The Element of Crime

The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens element, 1984) is Lars von Trier's feature debut — watch it online on iFILM. Fisher, a former European detective living in Cairo, is hypnotised back into a case he has been trying to leave behind: a string of murders targeting young lottery-ticket sellers, all linked to a man named Harry Grey.

The investigative method Fisher uses comes from a criminologist's book: inhabit the killer's perspective. Sleep where he slept. Walk where he walked. Think what he thought. Michael Elphick plays Fisher as a man already half-erased by the case before it fully begins — controlled, fatigued, drifting. The deeper he follows Grey's trail through a rain-soaked, flooded post-war Europe, the less certain the film is about who is chasing whom.

Shot in sepia and amber with occasional bursts of cold blue, the film looks less like a crime story than a fever memory of a continent that never recovered from its own history. Trier was a film school student when he made it; the control is extraordinary for a debut. Stream The Element of Crime (1984) online on iFILM.