I watched the DVD of "Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier" and as the documentary was spinning with beautiful multilayered and overlapping imagery, I fell asleep. Not bored, not at all, but maybe hypnotised.

Carl Theodor Dreyer is still regarded as one of Denmark's greatest filmmakers, though during his life, his films were largely unappreciated. Even today kids would rather play Half Life on the Xbox360 than...

What am I saying?

Dreyer was a complex, enigmatic and somewhat sad figure. This Danish documentary chronicles his life using interviews with people who knew and worked with him.

The film also makes extensive use of Dreyer's own recorded thoughts as well as archival photographs, letters, scripts and articles. If he were alive today he'd be blogging. The film visits the locations of some of Dreyer's best known films.

The death of his birth mother, Josephine, when he was just born and the emotional distance of his adoptive mother would manifest in his characterizations of virtuous, self-sacrificing, and put-upon woman.

His adoptive parents made it perfectly clear that he owed them for taking him in and even told the child his mother died to get out of the job of raising him. This is painful stuff that stayed with him.

His "La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc" (1927) is still one of my favorite films. Strange to watch it when I did, I was in my teens, it's all in close-up and had a very odd effect on me. He always said the human face is a landscape of unending interest. He would rather film the face and ignore the background when ever he could.

The coolest move he did, was after doing "La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc" and everyone thinking he must be some sort of holy man, he made "Vampyr" (1931) and filmed it in a large cottage than many, including himself believed was actually haunted.

One cute story was actress Lisbeth Movin telling about how he didn't like actors wearing makeup in his films, so he would come into her dressing room and rub her cheeks to make sure she wasn't wearing any, then he'd leave and she would put some on, "I'm a girl after all," she said.

I wonder who would star in his films if he were alive today? Connie Nielsen? She's Danish!

Wait... If he were alive today, He'd be scratching and clawing his way out of the coffin!