Cinema
A Mother's Fight
Thora van Deken
John W. Brunius · 1920
Synopsis
Summoned by Pastor Bjerring to the bedside of her former husband, the landowner Niels Engelstoft, Thora van Deken knows that he has bequeathed his estate of Sofiehöj to a foundation, to be turned into a rest home, and not to their daughter Esther. He dies before he can revise this will. Thora seizes the deed, takes over the estate in Esther's name and claims that it was burned with the dead man's consent. Suspicions grow; questioned, she has to swear on the Bible that her account is true, while Esther falls in love with the young pastor.
Context
The film is based on a short novel by the Dane Henrik Pontoppidan, Lille Rødhætte (1900), Nobel Prize 1917 with Karl Gjellerup; it was the second of the adaptations of Nordic laureates that the director, artistic director of Skandia, made with the screenwriter Sam Ask. The play drawn from the novel, first performed in Copenhagen in 1914, was staged in Stockholm by the director, in the same year according to Kosmorama (in 1916 according to Pordenone), and several actors from that production reappear on screen; Pauline Brunius and Jessie Wessel made their film debuts in it. Released on 15 March 1920 in Stockholm, Norrköping and Gothenburg, and long difficult to see, it was digitally restored by the Swedish Film Institute in 2017 and shown at Pordenone the same year.
Who it is for
Ninety-two minutes, silent, with Swedish intertitles. The affair can be followed without knowing anything beforehand.
Prizes and reception
Praised by the critics of the day for Pauline Brunius, whose greatest screen role it perhaps is; long overshadowed by the films of Stiller and Sjöström.
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