fairly obvious. It’s
a big advantage for the actors to be able to follow their characters
and see them develop as the story progresses, and not to have to
jump back and forth in their characterization. But, as I said, we
should have had twelve weeks for the shoot instead. We lost quite
a few days when Katrin Cartlidge had to leave the set. I had to
record all her scenes again with Patricia Clarkson, who took over
the role at four days’ notice and made something very different but
also very personal out of it.
And now Katrin is dead. I miss her terribly.

To go back to Brecht, do you see Dogville as a morality play?

Perhaps I do. I often seem to manage to make things quite unclear

250
in my stories, so that the final message is thankfully not entirely
obvious. But morality? I’m not sure about that. When all’s said and
done, most films are about the fact that man is ultimately an ani-
mal who cannot control himself or his environment, but is gov-
erned instead by his insatiable desires — and by his stupidity. That’s
true of most characters, heroes and villains alike. Fortunately I
don’t know any more about man and his nature than anyone else,
so I can only come up with a story and shape it according to my
own thoughts.

At the beginning of Dogville the narrator says of the male lead,

Tom: ‘Although he did not blast his way through the rock, Tom
tunnelled through what could be even harder, namely the human
soul, deep into where it glittered.’ Is this what you want to say with
the film?
(Laughter.) In that case you could say that Tom is a sort of self-
portrait. As the Danish author Klaus Rifbjerg once put it: ‘I chop
myself up into a number of smaller pieces, and there I have the
characters in my story.’ I think that applies to me too. At any rate,
it’s true of Grace and Tom. I can argue from both their points of
view.
Do you know the child’s game where you have to adopt a point
of view and argue purely from that opinion? It was a good game,
and it was best when you had to argue in support of a point of
view that was completely opposed to what you yourself thought.
Arguing for inappropriate and wrong points of view. That’s why it
was such fun writing the speech given by Grace’s father (James
Caan) at the end of the film, where he expounds the shortcomings
of humanism. I was just trying to persuade myself of the opposite
of what I personally stand for. It was great fun! I’m very happy
with the exchange between Grace and her father, where he says
people are like dogs, and she replies that dogs only act according
to their nature and that we must understand and forgive them.
And her father replies: ‘Dogs can be taught a lot of good things,
but not if we forgive them every time they follow their nature.’
I possess a certain amount of self-irony, and I think maybe I’ve
bestowed that upon the character of Tom. Like when he’s sitting
looking at the view and daydreaming, and the narrator comments

25x
that ‘there are opportunities waiting on the horizon, which is a
suitable place for them’. You don’t have to prove anything. You
know that the opportunities are elsewhere; it’s far too much
trouble to try to reach them.

Tom is a remarkable mixture of idealism and calculation.

Yes, he’s thoroughly cynical. But then so am I! My very first film,
the short film The Orchid Gardener, opened with a caption stating
that the film was dedicated to a girl who had died of leukaemia,
giving the dates of her birth and death. That was entirely fabri-
cated! A complete lie. And manipulative and cynical, because |
realized that if you started a film like that, then the audience would
take it a lot more seriously. Obviously. Death and sickness are
things we have great respect for.

The word ‘arrogance’ occurs a lot in the film, both in the dialogue
and in the narration, with various meanings and in different tones.
That’s true, and perhaps the word is repeated a bit too often. My
biggest problem with the story was trying to explain Grace’s
change of attitude at the end. Admittedly the people of Dogville,
who have long exploited her, become more and more demanding
and cruel, but I still had trouble explaining Grace’s conversion.

Yes, up to then she has acted as a ‘Goldheart’ character, like the

tragic heroines of your ‘Goldheart’ trilogy, Breaking the Waves,
The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark.

Yes, Grace acts good-heartedly, but she isn’t — and will not be —a
‘Goldheart’ figure. She has to possess a capacity for something
else. I tried two or three tricks to get it to work, but I don’t know
if it does. This is where the concept of arrogance comes in, a
refusal to discuss things and analyse them. So I was happy to let
Grace’s father accuse her of being arrogant. She can’t understand
this and asks her father how he can say that. And he replies that
she is so irreproachably moral that no one can compete with her
for righteousness. She feels superior to the other townspeople, who
can’t see the difference between right and wrong.

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30 Dogville: Grace (Nicole Kidman), Gloria (Harriet Andersson), and
Ma Ginger (Lauren Bacall)

There is a similar discussion earlier in the film, between Grace and

Tom, where arrogance is a keyword but the conclusion is different.
Of course. Writing a script is extremely simple. You construct your
story and then you introduce a discussion of the key issue at three
chosen points, and you vary the conversations accordingly. It’s
quite mechanical. But it works well once you’ve found a way of
dealing with the mechanics.

In your ‘Goldheart’ trilogy you had women who sacrificed them-

selves for a man, an idea and for a task. There’s a different per-
spective in Dogville. The female lead, Grace, may be willing to
sacrifice herself, but there is a limit to her willingness to be sacri-
ficed, and her protest is violent. You’ve evidently had enough of
martyrs now.
Yes, I wanted to make a film about vengeance, and women’s
vengeance is considerably more interesting to deal with than
men’s. (Pirate Jenny is also a vengeful woman, of course.) Women’s
vengeance is more exciting. In some strange way it seems that
women are better at embodying and expressing that part of me.

253
The feminine part of me, perhaps! I find it easier to excuse myself
and my thoughts if I allow them to be expressed through a woman.
If I expressed the same thing through a man, you would only see
the brutality and cruelty.

Looking more closely at cynicism ... This business of making films

in English, is that because you want to guarantee a bigger audience
than when you made films in Danish?
Well, my most recent films are set in the USA, of course, so it is nat-
ural for them to have English dialogue. And because they’re set in
the USA, I’d like an American audience to be able to see them. But
one important feature of Dogville is that I wanted the narrator’s
voice to be recorded by a British actor. I don’t want to hide the fact
that the USA is being observed from the outside in this film.

You’re also planning a sequel to Dogville.

Iam. One of my problems is that I would really like to start a new
experiment in form with each new film. But now I want to com-
plete this experiment in a trilogy. Making three three-hour films in
this style, that would be pretty monumental!
I’ve already written another script, called Dear Wendy, but I’ve
passed that on to Thomas Vinterberg, because it’s a story that has
to be told in an entirely naturalistic style. I got tired of it, basically,
because I think this new world I’ve created with Dogville is so
inspiring that I want to carry on living in it for a bit longer. It’s
entirely uncharted territory. There’s a lot of potential here that I
want to carry on exploring.
Naturally there are problems involved in making three films in
exactly the same way stylistically. But the idea is to develop Grace’s
story. I’ve written the next part, called Manderlay, which is set in
the southern States, and I’ve got it in mind to set the last part in a
big city, Washington or somewhere like that. The trilogy could be
described as a depiction of a woman’s development to maturity.
Nicole (Kidman) has indicated that she would be interested in con-
tinuing to work together and playing the part again. It’s possible
that she’ll change her mind when she’s read the next script, but I
hope she won’t. It would be nice to do three films that connect
directly to one another. The next part starts two days after the end

254
of Dogville, so all three films will be set during the great depression
of the 1930s.
I like these long stories. It’s like reading a good book and leafing
ahead and realizing that you’ve got lots and lots of pages left to
reads:

255
ae

Filmography

SHORT FILMS

Between 1967 and 1971 Lars Trier made a number of short films
in super-8, the earliest about a minute long, the later ones seven
minutes long. The films are called Turen til Squashland (Trip to
Squashland), Nat, skat (Goodnight Darling), En revsyg oplevelse
(A Strange Experience ), Et skakspil (A Game of Chess), Hvorfor
flygte fra det du ved du ikke kan flygte fra? (Why Run from Some-
thing You Know You Can’t Escape?) and En blomst (A Flower).

