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In his study of the Holy in art, Gerardus van der Leeuw traces the history of the major arts from their origins in religious practice to the present secularized state. At its beginnings each art form was one with religion but throughout the centuries progressively suffered a “breakup of unity.” The…

At times Dreyer’s tension even bursts out of the frame. In a well-known composition from The Passion of Joan of Arc, a guard, partially hidden by the left vertical frame line, is tugging at Joan’s arm while Joan herself is struggling to pull herself outside of the right vertical frame line. The fra…

The late Gothic cathedral is the reductio ad absurdum of the Scholastic method with its sic and non, its internal contradictions eternally interlocked: saints and gargoyles, Pantocrators and crucified Christs, oblique lines of force and verticals and horizontals. The lines of tension often clash ra…

[...] Anne and Martin attempt to hide their love, romancing only on clandestine field trips. This conflict is reflected in the decor: the parsonage is claustrophobic and chiaroscuric; the fields are bucolic and well-lit. [...]

The long forehead, the lean features, the closed lips, the blank stare, the frontal view, the flat light, the uncluttered background, the stationary camera, these identify Bresson’s protagonists as objects suitable for veneration. When Michel’s cold face stares into the camera in scene after scene …