Babykiller?
The protagonist of Presidænten (The President), is the President of a tribunal of judges who leaves town for a while. When he returns, he learns that his estranged daughter has been accused of infanticide. He must recuse himself from the case, appointing his lawyer friend to handle her defense. Visiting her in her jail cell, he finds out that her mother forgives him for his past rejection. He had heeded his own father's wishes that he not marry a commoner, not knowing he'd already made her pregnant. Their child, now almost certain to be executed for allegedly killing her baby, affects the President's heart and inspires guilt over his past behavior learned from obedience to his dead father's will.
It's a film depicting the truism that society often can't figure out who the really damaging human beings are, while aggressively punishing harmless people. Directed by Carl Dreyer, the great Danish film master, The President is his first film, made in 1919. For reference, his famous The Passion of Joan of Arc is his ninth film.
As with Joan of Arc and in his 1943 masterpiece Day of Wrath, we get a depiction of authority figures convinced their beliefs are correct, while in actuality they're dead wrong. Dreyer in the last decade of his life wanted to make a film called Jesus, but he never made it farther than a screenplay which was later published as a book. I assume the same theme of judicial injustice would've been prominent in that unmade film.
Dreyer left notes about how he would've wanted his first film tinted. After his death in 1968, a good print of The President was found, the film was restored and tinting was applied, according to his design. Some of this is quite striking, especially the red tint applied to a torchlit procession on the celebratory night of the President's last day on the job. Shot at night, an unusual practice for cinema at the time and for many years after, the torches flow like liquid blood, a counterpoint to the fate of the President's daughter. There is, of course, a great deal to her backstory which comes out as she testifies in court. Due to her pregnancy, she was shunned by the mother of the baby's father, another man who's left a woman in the lurch, a major theme in the film.
The shunning is particularly harsh. She gets set upon, nearly bitten, by a dog. Her shoes are barely adequate, she's about to give birth, ends up unconscious in the woods with a dead newborn found beside her.
"She killed her own child!!!" believes Society.
The President goes to great career-ending lengths to save his daughter, an act that leads to his own destruction.
It's quite a beautiful and affecting film--a must-see for anyone interested in Dreyer's work.
Vic Neptune
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