Orchidégartneren (The Orchid Gardener, Denmark, 1977). Prod:

Lars von Trier, Filmgruppe 16. Script: Lars von Trier. Photogra-
phy: Hartvig Jensen, Mogens Svane, Helge Kaj, Peter Norgaard,
Lars von Trier (16mm, b/w). Editing: Lars von Trier. Music: flute
solo by Hanne M. Sondergaard. 37 minutes.
Lars von Trier (Victor Morse), Inger Hvidtfeldt (Eliza), Karen
Oksbjerg (Eliza’s friend), Brigitte Pelissier (third girl), Martin
Drouzy (gardener), Yvonne Levy (woman on bicycle), Carl-Henrik
Trier (old Jew), Bente Kopp (woman in film), Jesper Hoffmeyer
(narrator).

Menthe — la bienheureuse (Denmark, 1979). Prod: Lars von Trier,

Filmgruppe 16. Script: Lars von Trier, free adaptation of Pauline
Réage’s Story of O. Photography: Lars von Trier, Hartvig Jensen
(x6mm, b/w). Editing: Lars von Trier. Music: Erik Satie. 31 min-
utes.
Inger Hvidtfeldt (woman), Annette Linnet (Menthe), Carl-Henrik
Trier (gardener), Lars von Trier (chauffeur), Jenni Dick (old lady),
Brigitte Pelissier (woman’s voice).

257
 Between 1979 and 1982 Lars von Trier made a number of test
films on film and video during his time at the Danish Film School.
The earliest are entitled Produktion I, Produktion II, Videoovelse
>
(monolog) (Video Practice), Videoovelse (dialog), Lars & Oles
Danmarksfilm, Produktion III: Marsjas anden rejse (Production
III: Marsja’s Second Trip), Produktion IV: Historien om de to
egtemend med alt for unge koner (The Story of the Two Hus-
bands Whose Wives Were Far Too Young) and Danmarkovelsen
(Lolita) (Denmark Practice — Lolita).

Nocturne (Denmark, 1980). Prod: Lars von Trier. Script: Lars von
Trier. Camera script: Lars von Trier, Tom Elling. Photography:
Tom Elling (16mm, b/w and col.). Editing: Tomas Gislason. 8
minutes.
Yvette (woman), Annelise Gabold (woman’s voice), Solbjorg
Hejfeldt (voice on telephone).

Den sidste detalje (The Last Detail, Denmark, 1981). Prod: Den
Danske Filmskole. Script: Rumle Hammerich. Photography: Tom
Elling (35mm, b/w). Editing: Tomas Gislason. Music: Alban Berg,
‘Lulu suite’. 31 minutes.
Otto Brandenburg (Danny), Torben Zeller (Frank), Gitte Pelle
(woman), Ib Hansen (gangster boss), Michael Simpson (hench-
man).

Befrielsebilder (Liberation Pictures, Denmark, 1982). Prod: Den

Danske Filmskole. Script: Lars von Trier. Camera script: Tom
Elling, Lars von Trier. Photography: Tom Elling (35mm, col.). Art
Direction: Soren Skjzr. Wardrobe: Manon Rasmussen. Editing:
Tomas Gislason. Music: Mozart’s string quartet in C major, K465,
Ist movement. 57 minutes.
Edward Fleming (Leo), Kirsten Olesen (Esther).

FEATURE FILMS

Forbrydelsens element (The Element of Crime, Denmark, 1984).

Prod: Per Holst/Per Holst Filmproduktion in co-operation with
Det Danske Filminstitut. Script: Lars von Trier and Niels Vorsel.

258
Camera script: Lars von Trier, Tom Elling, Tomas Gislason. Pho-
tography: Tom Elling (35mm, tinted b/w, sodium lit col.). Art
Direction: Peter Hoimark. Wardrobe: Manon Rasmussen. Edit-
ing: Témas Gislason. Music: Bo Halten; the song ‘Der Letzte
Turist in Europa’ by Mogens Dam and Henrik Blichman. 103
minutes.
Michael Elphick (Fisher), Esmond Knight (Osborne), MeMe Lai
(Kim), Jerold Wells (Kramer), Ahmed El Shenawi (psychiatrist),
Astrid Henning-Jensen (Osborne’s housekeeper), Janos Hersko
(pathologist), Stig Larsson (pathologist’s assistant), Lars von Trier
(receptionist ‘Schmuck of Ages’), Preben Lerdorff Rye (girl’s
grandfather), Camilla Overby (first girl), Maria Behrendt (second
girl), Mogens Rukov (archivist).

Epidemic (Denmark, 1987). Prod: Jakob Eriksen/Element Film I/S

in co-operation with Det Danske Filminstitut. Script: Lars von
Trier and Niels Vorsel. Photography: Henning Bendtsen (3 5mm),
Lars von Trier, Niels Veorsel, Kristoffer Nyholm, Cecilia Holbek
Trier, Susanne Ottesen, Alexander Gruszynski (16mm, b/w). Art
Direction: Peter Grant. Wardrobe: Manon Rasmussen. Editing:
Lars von Trier, Thomas Krag. Music: Wagner, overture to
‘Tannhauser’, the song ‘Epidemic, We All Fall Down’ by Peter
Bach, Lars von Trier and Niels Versel. 106 minutes.
Lars von Trier (Lars/Doctor Mesmer), Niels Vorsel (Niels), Claes
Kastholm Hansen (film consultant), Susanne Ottesen (Susanne),
Ole Ernst, Olaf Ussing, Ib Hansen (doctors in film within film),
Cecilia Holbek Jensen (nurse), Svend Ali Hamann (hypnotist),
Gitte Lind (medium), Udo Kier (Udo), Anja Hemmingsen (girl
from Atlantic City), Kirsten Hemminsen (woman from Atlantic
City), Michael Simpson (chauffeur and priest).

Medea (Denmark, 1988). Prod: Bo Leck Fischer/Danmarks Radio.

Script: Lars von Trier after Carl Th. Dreyer and Preben Thomsen.
Photography: Sejr Brockmann (video, copied to film and copied
back to video, col.). Art Direction: Ves Harper. Wardrobe:
Annelise Bailey. Editing: Finn Nord Svendsen. Music: Joachim
Holbek. 75 minutes.
Kirsten Olesen (Medea), Udo Kier (Jason), Ludmilla Glinska
(Glauce), Henning Jensen (King Creon), Baard Owe (King

259
Aegeus), Solbjorg Hejfeldt (nurse), Preben Lerdorff-Rye (tutor),
Johnny Kilde, Richard Kilde (Medea and Jason’s sons).

Europa (Denmark, 1991). Prod: Peter Aalbeek Jensen, Bo Chris-

tensen/Nordisk Film in co-operation with Gunnar Obel, Gérard
Mital Productions, PCC, Telefilm GMbH, WMG, Svenska Filmin-
stitutet, Det Danske Filminstitut. Script: Lars von Trier and Niels
Vorsel. Camera script: Lars von Trier and Tomas Gislason. Pho-
tography: Henning Bendtsen, Edward Klosinski (Poland), Jean-
Paul Meurisse (3 5mm, b/w and col. CinemaScope). Art Direction:
Henning Bahs. Wardrobe: Manon Rasmussen. Editing: Hervé
Schneid. Music: Joachim Holbek. 113 minutes.
Jean-Marc Barr (Leo Kessler), Barbara Sukowa (Katarina Hart-
mann), Ernst-Hugo Jaregard (Leo’s uncle), Jorgen Reenberg
(Max Hartmann), Udo Kier (Larry Hartmann), Eddie Constan-
tine (Colonel Harris), Erik Mork (priest), Henning Jensen
(Siggy), Leif Magnusson (doctor), Lars von Trier (Jew), Cecilia
Holbek Trier (maid), Holger Perfort (Mayor Ravenstein), Anne
Werner Thomsen (Fru Ravenstein), Janos Hersko (a Jew), Talia
(his wife).

