Du skal ære din hustru / Master of the House / Du sollst deine Frau ehren

Viktor is a domestic tyrant. Always in a bad mood, he turns his wife Ida’s life in their two-room apartment into a living hell. His former nanny takes notice and persuades the long-suffering Ida to seek respite from the marriage grind by moving to her mother’s house. The nanny meanwhile sets about taming the family despot and turning him into a model husband… Seen from a present-day perspective, this satirical family drama – Dreyer’s only comedy – seems nothing if not very modern indeed. As in all his films, the director’s production design was inspired by the work of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916). As art historian Jordi Balló wrote “The entire film is imbued with the quietist, sculptural sense of Hammershøi’s paintings, with the same desire to make the composition and sparse elements of the set transcend toward a realistic intensity, verging on abstraction, which accentuates the feeling of a domestic prison”. With music by Lars Fjeldmose.