Dreyer’s Jesus. He wanted to make a film, now his screenplay is a book

Iperborea publishes the text of the great Danish director: his divinity is provocative and almost magical in distributing miracles, but resurrection is not contemplated. A must-have book for film lovers and beyond

Already during the thirties, the great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer conceives the idea of ​​a film about the figure of Jesus. The project strengthened during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, with the suggestive equation between the ancient Roman rulers and the evil invaders of the present. Dreyer writes a meticulous screenplay – then reworked several times – and after the war he signed a contract with the American producer Blevins Davis, an unreliable character. The director is dominated by the impresario, the screenplay remains on paper. After sixteen years of continuous postponements, finally in 1967 Dreyer freed himself and accepted Rai’s offer to produce the film for Italian television. Again he works on the text, but the following year he dies without having succeeded in realizing his most ambitious project.