Riget (The Kingdom, Denmark, 1994). Part 1: ‘Den vita flocken’

(‘The White Flock’), Part 2: ‘Alliansen kallar’ (‘The Alliance is
Calling’), Part 3: ‘En frammande kroppsdel’ (‘A Strange Body-
part’), Part 4: “De levande dda’ (“The Living Dead’). Prod: Ole
Reim/Zentropa Entertainments ApS and Danmarks Radio in co-
operation with Sveriges Television (Malmo), WDR, ARTE,
Nordisk Film and TV-fond. Exec. prod.: Pater Aalbak Jensen, Ib
Tardini. Script: Lars von Trier and Niels Versel. Photography: Eric
Kress, Henrik Harpelund. Wardrobe: Annelise Bailey. Editing:
Jacob Thuesen, Molly Malene Stensgaard. Music: Joachim Hol-
bek. 63 minutes, 65 minutes, 69 minutes, 75 minutes.
Ernst-Hugo Jaregard (Stig C. Helmer), Kirsten Rolffes (Fru Sigrid
Drusse), Holger Juul Hansen (Einar Moesgaard), Soren Pilmark
(Jorgen Krogshgj), Ghita Nerby (Rigmor Mortensen), Jens
Okking (Bulder), Birgitte Raabjerg (Judith Petersen), Baard Owe
(Bondo), Solbjorg Hojfeldt (Camilla), Peter Mygind (Mogge), Udo
Kier (Aage Kriiger), Morten Rotne Leffers (dish-washer), Vita
Jensen (dish-washer), Henning Jensen (hospital manager), Laura

260
Christensen (Mona), Metter Munk Plum (Mona’s mother), Lars
von Trier (himself).

Breaking the Waves (Denmark, 1996). Prod: Peter Aalbeek Jensen,

Vibeke Windelov/Zentropa Entertainments ApS in co-operation
with Trust Film Svenska AB, Liberator Productions S.a.r.l., Argus
Film Produktie, Northern Lights A/S, La Sept Cinéma, Sveriges
Television, VPRO Television, with support from the Nordic Film
and Television Fund, Det Danske Filminstitut, Svenska Filminsti-
tutet, Norsk Filminstitutt, Dutch Film Fund, Dutch CoBo Fund,
Finnish Film Foundation, Canal +, DR-TV, Icelandic Film Corpo-
ration, Lucky Red, October Films, TV 1ooo, Villialfa Filmprod
OY, Yleis Radio TV-1, ZDF/ARTE. Exec. prod.: Lars Jonsson.
Script: Lars von Trier. Photography: Robby Miller (35mm, col.,
CinemaScope). Chapter illustrations: Per Kirkeby (digital video,
copied to film). Art Direction: Karl Juliusson. Wardrobe: Manon
Rasmussen. Editing: Anders Refn. Music: ‘All the Way from Mem-
phis’ (Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter), ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ (Bob
Dylan), ‘Pipe Major Donald MacLean’ (Peter Roderick MacLeod),
‘In a Broken Frame’ (Python Lee Jackson), ‘Cross-Eyed Mary’
(Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson), ‘Virginia Plain’ (Roxy Music), ‘Whiter
Shade of Pale’ (Procul Harum), ‘Hot Love’ (T. Rex/Marc Bolan),
‘Suzanne’ (Leonard Cohen), ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (Elton John),
‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (Elton John), ‘Whiskey in the Jar’
(Thin Lizzy), ‘Time’ (Deep Purple), ‘Life on Mars’ (David Bowie),
‘Your Song’ (Elton John), ‘Gay Gordons’ and ‘Scotland the Brave’
(Tom Harboe/Jan Harboe/Ulrik Corlin), ‘Happy Landing’ (P. Har-
man) and ‘Siciliana’ (Johann Sebastian Bach). 158 minutes.
Emily Watson (Bess McNeill), Stellan Skarsgard (Jan), Katrin
Cartlidge (Dodo), Jean-Marc Barr (Terry), Adrian Rawlins (Dr
Richardson), Sandra Voe (Bess’s mother), Jonathan Hackett
(priest), Udo Kier (man on trawler), Mikkel Gaup (Pits), Roef
Ragas (Pim), Phil McCall (Bess’s grandfather).

Riget 2 (The Kingdom 2, Denmark, 1997). Part 5: ‘Mors in tab-

ula’, Part 6: ‘Flyttfaglarna’ (‘Migrating Birds’), Part 7: ‘Gargan-
tua’, Part 8: ‘Pandemonium’. Prod: Svend Abrahamsen, Peter
Aalbzk Jensen, Vibeke Windelov/Zentropa Entertainments ApS
and Danmarks Radio TV-Drama in a co-production with Liber-

261
 bal ed ee
=< a oS aa

«wt ee

oy
ih at

ator Productions S.a.r.l., Norsk Rikskringkastning, Sveriges Tele-

vision (Malm6), La Sept ARTE, RAI Cinema Piction and the ~
MEDIA Programme of the European Union. Script: rai
Trier and Niels Veorsel. Photography: Eric Kress and Henrik
Harpelund. Art Direction: Jette Lehmann, Hans Chr. Lindholm.
Wardrobe: Annelise Bailey. Editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard.
Music: Joachim Holbek. 63 minutes, 79 minutes, 76 minutes, 78
minutes.
Ernst-Hugo Jaregard (Stig C. Helmer), Kirsten Rolffes (Fru Sigrid
Drusse), Holger Juul Hansen (Einar Moesgaard), Ghita Norby
(Rigmor Mortensen), Soren Pilmark (Jorgen Krogshgj), Jens
Okking (Bulder), Birgitte Raaberg (Judith Petersen), Baard Owe
(Bondo), Solbjorg Hojfeldt (Camilla), Peter Mygind (Mogge), Udo
Kier (Aage Kriiger and Lillebror), Erik Wedersoe (Ole), Morten
Rotne Leffers (dish-washer), Vita Jensen (dish-washer), Henning
Jensen (hospital manager), Ole Boisen (Christian), Louise Fribo
(Sanne), Otto Brandenburg (caretaker Hansen), Stellan Skarsgard
(lawyer), Klaus Pagh (bailiff), Lars Lunge (health minister),
Michael Simpson (man from Haiti), Lars von Trier (himself).

