The theme of Master of the House, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1925 screen adaptation of Svend Rindom’s play Tyrannens fald, is better captured in the film’s original Danish title Du skal ære din hustru: Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife. Viktor Frandsen (Johannes Meyer), the master of the house himself, is indeed the central character of this domestic drama, but his journey is all about learning to appreciate his wife Ida (Astrid Holm), who he has driven to illness with his ill temper.
While the opening intertitles of the film, a sentimental paean to the overlooked and underappreciated work of the mother and housewife, leave no ambiguity about the drama to come, Dreyer is far less obvious in his direction. The film opens with Ida’s morning ritual, a routine that Dreyer observes with the patient care of a documentarian and the delicacy of a painter. Ida is never still as she makes breakfast, cares for the children, and sacrifices her own meager luxuries to give Viktor a little extra butter on his bread, but neither is she rushed or harried. There is a grace to her toil and a pride and satisfaction in the work she does. Her confidence and clarity unravels, however, when Viktor emerges for breakfast, complaining with his first steps into the room that coffee is no waiting for him on the table.