The Bride of Glomdal (1926)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Writer: Carl Theodor Dreyer, from the novels by Jacob Breda Bull
Stars: Einar Sissener and Tove Tellback

Index: That's a Wrap!

When people ask me which film I believe is the best ever made, I tend to say The Passion of Joan of Arc, a French silent movie by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. That won’t pop up in this project for another couple of years, but this is the movie he made before it.

Frankly, it feels like a film by someone else, because it’s built not of majestic close ups but sparse pastoral long shots. There are scenes in farmhouses and a vicarage, but mostly, they’re of fields and the river and more fields. Even as the tension is ratcheted up during the closing scenes, it’s still a relaxing movie that allows us to slow down to the pace of the countryside.

There isn’t much of a story, mostly because Dreyer improvised it as he went, albeit loosely based on a couple of novels by the Norwegian author Jacob Breda Bull, Glomdalsbruden, which means The Bride of Glomdal, and Eline Vangen. It seems to me that the former is likely to be the bulk of the story even though the latter is the longer work. Sadly I can’t find details online.

This film collation of the two mostly focuses on two childhood friends now grown up, Tore Braaten and Berit Glomgaarden. It’s hardly a stretch to see them just as absorbed with each other as ever and they clearly intend to marry, so the inevitable wrench is promptly thrown into the works and we have a movie.

We begin with Tore returning to his family farm to find it in poor shape because his father couldn’t afford a farmhand in his absence. He will happily put in the long hours to turn the place around but it’ll take time and he’ll wait to ask for Berit’s hand until it’s done.

Over on the other side of the river, at Berit’s place, her father Ola has a different idea. Old Haugsett asks him for permission to marry her to his son Gjermund and he’s well aware that the Haugsetts are better off than the Braatens. Overhearing, Berit is shocked that, “They’re in there negotiating as if I were cattle!”

Needless to say, she makes it perfectly clear she won’t play ball. When Ole explains that he has given his assent, she replies “But I haven’t, Father!” and slams her bedroom door right in his face. That it’s a trapdoor to an attic room she can dance on makes it even more joyous.

When he pursues it anyway, putting her on horseback and leading it off to the Haugsetts, she takes advantage of him stopping to invite a farmer and promptly rides away. She makes it to Tore’s farm before she falls off and knocks herself unconscious, but the Braatens pick her up and nurse her back to health.

If that sounds like we’ve suddenly ended up in a fraught village feud, then that overstates the danger. Tore is over the moon that she is right there and presses her for attention. Berit gradually realises that she’ll give it and that’s dangerous before they’re married. Ole disowns her, claiming he no longer has a daughter. And Gjermund just sits back and broods on his lack of bride, nursing some serious grudges.

I wonder if the original version dug deeper, but, if it did, it’s lost. My copy of this film runs 74 minutes, but IMDb and Wikipedia suggest it should be 115 minutes. Silent Era says it ran four or five reels, suggesting 60 to 75 minutes, but Wikipedia adds that the movie saw varied releases. In Norway, where it was set, it lasted 115 minutes in 1926, 74 minutes on re-release in 1930, 65 minutes on a further re-release in 1958 and 70 minutes in a 1998 restoration.

My copy must be the 1930 version then and nothing seems to be serious until very late in the film. We can sit back and relax to enjoy the sparse but beautiful Norwegian countryside, a bleak landscape in which everyone has a farm but there are big gaps in between them. We’re never told what the river is called, but it’s the barrier between the sides and we cross often.

Einar Olsen’s cinematography deserves the most credit but I like the performances as well for their effortless naturalistic delivery. Einar Sissener is a capable enough leading man but Tove Tellback steals all their scenes from him. She’s a joy as Berit, fiercely independent and refusing to let anyone else dictate her destiny. As her screen father, Stub Wiberg wants to do exactly that and he pouts just as well as an old Norwegian farmer can.

So far so good. While this is light for Dreyer, it’s enjoyable stuff and there are no negatives to drag it down. When the deadlock breaks, it’s in a way that makes us smile and, perhaps best of all, never makes us roll our eyes. Dreyer was clearly fond of intransigence because it’s often the focal point of his films, all the way to Ordet in 1955, but he also knew how to get past it on the rare occasions he wanted a happy ending.

What disappointed me was the ending, for a few different reasons, all of which tie to what genre we might consider the film to fall under. It’s fundamentally a romance and a drama in a relatively even mix and that’s fine. However, it threatens to take different directions towards the end and eventually does.

I’m a horror fan and Dreyer would later dip his toes into that genre with 1932’s Vampyr but he hints at it here too. I’m not talking about an early scene of youths dancing in a field, as that was just folk in 1926 not folk horror. However, much later, when Tore and Berit prepare to be married and the jealous Gjermund prepares to screw it up for them, we definitely go there.

There’s a wonderful sequence where he sets the boats adrift and then, armed with an axe, sneaks up a bank behind everyone else. It’s as impeccable a way to isolate and threaten as a slasher movie of today could conjure up. It just stops going there, like Dreyer forgot his mood.

Instead, it dives headlong into adventure, as Tore tries to cross the deep river on horseback and ends up borne away by the rapids. It isn’t badly shot, with logs drifting downriver very much in the way, but it wasn’t needed. I see a bevy of commenters suggesting how obviously borrowed from D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East it seems but there are more earlier films that did this. I’ve reviewed plenty for this project.

And, without intending the pun, it goes very much against the flow of this film. Everything has been quiet and character-driven, but now we’re in a spectacle that’s anything but quiet. I would have been happy for the film to end at the reconciliation, maybe with a brief wedding for a finalé. The river suspense scenes remind of a CGI boss battle to end a superhero flick, in that the plot pauses and we usually switch off.

Needless ending aside, I enjoyed this much more than I expected to, but it’s still a league behind The Passion of Joan of Arc. Dreyer would seriously up his game by 1928.