Idioterne (The Idiots, Denmark, 1998). Prod: Peter Aalbek

Jensen, Vibeke Windelov, Sven Abrahamsen/Zentropa Entertain-
ments ApS and Danmarks Radio TV-Drama in co-operation with
Liberator Productions S.a.r.l., La Sept Cinéma, Argus Film Pro-
duktie, VPRO Television, Holland, ZDF/ARTE, SVTI-Drama,
Canal +, RAI Cinema Fiction 3 Emme Cinematografica, with sup-
port from the Nordic Film and Television Fund. Script: Lars von
Trier. Photography: Lars von Trier, Kristoffer Nyholm, Jesper
Jargil, Casper Holm (video, transferred to 35mm film). Editing:
Molly Malene Stensgaard. Music: Kim Kristensen, ‘The Swan’
(Camille Saint-Saens), ‘Vi er dem de andre ikke ma lege med’
(“We’re the Ones the Others Won’t Play With’, Kim Larsen and
Eric Clausen). 117 minutes.
Bodil Jorgensen (Karen), Jens Albinus (Stoffer), Anne Louise Has-
sing (Susanne), Troels Lyby (Henrik), Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Jeppe),
Henrik Prip (Ped), Luis Mesonero (Miguel), Louise Mieritz
(Josephine), Knud Romer Jorgensen (Axel), Trine Michelsen
(Nana), Erik Wedersge (Stoffer’s uncle), Michael Moritzen (man
from the council), Anders Hove (Josephine’s father), Claus Strand-

262
 ww te

“berg (factory foreman), Lone Lindorff (Karen’s mother), Hans

SapaClemensen (Anders, Karen’s husband).

Dandiesin the Dark (Denmark, 1999). Prod: Peter Aalbxek Jensen,

Vibeke Windelov/Zentropa Entertainment ApS in co-operation
with Trust Film Svenska AB, Liberator Productions S.a.rl., Pain
Unlimited, Cinematographers, What Else Prod., Icelandic Film
Corporation, Det Danske Filminstitut, Svenska Filminstitutet,
with support from the Nordic Film and Television Fund. Exec.
prod.: Lars Jonsson. Script: Lars von Trier. Photography: Lars von
Trier and Robby Miller. Art Direction: Karl Juliusson. Wardrobe:
Manon Rasmussen. Choreography: Vincent Paterson. Editing:
Molly Malene Stensgaard. Music: Bjork.
Bjork Gudmundsdottir (Selma), Catherine Deneuve (Kathy), Peter
Stormare (Jeff), Vladan Kostig (Gene), David Morse (Bill), Cara
Seymore (Linda), Jean-Marc Barr (Norman), Jens Albinus
(Morty), TJ Rizzo (Boris), Vincent Paterson (Samuel), Katrine
Falkenberg (Suzan), Stellan Skarsgard (doctor), Udo Kier (Dr
Porkorny), Lars Michael Dinesen (defence lawyer), Zeljko Ivanek
(district attorney), Joel Grey (Oldrich Novy), Lars von Trier (angry
man), Paprika Steen (woman on nightshift).

Dogville (Denmark/Sweden/Britain/France/Germany/Holland, 2003).

Prod: Vibeke Windelov/Zentropa Entertainment ApS and Film-
mek in co-production with Memfis Film International AB, Troll-
hattan Film AB, Slot Machine Sarl, Liberator Sarl, Isabella Films
International, Something Else BV, Sigma Films Ltd, Zoma Ltd,
Pain Unlimited Gmbh, ArteFrance Cinema, France 3 Cinema.
Executive producer: Peter Aalbzek Jensen. Co-producers: Gillian
Berrie, Bettina Brokemper, Anja Grafers, Els Vandevorst. Co-
executive producers: Lene Borglum, Peter Garde, Lars Jonsson,
Marianne Slot. Script: Lars von Trier. Director of photography:
Anthony Dod Mantle. Production designer: Peter Grant (creative
consultant: Karl Juliusson). Costume designer: Manon Ras-
mussen. Editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard.
Nicole Kidman (Grace), Harriet Andersson (Gloria), Lauren
Bacall (Ma Ginger), Jean-Marc Barr (The Man with the Big Hat),
Paul Bettany (Tom Edison), Blair Brown (Mrs Henson), James
Caan (The Big Man), Patricia Clarkson (Vera), Jeremy Davies (Bill

2.63
Henson), Ben Gazzara (Jack McKay), Philip Baker Hall (Tom Edi-
son Sr.), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (Martha), John Hurt (Narrator),
Zeljko Ivanek (Ben), Udo Kier (The Man in the Coat), Cleo King”
(Olivia), Miles Purinton (Jason), Bill Raymond (Mr Henson),
Chloé Sevigny (Liz Henson), Shauna Sim (June), Stellan Skarsgard
(Chuck).

264
 Index

Figures in bold refer to illustrations. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick), 242

Von Trier’s films are shown in capital Barseback nuclear power station,
letters. 199-200
BBC, 175
Aabye, Finn, 83-4, 103 BEFRIELSEBILLEDER, see LIBERA-
Aalbek, Peter, 141-2 TION PICTURES
Aberg, Lasse, 149 Belleche, Lizzie, 83-4
actors, 152-6, 169 Bellefegour, the Phantom of the Louvre
Albinus, Jens, 244 (French television series), 147
Alien3 (David Fincher), 76 Bendsten, Henning, 91, 108, 142-3
Allen, Woody, 3, 72, 97, 152 Bergman, Ingmar, 10, 26, 186, 193, 211,
Amalienborg Palace, 212 2205-246
Amarcord (Federico Fellini), 28 childhood tales of, 6, 11
America (Franz Kafka), 126, 245 as a director, 151, 152
American in Paris, An (Vincente Minelli), a father figure, 151, 202
ne4 film as game, 207
Amistad (Steven Spielberg), 152 interviews with, 3
Andersson, Harriet, 253 as scriptwriter, 151
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky), 68 The Silence, 48
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 26, 29 toilet arrangements, 150
Arabian Nights (Pier Paolo Pasolini), 58 Winter Light, 109
Arestrup, Niels, 105, 112 Bergman on Bergman (Ingmar Bergman),
Armstrong, Neil, 232 90
Arnfred, Morten, 181, 182, 183, 187, 188 Bergom-Larsson, Maria, 179
Astaire, Fred, 223 Berlin, 85, 86, 128, 140
Atlantic City, 99 Berlin Wall, 86, 140
August, Bille, 64, 85 Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werder
auteurs, 159 Fassbinder), 58
Avid, 186 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 26
Axel, Gabriel, 95 Besson, Luc, 137
Bettany, Paul, 246, 247
Bacall, Lauren, 253 Big Blue, The (Luc Besson), 137, 144
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 47 Billy Liar (John Schlesinger), 27
Bahs, Henning, 54, 142-3 Bjork, 222, 223, 227, 228-30, 235-6
Band Wagon, The (Vincente Minelli), Bjorkman, Stig, ix—x
223, 224 BMWs, 140, 141
Barr, Jean-Marc, 134, 137, 138, 144, I71 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 33

