Jim Jarmusch recommends They Caught The Ferry by Carl Theodor Dreyer
They
Caught the Ferry
Carl
Theodor Dreyer, 1948
It's true that the cinematic language spoken by Danish director Carl Dreyer (1889-1968) is one of the purest and most evocative of the form's history. (He's also one of my all-time hands-down favorite directors-right up there with Ozu, Vigo, Bresson, and Keaton.) But just to get things straight, Dreyer, in fact, does not fit neatly into the "purist aesthete" category where cinema history tries to contain him. Before directing he was a café pianist, a corporate bookkeeper, a tabloid journalist, and a balloon pilot. And let's not forget that his second feature was entitled Leaves from Satan's Book and that his third, The Witch Woman, was in essence a sex film. His next one, Chained (or The Story of the Third Sex), was about a man's internal torment over his homosexual urges (shades of Ed Wood!). Dreyer was also regarded as an obstinate brat and was a well-known pain in the ass to producers and financiers. This, of course, was due to his fanatical insistence on complete aesthetic control over his work.
In any case, by 1948 Dreyer, by then a true master, was having trouble securing financing for his feature projects (and had yet to deliver two of his greatest films--Ordet made in 1955 and Gertrud made in 1964). Auspiciously, the Danish government approached him (or maybe vice versa) to direct, of all things, a traffic-safety film for public-service purposes. Dreyer accepted the offer but decided to use a tragic motorcycle ride as his subject--therein unexpectedly creating what is possibly the very first Euro-biker movie.
Entitled They Caught the Ferry, it's now a rarely seen ten-minute black-and-white masterpiece and is only slightly disguised by its original intention. It's both a perfectly miniaturized youth horror film and the likely precursor to a subgenre of motorcycle flicks (including, among many others, The Wild One, Girl on a Motorcycle, Blonde in Black Leather, The Loners, and maybe even Easy Rider, since the bikers die in the end).
On another level, They Caught the Ferry could also be seen as a kind of thumbnail encapsulation of the tragic criminal-youth-on-the-run love-story genre, with Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night being my personal favorite. Just imagine They Live by Night transposed to a single motorcycle ride--the whole thing reduced to two wheels and minus the entire plot! Talk about cinematic purity.
Dreyer's jewel-like movie begins with a ferryboat docking, then various cars and motorbikes unload into a small city or town. Among the vehicles disembarking is the film's focus: a young couple on a motorcycle--she in the saddle behind, arms encircling him. And, as in all good biker movies, these two characters are "born to be bad" (even if only in a clean, 1948, Scando-trash kind of way). After all, they're on a motorcycle, they're not wearing helmets, and, if nothing else, they just drive way too fast.
The couple exits the town. She holds on even tighter as the bike flies down rural roads past trees and Scandinavian farmland. Daringly, they overtake cars and other motorcycles, barely avoiding farm animals in the process.
They arrive at a fork in the road and make a quick wrong decision, then have to turn around and accelerate back up to their previous breakneck speed. In the process, Dreyer employs a beautifully balanced variety of camera positions: shots from the bike, blurred POVs of the passing landscape, inserts of the vibrating needle on the speedometer, shots of their ecstatic faces intercut with the bike's spoked wheels spinning above the surface of the road . . . Breathtaking.
Then, eventually, their ecstasy hits a snag. The motorcycle catches up to a slow-moving, black, boxlike hearse--complete with an ominous skeleton painted on its rear doors. The bike makes several attempts to overtake the sinister hearse, but each time it is blocked. Dreyer carefully picks his moment to reveal the driver of the hearse--an emaciated ghoul clad in black, grinning maniacally from behind the wheel! Dr. D. the Reaper.
Accelerating wildly, they make yet another attempt to pass, but again the hearse swerves, intentionally forcing the motorcycle off the road. The bike catapults across a ditch, then slams head-on into a tree. Fade to black.
Fade up from black: the final shot of the film mimics its opening. This time, though, the ferryboat is preparing to depart. Two coffins have been loaded on. They contain the corpses of our young riders, making the return trip. Dead. They caught the ferry.
Jim Jarmusch
Director
Note: The original version has no accompanying music, instead effectively relying on variations of the motorcycle's engine to provide a "score" for the film. However, Tom Verlaine (guitarist extraordinaire and former leader of the legendary New York rock band Television) created a new score for They Caught the Ferry in 2000, which unfortunately I have not yet heard.
Editor's Note: The Danish band, Phonovectra, procured permission to use footage from They Caught the Ferry in their music video, "Too Young to Die." The video (which uses 3:26 minutes of the 11-minute short) can be viewed on YouTube under the title "Phonovectra--Too Young To Die."
