A young theology student, after intensive study of the New Testament and contemporary philosophy, loses his memory and believes he is Christ come back to earth. He is kept in his father's house, where religion plays a large role: a feud between antagonistic sects has prevented the engagement of one of his brothers to the woman he loves, and the wife of his other brother lies dying after a miscarriage, waiting for a miracle that nobody believes can occur.
Based on a play by Kaj Munk, the Danish pastor and playwright who was murdered, probably on Gestapo orders, in 1944, Ordet “represents Dreyer's efforts to portray on the screen one of his most consistent themes, namely the inherent conflict between organized religion and an individual's personal religious and moral beliefs.... In Ordet Dreyer places his experimental efforts involving simplification and abstraction of the real world at the forefront of his technical considerations. For him, simplification means excluding any elements which are not basically filmic.... It follows therefore that the sets and decors, the camerawork and the editing, and the acting in Ordet are not ‘realistic' but function to suggest a truer psychological realism....” --Joel Weinberg