265
Bogarde, Dirk, 26, 27, 82, 100 Epidemic, 87, 94-5
Bogart, Humphrey, 245 The Idiots, 217-18
Bolex cameras, 99 Canterbury Tales (Pier Paolo Pasolini),
Bonham-Carter, Helena, 154, 170 58
Boot, Das (Wolfgang Petersen), 84 Carlsen, Jon Bang, 99
Borg, Bjorn, 193 Cartlidge, Katrin, 37, 156, 170, I7I, 250
Bowie, David, 24, 27, 90, 167, 174 Casablanca (Michael Curtiz), 245
Brahms, Johannes, 57 Cassavetes, John, 216
Braque, Georges, 26 casting, 77
Brazil (Terry Gilliam), 31 Catholicism, 104, 139, 168
BREAKING THE WAVES, x, 4, 9°, 96, Cavani, Liliana, 26
121, 144, 163-78, 165, 170, 176, Chagall, Marc, 28
195, 202 Chandler, Raymond, 46
aesthetics, 215 CHANGE, 191-2
camerawork, 227 Christiansen, Hans, 32
at Cannes, 94 CinemaScope, 23, 146, 165
casting, 154 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles), 12, 72
characters Clarkson, Patricia, 250
— Bess McNeil, 164, 165, 170, 176, Clausen, Christian, 64
220; casting, 170-71; character, 163; Coca-Cola Company, 130
feminists and, 177, 178; home of, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 79
173; innocence of, 17; religion and, collaborations, 187
169, 176-7, 236; rewriting of, 177 Cologne,
93, 97, 98
— Dodo, 163, 170, 171, 177 Communism, 218
— Dr Richardson, 173 Communist Manifesto, 68
— Jan, 17, $7, 163, 165 Confidential Report (Orson Welles), 72
collaborations on, 186-8 Constantine, Eddie, 37, 137, 138
Dancer in the Dark compared to, 221, Copenhagen, x, I, 22, 31, 93, 188, 199
222, 235-6 European Capital of Culture, 181
dialogue, 57 Kingdom Hospital, 145, 147, 199
enthusiasm for, 85 a place to live, 14, 65
freer form of, 145-6, 156 Strindberg and Munch in, 28
‘Goldheart Trilogy’, 220, 252 Coppola, Francis Ford, 218
imagery, 197 critics, §5, 93, 120
inspired by, 208 Crone, Nina, 66
Jensen and, 135 Czech Republic, 216
Kirkeby and, 67, 247 Czechoslovakia, 219, 225
landscape of, 116
origins of,17 Dala horses, 193
power structures in, 129 Damned, The (Luchino Visconti), 126
storyboards, 45 Dance of the Vampires (Roman Polan-
Brecht, Bertolt, 243-4, 250 ski), 92
Brondsholt, 93 DANCER IN THE DARK, 219-40, 222,
Brooks, Richard, 225 227, 233, 244, 252
Bruno S., 225 Danish Communist Youth, 129
Bufiuel, Luis, 212 Danish Film Institute, 67, 83-4, 89
American films and, 102
Caan, James, 251 Clausen at, 64
Cabaret (Bob Fosse), 223 Dimension, 38
Cairo, 63, 69, 82 Element of Crime, 66
Calder, Alexander, 182 Epidemic, 98, 103
Cannes Film Festival, 64 Grand Mal, 85
Breaking the Waves, 94, 172, 177 Danish Film School, Copenhagen, 1
Element of Crime, 82-3, 90 Danish Resistance, 27

266
Danmarks Radio, 93, 114, 116, 120, Medea, 111-14, 116-18, 221
146, 198 religion and, 168
Dante Alighieri, 196 sacrifice, 221
Davies, Jeremy, 249 Dumas, Alexander, 179
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Duras, Marguerite, 23, 24-5
E17
DEAR WENDY, 254 East Berlin, 140 see also Berlin
Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima), 225 East Germany, 140, 141-2, 143 see also
Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Marc Germany
Garo); 32 editing, 186
Delius, Frederick, 47 Edstrom, Maria, 22
Delius (Ken Russell), 47 Egypt, 82
Demoiselles de Rochefort, Les, (Jacques Eichinger, Bernd, 84, 85
Demy), 224 Eiffel Tower, 80
Demy, Jacques, 224 8'/2 (Federico Fellini), 29
Deneuve, Catherine, 34, 224, 226, 227, Ekstrabladet, 192-3
228 Element-film, 94
Denmark, 188, 193 ELEMENT OF CRIME, THE, x, 22, 25,
Breaking the Waves received, 178 26, 62, 63-85, 65, 74, 78, 90, 94,
casting procedures, 77 99, 102; 132,152, 188
Europe and, 70 aesthetics, 215
for filmmaking, 102 characters
films and Second World War, 44, 126 — Commissioner Kramer, 63, 64, 75,
lesbians, 198 76
in Liberation Pictures, 44 e Fisher, 63, 65, 72> 745 76, 78, 79-82
Matador, 149 — Harry Grey, 63, 79, 80
Medea, 119 — Kim, 63, 65, 78
and Sweden, 199 — Osborne, 51, 63, 64, 70, 76
DENMARK’S MEMORY, 99 dialogue, 57
Depardieu, Gérard, 34, 137, 171 Elling and, 35
Department of Social Affairs, 105 Elphick in, 45
Despair (Rainer Werder Fassbinder), 82 filming, 44, 51, 206
Det er et yndigt land, (Morten Arnfred), Germany and, 48
188 humour in, 91
dialogue, 57 importance of, 217
Dickens, Charles, 242, 245, 247 inspiration for, 27
DIMENSION, 37, 38, 40 narrative, 100
Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri), 196 patinas, 36
DKU (Danish Communist Youth), 129 prize for, 82
Dogme 95, 159-61, 167, 201-3, 217-18, space, use of in, 50
LEE GEO von Trier in, 105
regulations, 213, 214 trilogy, 37, 47-8, 70, 95-6, 129, 220
DOGVILLE, 241-55, 243, 247, 248, Vorsel and, 37
253 Eliot, T. S., 80
Dolce Vita, La (Federico Fellini), 29 Elling, Tom, 44, 56, 67, 68, 69, 72, 82,
Dramatic Institute, Stockholm, 72, 73 83
dramaturgy, 101-2 influence of, 3 5-6
Dreyer, Carl Theodore, 21, 54, 71, 89, Elmo 8mm camera, 20-21
91-2, 164 Elphick, Michael, 45, 65, 74, 77-8, 78,
compared to von Trier, ix fab
humour and, 177 Emigrants, The (Jan Troell), 29
an influence, 175-6 Enigma of Kasper Hauser, The, (Werner
lighting, 108 Herzog), 225
the man and the work, 90 Ephron, Nora, 102

267
EPIDEMIC, 64, 71, 89-109, 92, 107, Festen (Thomas Vinterberg), 203, 217,
412751256126 218
characters Fielding, Henry, 242
— Claus Kastholm Hansen, 89, 98, 99 film noir, 46, 56, 71
— Doctor Mesmer, 91, 92 Filmgrupp 16, 23
cost, 85, 103 Filmstaden, 150
filming, 44 filters, 108
Manifesto 2 and, 87 Finnegan’s Wake (James Joyce), 79
von Trier in, 89 Fischer, Bo Lech, 114
trilogy, 37, 47-8, 70, 95-6, 129, 220 Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson), 30
Ernst, Ole, 64 flamenco, 224
Esprup Lake, 43 Fleming, Edward, 42, 43, 57, 58
Essen, Siri von, 8 Flon, Suzanne, 72
EU, 26 Fosse, Bob, 223
Euripides, 111, 114, 121 France, 150, 192
EUROPA, 25, 59; 73, 125-44, 134, 138, Frantex, 207
149, 171, 186, 188 Fredholm, Gert, 32, 33
aesthetics, 215 French New Wave, 203, 216
betrayal theme, 56 Frisch, Max, 104
characters Frege, Bente, 13, 170, 207
— Colonel Harris, 125, 138
— Katarina Hartmann, 125, 129, Gazzara, Ben, 249
132-4, 138, 139 Geelsgaard, 2
— Larry Hartman, 125, 138 Gelsted, Otto, 4
— Leo Kessler, 125-6, 129-31, 132-4, Gelting, Michael, 71, 83
134, 137, 138, 139, 143 Germany, 98, 126-8, 130-31, 139-41,
— Max Hartmann, 125, 138 192 see also East Germany
— Siggy, 125, 132 cities, 47-8, 103
— Werewolves, 125 Europe and, 70
filming,
45, 53-4 Second World War, 84-5
Germany and, 48 Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer), 71, 92,
The Grand Mal and, 86 108, 175
inspiration for, 27 Gielgud, John, 100
Obel and, 66 Gilliam, Terry, 31
prize for, 82 Gislason, Tomas, 35-6, 44, 83, 133, 146,
space, use of in, 50 154, 229
techniques used in, 108 God, 104, 129-30
von Trier in, 89, 105 Godard, Jean Luc, 42
trilogy, 37, 47, 70, 95-6, 124, 129, Gode og det onde, Det (Jorgen Leith), 25
220 Goebbels, Joseph, 128
Europe, 70 Goldheart (children’s book), 164
‘Europe Trilogy’, 47, 70, 95-6, 126, 220 ‘Goldheart Trilogy’, 220, 252, 253
Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick), 249 Good and Evil (Jorgen Leith), 25
The Good Woman of Setzuan, (Bertolt
Family Life, (Ken Loach), 29 Brecht), 243
Fanta, 130 Gorenstein, Friedrich, 67
Far and Away (Ron Howard), 249 Goretta, Claude, 34
Fassbinder, Rainer Werder, 77, 82, 90, 98 GRAND MAL, THE, 85, 86, 99, 140
filters, use of, 108 Grand Prix du Jury, Cannes, 177
Kier and, 105, 137 Great Expectations (Charles Dickens),
Sirk and, 139 247
von Trier’s opinion, 58 Greece, 112
Father, The (August Strindberg), 28 Greenaway, Peter, 31
Fellini, Federico, 28-9, 31, 117, 206 Groscynski, Alexander, 99

