Arquivo / 49ª mostra

The great theme of Swedish silent film is here: crude primitive nature as a metaphor for torrid passion. On a farm in up-country Sweden, an enigmatic stranger comes to a conservative peasant community inhabited by universal characters: a domineering mother, a frail and submissive son, and a young, orphaned servant whom the son marries against his mother?s will. Soon after the wedding, however, the wife runs away with another man. The husband sets off on her trail, in a boat, battling against the current. Emotional confusion and remorse on the part of the wife are suggested by the waves beating against the boat in an escapade up-river with a touch of the comic.