Why Carl Theodor Dreyer’s unmade Jesus film is one of cinema’s great ‘What ifs’

Although, today, the racism of his Southern epic The Birth of a Nation (1915) has rightly made D.W. Griffith a controversial figure, there’s no denying the impact that his films had on his contemporaries. Indeed, for a young Carl Theodor Dreyer, then at the start of his illustrious career, a first viewing of Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) proved revelatory: “I went home completely dazed, overwhelmed by a new rhythm and the number of close-ups,” he later recalled.

Made as a response to those who called out the prejudice of The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance weaved stories from four different eras – Babylonian, Renaissance, Modern and, significantly, Biblical – into a study of bigotry through the ages. Given that intolerance would go on to be one of the defining themes of Dreyer’s work, it’s perhaps not surprising that he was drawn to Griffith’s film.

Soon, Dreyer was at work on his own multi-era epic, Leaves from Satan’s Book (1920), in which Satan lures people into temptation during the Spanish Inquisition, the French revolution, the Finnish civil war and – once again – the time of Jesus.

Though the script for Dreyer’s film, by playwright Edgard Høyer, was actually written in 1913, Leaves from Satan’s Book is often seen as a response to Griffith’s work. In both films, the Biblical-era stories ultimately focus on the death of Jesus: in Griffith, the Pharisees (Jewish leaders) are depicted as hypocrites who are quick to condemn Jesus; in Dreyer, Satan appears in the guise of a Pharisee and plants the seeds which lead to the crucifixion.

Over time, Dreyer would rethink this approach to Jesus’s death and, wishing to combat the intolerance he believed it spread, began plans for his most cherished unmade film: a realist epic on the life of Jesus. Although never realised, the film’s published manuscript gives an insight into Dreyer’s plans.

Dreyer first considered returning to the life of Jesus shortly after The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), but it was only when the Nazis took control of Denmark, in 1940, that the idea began to crystallise. As the occupation took hold, Dreyer was struck by the heavy oppression of the Danish people, feeling that the situation mirrored the political reality of Jesus’s time, when Judea was under the rule of the tyrannical Roman Empire.

Dreyer was also riled by the Nazis’ unbridled anti-Semitism. His empathy for the Jewish people had been stoked while making Love One Another (1922), in which czarist authorities incite a pogrom against the Jewish people as an attempt to quell the 1905 Russian revolution. A key text in Dreyer’s ongoing examination of intolerance and persecution, the film featured actual Jewish refugees from Russia. Working alongside them left a lasting impression, fuelling Dreyer’s lifelong desire to fight anti-Semitism.

Now deeming the primary cause of anti-Semitism to be the blame placed on Jews for the death of Christ, Dreyer envisioned an epic production that would shift the culpability to the occupying Romans who, Dreyer believed, executed Jesus as a political prisoner. Under this conception, Jesus is mostly on good terms with the Pharisees, while the pot is stirred by anti-Roman revolutionaries who want to use Jesus for their own ends: it is they, not Jesus, who chase the money-lenders from the temple. Their attempts to use Jesus as a figurehead in their freedom-fight sticks, and the Romans, worried about future uprisings, force the Pharisees to give Jesus up for crucifixion – a purely political decision, undertaken by the Jews with a heavy heart.

In all, Dreyer sought to portray Jesus realistically, not only as a man of flesh and blood but also as a practising Jew; one who, for instance, observed the Jewish custom of touching the mezuzah (a small casing containing verses from the Torah) when entering a doorway. Perhaps most strikingly, Dreyer turns the Last Supper into a Passover celebration during which the action moves away from Jesus and his disciples into a number of neighbouring houses, with each house taking us a stage further through the Seder (the Passover ritual).

Such a focus on the details of Jewish existence, backed by years of fastidious research, add a real sense of time and place to the manuscript, grounding the story in the (Jewish) reality of Jesus’s life in a way quite unlike the usual portrayals of Christ – including Dreyer’s own previous, rather traditional attempt.

Tantalisingly, Dreyer wanted to make his Jesus film in Hebrew, in colour and in widescreen. The reason why the film was never made is often attributed to an unreliable American producer, Blevins Davis, to whom Dreyer felt a misplaced sense of loyalty. Looking at the facts, though, there is also the sense that, perhaps, Dreyer became afraid to realise his ambition, lest it fail to live up to his own expectations.

Still, if the unrealised nature of the project remains one of the great misfortunes of cinema history, comfort can be found in the way it fed into Dreyer’s late masterpieces Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964). By the time these films were made, Dreyer was so consumed by thoughts of Jesus that he used them as opportunities to test out ideas: thus, Ordet became an examination into making miracles believable, while Gertrud was an attempt to give new weight to dialogue through a momentous, statuesque, scriptural stillness.

As consolation prizes go, these two masterworks are the best that one could ever hope for.