268
Guinness Book of Records, 230 Information, 93, 178
Guldhjerte (children’s book), 164 INSPECTOR AND THE WHORE,
THE, 89, 98
Haiti, 145, 195 internal monologues, 46
Hall, Philip Baker, 249 Ireland, 164
Hansen, Anne-Marie Max, 64 It’s a Wonderful Country (Morten Arn-
Hansen, Holger Juul, 150 fred), 188
Hassing, Anne Louise, 208, 209, 210
Hayworth, Rita, 72 J. B. (Niels Vorsel), 37
Hebrew, 71 Jackson, Michael, 23 3
Hedegaard, Rie, 208 Jacob, Gilles, 83
Hell (Dante Alighieri), 196 Jacobsen, Professor, 28
Hellberg, Bettina, 120 Jaregard, Ernst-Hugo, 128, 150,
Helmer, Stig G. see Larsson, Stig in adverts, 192-3
Hemingway, Ernest, 79 character, 135-7, 185
Hemlig sommar (Danish/Swedish TV on death, 39
series), 22, 22, 23 Dimension and, 37
Henning-Jensen, Astrid, 73 filming Europa, 53-4, 135-7
Hepburn, Katherine, 34 Kingdom and, 136, 149-51, 150, 156
Hermes Baby typewriters, 104 Kingdom 2 and, 199
Hersko, Janos, 72, 73, 74 Jargil, Jesper, 204, 205, 209
Herzog, Werner, 106, 225 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 105
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais), Jensen, Claus Kastholm, 85
24 Jensen, Henning, 132
Hitchcock, Alfred, 54, 77, 96, 115, 152 Jensen, Peter Aalbek, 3, 66, 135, 158,
Hitler, Adolf, 128 189, 203
Hoimark, Peter, 75, 76 Jews, 139 see also Judaism
Holbek, Cecilia, 13, 14, 37, 104 Joe Hill, (Bo Widerberg), 225
Hollywood, 2, 54, 223, 250 Johnny Larsen (Morten Arnfred), 188
Holst, Per, 64, 66, 67 Jorgensen, Bodil, 209, 210
Holte, 2 Joyce, James, 79
Homicide (Barry Levinson), 146, 155 Judaism, 8-9 see also Jews
Homo Faber (Max Frisch), 104 Juliosson, Karl, 173
Hest, Borge, 19, 177 Jutland, 65, 112, 114, 116, 164
Hove, Anders, 213
Hudson, Rock, 223 Kafka, Franz, 72, 126, 245
Humiliated, The (Jesper Jargil), 204 Kdrlekens smarta (Niels Malmros), 208
Huppert, Isabelle, 34 Kelly, Gene, 223, 224
Kidman, Nicole, 243, 246, 247, 248-9,
I Am Curious, Film, (Stig Bjorkman), ix, 248, 253, 254
x Kier, Udo, 58, 93, 105, 112, 137, 138
Idealister (Hans Scherfig), 148 Kieslowski, Krzysztof, 143
IDIOTS, THE, x, 17, 126, 152, 154-6, King of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson),
201-18, 204, 210, 215, 220, 227-8, 30
244, 252 Kingdom Hospital, Copenhagen, 145,
improvisation, 213, 226, 227-8 147, 199
In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks), 225 KINGDOM, THE, 71, 74-5, 89,
In Search of the Castaways (Robert 145-58, 150, 153, 157, 188, 195-6,
Stevenson), x, 27 LOD, DLS
In the Presence of a Clown (Ingmar car chase, 86
Bergman), 151 characters
India Song (Marguerite Duras), 23, 24, — Dr Aage Kriiger, 145, 157
25 — Fru Drusse, 145, 148, 153,
Inferno, II (Dante Alighieri), 196 — Judith, 145,

269
 — Krogshoj, 145 lighting, 68-9 ©
— Mary, 145, 157 Lind, Gitta, 107
— Mona, 145 : Lisztomania (Ken Russell), 47
— Professor Bondo, 145 Loach, Ken, 26, 29, 216
— Rigmor Mortensen, 145 London, 76, 77, 78, 107
— Senior Consultant Moesgaard, 145, | _ Loulou (Maurice Pialat), 34
150 Louvre, 26 _
— Stig C. Helmer, 145, 149, 150, 150 Lundtofte School, 9-11
critics and, 94-5 Liineberg an der Heide, 48
Element of Crime and, 90-91
filming, 18, 52, 166 Madonna, 233
Jaregard in, 136 Magnificat, 179
lessons learned from, 1o1 Magnificent Ambersons, The (Orson
Night Porter and, 26 Welles), 72
power structures in, I29 + Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk),
research for, 37 22%
storyboarding, 44-5 Magnolia, (Paul Thomas Anderson), 249
KINGDOM 2, THE, 52, 148, 158, Magnusson, Leif, 47
195-200, 198 Malmros, Niels, 208
KINGDOM 3, THE, 158, 200 Malg, 116
Kirk, Hans, 4 MANDERLAY, 254
Kirkeby, Per, 67, 167, 174, 247 Manhattan Murder Mystery (Woody
Klosinski, Edward, 143 Allen), 72
Knight, Esmond, 76-7, 83 Manifesto 1, 61
Kostig, Vladan, 228 Manifesto 2, 87
Kragh-Jacobsen, Seren, 203 Manifesto 3, 123
Kristianshavn, 31 Mannheim, 105
Kubrick, Stanley, 249 Mantle, Anthony Dod, 248
Kurosawa, Akira, 112, 118 Matador (Danish TV series), 149
KVINDESKIND, 54, 65 McCarthy, Joseph, 223
Me and Charlie (Morten Arnfred), 188
Lacemaker, The, (Claude Goretta), 34 MEDEA, 57, 105, 111-21, 166, 221
Ladas, 141 Meeting Venus, (Istvan Szabo), 112
Lady from Shanghai, The, (Orson Melville, Jean-Pierre, 3 5
Welles), 72, 132 MENTHE - LA BIENHEUREUSE,
Lagerlof, Selma, 6 23-4
Lai, MeMe, 65, 78, 78 Mercedes, 84, 98, 141
Lang, Jack, 26 Merchant-Ivory, 166
Larmar och gor sig till (Ingmar Bergman), Michelsen, Ole, 95
151 Mig og Charlie (Morten Arnfred), 188
Larsson, Carl, 28 Miller, Ann, 224
‘Larsson, Stig, 72, 149 Ministry of Culture, Paris, 26, 188
LAST DETAIL, THE, 35 Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky), 24, 25, 47
Last Train to Harrisburg, The (Udo Kier), Miss Julie (August Strindberg), 28
105 Monet, Claude, 220
Laughton, Charles, 82, 132 Monroe, Marilyn, 34
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean), 234 Moreau, Jeanne, 35
Lerdorff-Rye, Preben, 113 Merk, Erik, 130, 136-7, 138
Leth, Jorgen, 25 Morocco, 245
Levinson, Barry, 146 Morse, David, 228
Levring, Kristian, 203 Moscow, 128
LIBERATION PICTURES, 35, 36, Mother Courage (Bertolt Brecht), 243
41-59, 43, 64, 68, 735 193 motion control, 188, 192
—
Life on Mars (David Bowie), 174 MTV, 30, 35

