["Day of Wrath" is] a curious study of the power of evil…. And again it manifests the stark integrity and the solid character of Dreyer's style—his absolute perfection of the image, his interest in faces and his heavy restraint.

Indeed, the visual richness of this picture and its brilliant instrumentation of the human face cause one to wish very strongly that the drama were more insistent than it is. But, unfortunately, in telling a story of love and hate in a Danish parish house back in the middle ages, Dreyer has kept his idea so obscure and the action so slow and monotonous that the general audience will find it a bore….

[In] spite of the fine, tasteful production and the photogenic excellence of all the cast, the drama lacks any compulsion. "Day of Wrath" is handsome but dull….

Bosley Crowther, "'Day of Wrath'," in The New...