Much of Dreyer's work can be seen as an attempt to counter the terrorism of organized religion with the miracle of personal faith-not to deny the body but to reach into the spirit through its material substance, life. If The Passion of Joan of Arc was his first epiphany in this regard and Day of Wrath his second, surely Ordet, his only feature film of the fifties, was a third. The conflict between a fanatic and a life-affirming view of Christianity is played out in a rural village, where feuds between antagonistic sects keep lovers apart; a young theology student, engorged on the New Testament and Kierkegaard, comes to believe he is Christ on earth; and a woman lies dying after a miscarriage, waiting for a miracle that nobody believes can occur. Dreyer in a sense frees the play by Kaj Munk (a Danish pastor and playwright who was killed by the Nazis) from its claustrophobic narrative with dynamic visuals based on spare sets, dramatic lighting, and stunning pans and camera angles; but this also draws the viewer in, inexorably, toward the final moment in which we must participate wholly.