270
Miller, Robby, 174 Paris, 2, 26, 112, 171, 187, 188
Munch, Edvard, 28, 100 « Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 58
Munich, 84 Passion of Joan of Arc, The (Carl
Murders in Skane, (Swedish TV series), Theodor Dreyer), 21, 117, 175
Paterson, Vincent, 233
I 3 6
“

Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, 182 Pearl Harbour, 80

Music Lovers, The (Ken Russell), 47 Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)
‘My Favourite Things’ (Richard Rodgers (Bille August), 64
& Oscar Hammerstein II), 223 <° perfekte menneske, Det (The Perfect
My Last Sigh (Luis Bufiuel), 212. Human), (Jorgen Leith) 25
‘Persilschein’, 139
Nabokov, Vladimir, 82 Petersen, Wolfgang, 84
Napoleon Bonaparte, 49 Philosophie dans le boudoir, La (Marquis
National Archive, Copenhagen, 99 de Sade), 33
Nazism, 56, 130 Phoenix, Arizona, 96
Nedergaard, Jeffrey, 76 Pialat, Maurice, 34
Neue Constantin Film, 84 Picasso, Pablo, 26
New Mexico, 181, 182, 183 Piil, Morten, 93
New Wave, 203, 216 Poland, 141-3, 216
New York, 97, 222 Polanski, Roman, 92, 105, 218
Nicholas Nickleby (Trevor Nunn), 245 Politiken, 120, 213
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2, 80 Pope, The, 104
Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton), Powell, Michael, 77
$25132 Price, Birgitte, 111, 116
Night Porter, The (Liliana Cavani), 26-7, Private Schultz, (television series) 78
34 Providence (Alain Resnais), 100
NOCTURNE, 35, 35, 45; 575 68 Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock), 96, 97, 115
Nordisk Film, 135, 136, 142 PSYCHOMOBILE, 181-9
Norway, 164 Pullman cars, 131
Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky), 14
Notte, La (Michelangelo Antonioni), 29 Raabjerg, Birgitte, 198
Nunn, Trevor, 245 Radhuspladsen, Copenhagen, 193
Nyholm, Kristoffer, 97, 98, 216 Rafelson, Bob, 30
Rampling, Charlotte, 26, 34
Obel, Gunnar, 64-6 Rasmussen, Manon, 77
O’Connor, Donald, 224 Rawlins, Adrian, 173
Olesen, Kirsten, 42, 56-8, 111-13, Réage, Pauline, 33
115-17 Red Army, 186
Olivier, Laurence, 77 Red Army Faction, 98
opening scenes, 115 Redgrave, Michael, 72
Ophiils, Max, 34 Reenberg, Jorgen, 138
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer), 108 ‘Reinheitsschein’, 139
ORCHIDEGARTNEREN, (The Orchid Resnais, Alain, 24, 100
Gardener), 23, 24, 31, 252 Reynolds, Debbie, 224
Oshima, Nagisa, 225 Riefenstahl, Leni, 85
Ostende, 164 Rifbjerg, Klaus, 109, 251
Our Town (Thornton Wilder), 245 Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, 145, 147,
Ovig, Peter, 211 199
Owe, Baard, 71, 113 Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge), 79
Pain of Love, The (Niels Malmros), 208 Ring Cycle, The (Richard Wagner), 36
Panavision, 166, 232 ‘Riverdance’, 224
Panduro, Leif, 151 Rocky Mountains, 2.45
Paradiso, II (Dante Alighieri), 196 Rolffes, Kristen, 153

271
 »~

Roma (Federico Fellini), 29 Sound of Music, The, (Richard Rodgers

Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare), & Oscar Hammerstein II), 223, 227,
III 237
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock), 54 Soviet Union, 102
‘Rosebud’, 12 Spielberg, Steven, 152
Rossellini, Roberto, 29 SS, 139
Royal Shakespeare Company, 245 Statens Filmcentral, 21, 23, 38
RUE, LA, 187-8, 192 Steen, Paprika, 156, 208
Ruhr, 36 Steenbeck editing tables, 20, 21
Rukow, Mogens, 32 Steiner, Rudolf, 204-5
Russell, Ken, 47 Sternberg, Josef von, 2
stikkere, 44
Sade, Marquis de, 33 stills, 172
Salo (Pier Paolo Pasolini), 58 Stockholm, ix, 72, 73, 127, 150, 182
Sanda, Dominique, 34 Stormare, Peter, 228
Sandgren, Ake, 69 The Story of O (Pauline Réage), 24, 33, 34
Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Strindberg, August, 2, 8, 28, 136
Bergman), 151 Stroheim, Erich von, 2
Scherfig, Hans, 4, 148 Stroszek (Werner Herzog), 225
Schlesinger, John, 27 Sukowa, Barbara, 108, 137, 138, 171
Schlondorff, Volker, 104 Surrealists, 68
Schwarzenberger, Xaver, 108 Sweden, 102, 178, 199, 245
Scorsese, Martin, 218 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 197
Scotland, 164, 168, 174 Sydow, Max von, 29, 45, 53, 70
scriptwriting, 121, 247, 253 symbolism, 55
Sebastian, 244 Szab6, Istvan, 112
Second World War, 44, 84-5, 126, 140 Szczecin, 141
Secret Summer (Danish/Swedish TV
series), 22, 22, 23 T. Rex, 173
Seven Samurai, The (Akira Kurosawa), Tamiroff, Akim, 72
118 tap-dancing, 224
Sevigny, Chloé, 249 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 13-14, 24, 47, 67-8,
Seymore, Cara, 228 102
SIDSTE DETALJE, DEN, 35 television, 119
Silence, The (Ingmar Bergman), 48, 202 Tetris, 15
Simpson, Michael, 92 Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini), 58
Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen), 223, Third Man, The (Carol Reed), 79
224 Thomsen, Christian Braad, 120-21
Sirk, Douglas, 139, 222 Thomsen, Preben, 114
Sjoman, Vilgot, 216 Thorsen, Jens Jorgen, 99
Skanska mord (Swedish TV series), 136 Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht),
Skarsgard, Stellan, 127-8, 152, 165, 199, 243-4
210, 248, 249 Tibet, 168
Dimension and, 37 title sequences, 115
von Trier praises, 171 To Have and Have Not (Ernest Heming-
Skellern, Peter, 236 way), 79
Skolimovski, Jerzy, 54 Touch of Evil (Orson Welles), 54, 72, 73
Skovshoved, 31 trains, 127-9
Skye, Isle of, x, 164, 174, 175 Trial, The (Orson Welles), 72
Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron), to2 Trier, Agnes (daughter), 6, 14
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky), 67 Trier, Benjamin (son), 13
Sollered, x, 210, 221 Trier, Caecilia (wife), 14
Son nom de Venice dans Calcutta desert Trier, Inger (mother), 4, 5, 8, 10, 11-12,
(Marguerite Duras), 25 27, 243

