Day of Wrath (1943)
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne, whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.
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What critics compared Day of Wrath to
Indeed, his inspiration seems to have been Danish director Carl Dreyer’s wartime drama Day of Wrath, with which The Witch (the title appears as “The VVitch” on the credits) shares many themes.
It might be argued that revered director Carl Dreyer was doing something similar in his 1943 classic, Day of Wrath, a tale of alleged witchcraft in a Danish village which Eggers had acknowledged as an influence.
Cinema has always had a grand tradition of dealing with religious hysteria tied to the patriarchal fear of pussy, lest we forget Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath, plus virtually anything foisted upon us by Ingmar Bergman.
Conjuring the spirit of such convincing occult dramas as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day Of Wrath, Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General and Piers Haggard’s The Blood On Satan’s Claw, The Witch favours verisimilitude, formal exactitude and insidious dread over cheap shocks.
(Dreyer’s Day of Wrath might well be Gainsbourg’s character’s favorite film of all time, as it concerns her thesis topic, the persecution of women as witches in 16th century Europe.)
Omitting from this conversation admittedly key Dreyer works such as Day of Wrath, it's as though von Trier has, ironically, announced his artistic maturation by reverting to an older leitmotiv--through what started out as self-flattering imitation, he's organically retraced the arc of Dreyer, "Denmark's greatest filmmaker."