Master Of The House

Carl Theodor Dreyer - 1925
Initially, the fast, late silent edit seems to move around fast; from a pretty wide, deep, realist establishing of the house, to side-views and others, which is definitively not continuity. It analyses the scene. Then it strikes; Dreyer has put huge amounts of this film around eyeline matches.
Considering Dreyer, in my experince, is one of the great directors who reinvents their cinema with every work, I was surprised, in that way, how formally similar this was to 'Jeanne d'Arc' (just three years later). That is; close-ups, the study of the face, eyeline matches (studies of a face; 'Vivre Sa Vie'). With generally strong side light, strong but misty, and the average tone of the palette being a dark grey.
Dreyer, like Hitchock (or rather Hitchcock, like Dreyer; I am sure Hitchcock knew and fully took in Dreyer), not only uses these matches but also displays sheer brilliance, thought, an exciting camera position, invention, in every shot. The embrace from behind the head, so we only see the hands come around the neck, for example..
Dreyer is also deeply creative in his montage. Cutting in the father's entry with the smiles or cries of the baby, for example, who is not plot-wise key to the action, gives the sense of the whole tone. Kuleshov at work
The plot is incredibly simple; yet it is a joyful and engrossing film to watch. The focus on the everyday chores is done briskly but, in the scheme of film time, arguably slow. We usually have a still camera, but occassionally those very neat horizontal tracks are made. These are revelatory moments; a connection is made across the field where people seem ignorant of each other. Even from one hand making a sandwhich to another.
What is the abiding sense of the film. Dreyer makes his actor's great; they express straight, primal emotions, daring to go to each other, yet retain a complexity and the enigma of the face, perhaps due to the cinematic medium and the eyeline matches. This film can be upbeat, brisk, but one also can't say there isn't a sense of impending doom as well. They are all watching each other, voyeurs even. One binds the other, as the plot goes the relations are reversed. There is something deeply sado-masochistic in the conclusions. Dreyer goes beyond the accepted emotions.
One more thing; Dreyer is here pretty sociologically acute. This is the baseline, an often seen as 'unglamorous' social issue, which Dreyer deals with. As he does economic hardsip, unemployment. This is perhaps Dreyer's, of what I have seen, most economically minded film, which I particularly appreciate. It, like all his films, deals with the seemingly average lives, not spectacular in on the surface overlarge; but gives them weight, lets us see, for all their mistakes, a dignity and the truth there.