Ordet

On a Danish farm in the 1920s, the Borgen family is divided by religious conflict: the patriarch is a revivalist Christian, one son believes himself to be Jesus Christ, another has married a woman from a rival pietist sect. When a death occurs, Johannes — the mad son — performs what appears to be a genuine resurrection. The long final scene is among the most powerful in cinema.

Dreyer achieves the cinematically unprecedented: he films a miracle and makes it credible. The film argues that genuine faith — as distinguished from religiosity, dogmatism, or sentimentality — is a form of madness to the world but constitutes its own evidence. The minimalist mise-en-scene becomes a formal analogue for the patience of belief.