The President

Dreyer's first film has gorgeous cinematography - this guy is amazing because he just pulls this stuff out of his hat, his cinematic aesthetic is unprecedented, he has nothing to lean on - but it's not a very good movie. The very theatrical melodrama was still in vogue then and this is no departure from the norm. However, it's not bad either, not bad at all.

Dreyer's directorial debut (though about his 24th screenplay produced); it adapts a popular Austrian novel from 1884. The plot has a lot of the overwrought melodramatic developments you expect to see in a Danish production of the time, but the presentation seems more interested in the underlying melancholy. The nice directorial touches are really the main source of interest: expressive use of shadow, closeups, attempts to bring the focus to faces and hands, etc.