For program notes please see Saturday, April 1. The President (Praesidenten) Dreyer's first feature is a novelistic melodrama about the ruin of an aristocratic family as a result of the sexual indulgences of its male heirs and the attendant illegitimacies. The plot concerns the last of the line, an eminent judge who, faced with a youthful child-murderer, recognizes her as his own illegitimate daughter and must choose between saving his career and saving her from execution. The story is presented through a series of flashbacks and parallel-time sequences whose contrivance is countered by Dreyer's subtle photographic sense, his already pared-down aesthetic, and his introduction of naturalistic elements (including non-professional actors in bit parts). Morever, the elements of the melodrama-desire, obsession, repetition-take on a particular resonance in this first film of a career-long exploration of women's desire; and certain novelistic devices, such as the seemingly incessant letter-writing that goes on, have a particular thrust as a male voice, manifested in the written word, that recurs throughout Dreyer's films.