Leaves from Satan's Book (1921)

Original title

Blade af Satans Bog

Directed by

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Genre

drama film, silent film

Country

Denmark

Runtime

2h 47m

Rating

6.1 of 10 from 46 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Satan is forced to tempt people across four different historical eras. He appears in each segment to try to bring about human downfall.

episodictheatricalslowsolemnstageddatedsomberfragmented

What happens

Leaves from Satan's Book, also known as Leaves Out of the Book of Satan (Danish: Blade af Satans bog), is a 1920 Danish fantasy film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Helge Nissen as Satan. This was only the third film directed by Dreyer, who later went on to create such classics as Vampyr (1932) and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). The film is structured much like D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) with its episodic nature while evoking F. W. Murnau's Satan (1920). The film ran 157 minutes, but sources list the DVD's running time at 121 minutes. Troy Howarth states "If not for the presence of Satan, (this film) wouldn't warrant inclusion in a study of the horror genre; in truth it's more of a quaint pageant play than a horror film....The cast emotes to a degree too theatrical for even silent cinema." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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