Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer made only 14 full-length feature films in a career spanning almost 50 years, from his classic silent The Passion of Joan of Arc to his penultimate masterpiece, Ordet (”The Word”) in 1955, based on the play of the same name by Lutheran minister (and Nazi victim) Kaj Munk.

Ordet tells the story of Morten Borgen, a prosperous farmer whose three sons tear at his religious teachings. The eldest has renounced the religious beliefs of his ancestors and claims that he no longer has even “faith in faith”Â?; the second is a theology student who suffered a mental breakdown while pondering the fundamental questions of faith and religion and now claims to be Jesus of Nazareth; and the youngest has disobeyed his father by pursuing the hand of a young woman whose religion puts her family at odds with his own.

Dreyer’s films are admired for their luminous beauty and a deep empathy for physical and emotional suffering. In Ordet, his cinematographic trademarks are all on display: slow, elegant tracking shots and pans; meticulously orchestrated movements and compositions; and stylized lighting used to subtly evoke distinct realities - the dark world of disbelief and insanity, and the transcendent light of human kindness and sexual passions. Religious intolerance and family tensions underlie this exploration of the clash between orthodoxy and true faith, quietly building towards a shattering and miraculous climax that expresses spiritual optimism that is neither too sentimental nor too pious.