Leaves From Satan's Book

"Leaves Out of the Book of Satan" is a complex motion picture for someone who had only directed one film, but it is certainly a setback in Carl Theodor Dreyer's growth. Compared to "The President", a small but vivid work, this long film is a pompous exercise that in the end distracts from the best efforts in his filmography. Much has been said about the influence of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" on this film, but little is told about the Danish long tradition of feature-length films and how these probably influenced the American filmmaker. So it is a two-fold affair that adds very little to the appreciation of "Leaves Out of the Book of Satan". Here Dreyer deals with Evil as a decisive factor in the evolution of mankind, in a sort of mystic treatise for which he managed a big budget, several casts and four stories. Helse Nilssen plays Satan very well, first as a Pharisee inducing Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus, then as an Inquisitor during the imperial days of Spain, followed by the impersonation of a fanatic Jacobin during French revolution, and finally, in (then) present day, as a Bolshevik monk (resembling Rasputin) during Russian invasion of Finland. The first two parts and the conclusion last around 30 minutes each, but the French episode is long, and Satan enters late in the story. Unfortunately I share the opinion that this film is of utmost interest only to Dreyer's completists.

Carl Theodor Dreyer's second feature film is an ambitious study of evil through the ages, but the great Danish filmmaker is years away from his masterpieces of The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud. The inexperienced filmmaker was influenced by D.W. Griffith's 1916 Intolerance and aimed to map out the path of the Devil using Griffith's innovative filming style as a guide. He added on his realistic approach to the subject matter, as he believed realism to be the most essential part of any film.

Like its inspiration, Intolerance, Leaves from Satan's Book contains stories from four historical periods linked thematically. Unlike Griffith's film though, Dreyer chose not to cross cut between stories, which makes for a less confusing film.

Satan is the character who links the four stories. The film starts with his fall from grace, as told through inter-titles, and God's proclamation that he walk the Earth tempting humanity. For each soul that turns from God, 100 years will be added to Satan's sentence, but for every person who resists his temptations, 1000 years will be removed. Hoping to fail in his duties so that he may be admitted back into heaven, Satan tries to get men to betray what they hold most dear in four eras of history.

The first section of the film is the biblical story of Jesus' betrayal by Judas. The next story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. The third section of the film takes place during the French Revolution. The final segment is set in the Finland during the Russo-Finnish war of 1918. As a film, this wasn't Dreyer's best, but it was fairly entertaining. This early Dreyer film shows his almost innate ability to compose attractive images within the limits of the frame.

Though this film isn't the grand spectacle he was hoping for, Dreyer did a wonderful job with it. His use of the film frame and style of story telling make this a movie interesting and attractive to watch.

With a pair of films under his belt, including the well-received The Parson's Widow, Carl Th. Dreyer set out to make a movie akin to D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, a huge series of interrelated stories in an anthology, spanning millennia. While Dreyer's third film doesn't reach the highs of Griffith's masterpiece, ultimately being fairly uneven, there's more than enough here to recommend it. This is a hugely ambitious work with often striking visuals and an interesting throughline that centers around an interesting recurring character.

The four stories are the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, a monk giving up his unrequited love to the Spanish Inquisition, a servant becoming a Revolutionary leader and betraying the aristocratic family he's helped hide, and a Finnish woman being forced to choose between her family and her part in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Out of these four, the first is the best, the most beautiful visually, and the most consistently acted. The least of the four is the last, which introduces too many characters for too short of a story and ends up just kind of confused as to what its overall purpose is. The Spanish Inquisition section feels remarkably like Dreyer's later The Passion of Joan of Arc, at least in storytelling focus, and is actually quite good. The third in the French Revolution is pretty good, bringing in Marie Antoinnette as a sympathetic figure who's supposed to mirror the plight of the aristocratic family the Chambords.

Through all four of these stories is Satan himself, and Dreyer takes an interesting take. Inspired somewhat by the tale of Job, Satan is viewed as a tool of God, sent to Earth to tempt mankind away from God where each soul he successfully turns away from God adds 100 years to his punishment while every soul he fails to turn away removes 1,000 years from his sentence. Satan pursues his mission with grim dedication, moving through the centuries in different guises (a Pharisee, the Grand Inquisitor, a Revolutionary official, and a Bolshevik officer), accomplishing his mission without any joy in it. His every success takes him further into human history to corrupt, away from God's Grace, while his only success is a tragedy of death.

