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Offers a novel approach to the legacy of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1964 film, Gertrud

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgments

Why a book about Gertrud?

If Gertrud is such a great failure, how is it so great?

What does the "Real" have to do with Gertrud's "talkiness"?

Why was Dreyer so fascinated with the "real" Gertrud?

Why can't images and words (and men and women) stay married in Gertrud?

Why are Dreyer's images, when they "quote," so obscene?

So what, after all, is the tapestry quoting?

Is Gertrud an ekphrastic film?

At last, here's Dreyer's probable source -- but does it matter that we found it?

Is Dreyer quoting Botticelli?

What is Dreyer teaching us about the history of perspective, and how is Gertrud so interesting a contributor to this topic?

What does perspective have to do with free will?

How is Gertrud a kind of remake of The Passion of Joan of Arc?

How did the Virgin Mary really get pregnant (and is that why Gertrud is childless)?

Why are Joan and Gertrud so "hysterical"?

How does the struggle between Dreyer's words and images open us up to the Real?

Credits

Cast

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

James Schamus is a professor in the School of Arts, Columbia University, and the CEO of Focus Features. His screenwriting and producing credits include The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and a number of other films from his long collaboration with Ang Lee.

Reviews

"Schamus creates an intricate web of connections that sheds light especially on the conflicted relation of image and text in Dreyer's films." Brigitte Peuker, Yale University