丹麦小村教堂

     The history of Danish country church architecture is told by showing scenes of how the church was used by the congregation, beginning with the celebration of mass in a small and simple wooden church 800 years ago, and ending with the congregation singing in a village church of to-day       The development and the growth of the pattern of church architecture is shown      　　Dreyer in this film shows a series of churches from different periods with churchgoers in period clothing       Each period is separated by a shot of a church bell double-exposed on the sky       Although the film has a vibrant and instructive way of communicating the different epochs and styles to students, it does not exhibit the artistic quality that usually distinguishes a Dreyer film, except perhaps in some of the costumes, which were originally made for Day of Wrath      　　The board of Dansk Kulturfilm in autumn 1945 decided that their planned church film would exclusively be about village churches       Dreyer would rework the script that was written by editor and folk high-school principal Bernhard Jensen, aided by a committee of experts consisting of architect H       Lønborg-Jensen and Victor Hermansen, curator at the National Museum of Denmark       Dreyer had a first draft ready in mid-March, entitled Kirken er et gammelt Hus (The Church Is an Old House), which was distributed to the members of the committee for their comments      　　In the last half of July, Dreyer and Victor Hermansen travelled the country to look at suitable churches       They researched the details and at Dreyer’s request a number of technical changes were made to the churches, including the removal of porcelain holders for electrical wiring in Tveje Merløse Church      　　On 4 July, Dreyer went in advance to Ringkøbing       Shooting was set to start a few days later with the arrival of the director of photography, Preben Frank, who had fallen off a ladder and broken his leg, Fortunately, he was ready to cautiously start working again within a few days, with his leg in a cast      　　Otherwise, the production went without a glitch       Everywhere, Dreyer said, they were well received at the vicarages and they had no problem getting enough extras       On 1 august, they returned to Copenhagen with almost all their footage in the can       They only needed to film the church in Skelby, where the weather had been against them, plus a Swedish wooden church in Hedared       The economy was distressed so soon after the war, especially when it came to foreign currency, but there were no real wooden churches left in Denmark and building an interior set in the studio would be too expensive      　　The finished film was shown for the first time on 24 September 1947 to a small, closed circle, which included the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs       In December 1947, as was Dansk Kulturfilm’s standard practice, the film was presented to the press, politicians and others on a programme with four other short films