However, as interesting as Satan's part is in the story, one thing I wish could change about the film is the explicit nature of Satan himself. He's played by the same actor in all four segments (Helge Nissen), but he wears so much makeup from one to the other that without the direct pointing out of him by intertitles his renewed presence would get lost on all but the most eagle-eyed viewers. I wish Dreyer had kept his appearance largely uniform across all the tales, and just shown this singular figure appearing in every tale, tempting humanity with maybe a reveal at the end that he was Satan, though I feel like the title of the film would have been evidence enough of whom he was.

The other problem I have to the film can be exemplified by the over-reliance on intertitles, especially in the final section. The Finnish part is about a husband and wife who manage a telegraph for the White Mensheviks. Their neighbor wants the wife for his own and turns to the Soviets in order to throw the husband in jail and allow him to have the wife. There's also another woman who watched the Soviets murder her father and wants to join the White army with little sense of anything other than vengeance. The focus ends up being the wife in the end, but the man who betrays is a large focus for a large amount of time, and Satan's part ends up feeling confused. There's a lot going on here, and the film has to rely heavily on intertitles to explain who's who and what's what. Coming two hours into a nearly three hour film, my patience was running thin on the vast amounts of exposition necessary in intertitles just to get this story going, and the addition of the girl going to war, who ends up playing a part in the story's finale that could have been largely interchangeable with any other background character, just adds to the frustration.

That being said, the section around Jesus is the best thing Dreyer had made up to that point, and the Spanish Inquisition section is a close second. The advantage these two sections have is that the first is one of the best known stories in the world so there's little need for lots of intertitles dragging the film down explaining things, and the second is so straightforward that it can largely play on its own after a certain point without needing lots of explanation.

This is also where Dreyer is coming into his own as a visual stylist. There are compositions from beginning to end that feel so much more than just setting up a camera on a tripod and letting a scene play out. There's a heavy use of irises to highlight subjects in frame, interesting compositions that highlight individual characters, and heavy uses of shadows that feel German inspired. He had also taken many lessons from Griffith, much more than just the idea of an anthology film through time. There's a very strong use of intercutting action that helps create a genuine sense of excitement at time, as well as use in the third section that helps draw the comparisons between Antoinette and the Chambords.

This is an ambitious film from a young director that took him two years to make. It's not a perfect film at all, ending far less well than it starts, but there's a very strong sense of visual composition, thematic purpose, and clarity of narrative that it represents Dreyer overreaching his grasp, but only so much. There's really compelling stuff in this film, and it represents the continued growth of the young Danish filmmaker.

Satan is exiled from Heaven by God and doomed to stay on Earth. God states that for each soul who falls in temptation, his sentence will be increased in one hundred years; for each soul who resists, his sentence will be decreased in one thousand years. Satan is followed in dark moments of mankind history: the betrayal of Jesus by Judas; the Spanish Inquisition; the French Revolution; and the Finnish Civil War of 1918.

"Blade af Satans bog" is an ambitious (or pretentious) Danish epic about evil temptation through time. Carl Theodor Dreyer made this movie inspired in D. W. Griffith's epic "Intolerance". I saw the version released in Brazil on VHS with 108 minutes running time; therefore a version totally mutilated and it would be unfair if I write that the screenplay is messy. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Páginas do Livro de Satã" ("Pages from Satan's Book")

God has set a few rules for Satan. He is to provide over historical events, usually playing one of the bad guys. If things go the way we would expect, he must endure more time in the underworld. If he can find a human willing to sacrifice for good, he will get a thousand years to his credit. Unfortunately, with the Crucifixion, the Inquisition, the French Revolution, and the invasion of the Reds into Finland, there's not much for him to pad his bank account. The stories are so bleak and hopeless. Women and children are not spared, and since we pretty much know what is going to happen, little suspense. It's one of the few cinematic treatments of Marie Antoinette where she comes off as upstanding (no cake here). The upside is, naturally, that there is wonderful film-making going on here with great images and depth. One should see as many of these films as possible in order to get a sense of our film heritage. This one may have taught a lot; Dryer taught a lot.