272
Trier, Lars von, ix, 2, 5, 22, 35, 43, 65, — uniqueness, 168
92, 138, 215, 233 family and background
anecdotes — childhood, 4-12
— Berlin police, 140-41 — children, 6, 13
— Cologne police, 97-8 — film school, 31-3, 35
— train conductors, 127-8 — house, 14-15
— trains, 127-9 — Judaism, 8-9
attitudes and opinions — origins of name, 1-2
— betrayal, 5 5-6 — parents, 4-6, 8-9, 11-14
— cancer, 39, 199, 207 — routines, 15-16
— cinema curtains, 234 — schooldays, 9-11
— cities, 47-8 — wives and partners, 13, 14
— critics; §5;°93, 120 others and,
— death, 39 — Bergman, Ingmar, 151, 202, 207
— director’s role, 19-20 — Brecht, Bertolt, 243-4
— directors and actors, 152 — Danmarks Radio, 114
— dramaturgy, ro1—2 — Dreyer, Carl Theodor, ix, 175, 177
— erotica, 33-5 — Duras, Margurite 24-5
— Europe, 70 — Elling, Tom, 36
— feminists, 178-9 — Elphick, Michael, 77-8, 79
— film as dream, 82 — Fassbinder, Rainer Werder, 58
— Germany, 70 — Gislason, Témas, 36
— good and evil, 81, 197-8 — Holst, Per, 66
— himself, 168 — Jaregard, Ernst-Hugo, 13 5-7,
— homosexuals, 58 150-51
— humanism, 143 — Jensen, Peter Aalbzk, 135
— hypnosis, 70-71, 106-7 — Kidman, Nicole, 248-9
— media, 93-5, 109, 120 — Knight, Esmond, 76-7, 83
— music, 47 — Leith, Jorgen, 25
— nudity, 216-17 — Munch, Edvard, 28
— painting, 28 — New Wave, 203
— pretentiousness, 57 — Obel, Gunnar, 64-6
— psychology in film, 49 — Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 58
—rain, 46 — Rafelson, Bob, 30
— religion, 104, 168 — Russell, Ken, 47
— sacrifice, 221 — Strindberg, August, 28
— science, 74 — Versel, Niels, 36-7
— tap dancing, 224 — Welles, Orson, 72-3
— therapy, 206 others’ films and
- toilets, 150 — Billy Liar, 27
— treacherous women, 56 — Danish speaking films, 66-7
— United States, 244-5 — English speaking films, 66—7
— vengeance, 253-4 — Homicide, 146
— water, 14 — In Search of the Castaways, 27
character — Italian cinema, 29
— anxiety, 207 — modern cinema, 31
— approachability, ix — musicals, 223, 229-30, 234
— controlling, 8, 44, 185-6, 206 — Night of the Hunter, 132
— guilt, 7 — Night Porter, The, 26-7, 34
— hypochondria, 39, 199 skills and working practices
— imspirations, 16-17 — acting, 105
~ phobias, 39, 43-4 — actors, 152-6, 169
— rationality, 205 — Avid, 186
— responsibility, 7 — camera technique, 45

273
 .

— casting, 77 Vorsel, Niels, 67, 97-9

— collaboration, 187 Epidemic, 89-90, 92-5, 101-3, 106
— dialogue, 57 Europa, 126-7,131, 133
— editing, 186 The Grand Mal, 140
— filters, 108 James Joyce and, 79
— improvisation, 213, 226, 227-8 The Kingdom, 147-9
— interior monologues, 46 Kingdom 2, 196, 197
— lighting, 68-9 Liberation Pictures, 48
— motion control, 188, 192 von Trier meets, 36-7
— opening scenes, II 5
— pages of script filmed per day, 52 Wagner, Richard, 36, 69, 234
— scriptwriting, 121, 247, 253 Wajda, Andrzej, 143
— stills, 172 Walkover (Jerzy Skolimovski), 54
— symbolism, 55 Warsaw, 128
— television, 119 Washington (State), 224-5
— title sequences, 115 Wasteland, The (T. S. Eliot), 80
— video, 215, 232 Watkins, Peter, 28
Trier, Ludwig (son), 13 Watson, Emily, 154, 165, 169-73, 170,
Trier, Selma (daughter), 6, 14 176, 177, 235
Trier, Sven (grandfather), 1 Wedersge, Erik, 208
Trier, Ulf (father), 4, 8,9, 12 Weill, Kurt, 243
Troell, Jan, 29 Welles, Orson, 54, 72-3, 80, 84, 85, 132
2001 (Stanley Kubrick), 234 West Berlin, 140 see also Berlin
West Side Story, (Jerome Robbins/Robert
Udmygede, De (Jesper Jargil), 204 Wise), 223, 234
Ulysses (James Joyce), 79 Widerberg, Bo, 120, 216
United States, 15, 48, 99, 102, 130, 225, Wilder, Thornton, 245
244-5 Williams, Tennessee, 120
Utvandrarna (Jan Troell), 29 Windelov, Vibeke, 174, 188-9, 230
Winding, Thomas, 22-3
Verlose, 23 Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne), 242
Valéry, Paul, 167 Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman), 109
Verdi, Guiseppe, 234 Winters, Shelley, 132
Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini), 29 Word, The (Carl Theodor Dreyer), 114
video, 215, 232 Wroclaw, 141
Vikings, 114, 117-18 Wyman, Jane, 222
Vinterberg, Thomas, 161, 201, 203, 254
Visconti, Luchino, 126 “You’re A Lady’ (Peter Skellern), 236
Vogue (Madonna), 233
Vogue (magazine), 25 Zealand, 43
voodoo, 145 Zentropa, 14, 16, 66, 135, 146, 158, 203

274
 The mercurial Danish director of Dogville, Dancer in the Dark and Breaking |
the Waves offers his inimitable views on life and art in this fascinating,
opinionated and witty addition to Faber's Directors on Directing series.

Lars Trier affected the lordly ‘von’ in his name while still a film student, in _
homage to such great movie-makers of the past as von Sternberg and von ~
Stroheim. His own brilliant directing career has been marked by similarly
grand ambitions, and he is unique in having premiered all of his features —
from the highly styled The Element of Crime to the digital-video-originated —
The Idiots — at the Cannes Film Festival. Trier is a rare item in contemporary —
cinema, a restless innovator and polemicist, as his participation in the back-
to-basics Dogme 95 movement attests; and these conversations with Stig —
_ Bjorkman, author of Bergman on Bergman and Woody Allen on Woody
Allen, trace the evolution of his career and thought in a m2z6a™SOx \at is

WC
both absorbingly detailed and engagingly humarauc Bin
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$15.00
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Cover design by Two Associates

Cover photograph by Jan Buus wwwJanBuus.com
Back cover images from Breaking the Waves, |
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788571 "20707?
© Zentropa Entertainments _ ISBN O— 571 20 — 707 —3