This is one of the most beautiful movies ever period.
It is preachy? Yes. Are there too much title cards with too long texts? Yes. It would be better if we had Valdemar Psilander in the role of the father instead of Alf Blütecher? Yes, but Psilander wasn't avaiable anymore since he died three years ago this movie was released. Is it there any other question we could make to blame this movie? Yes, all you want. But it is still being one of the best movies ever to me. Why?
First, I watched in a really bad conditions, with the original tittle cards in Danish without subtitles in any language I know (I was guessing the meaning of the most part of them, even I have no idea of that beautiful language, and translating the ones that seemed me more important ones with a very slow killing patience App) and with a lot of other inconveniences that have made my experience of watching the film more annoying and painful. And, even all that I have cried and felt sincerely overwhelmed as few times in all my movie watching history (I am now 60 years old and I have watched thousands of silent films, not only the official masterpieces but the hidden pearls... and sometimes suffering some boredrom as well).
I am not a religious person at all, either. I shouldn't be impressed with some of the scenes of this movie since I have watched a lot of similar things that happen in some scenes and several great cinematic inventions here, that were made or discovered in oldest movies than this one. But here everything has heart in a way that made me feel that I was watching all that stuff for the first time.
I do love the old Danish style from the early tens, when the movies weren't still too "contaminated" with the modern narrative. I found it even sexy in a way the 20's didn't reach. The Danes were the best at making moving pictures with that primitive style. Holger-Madsen has been always one of my favourites, even knowing that I have to take a bit of patience to gulp his preachy tendences in anything he made since 1915 onwards. But I didn't expected he could make this wonderful piece of art in such late year of 1920! His transition from the sequence based narrative to the shot based one is quite smooth (even, call me weird, sometimes I miss the more auster style of 1912 or 1913, when he never used inserts).
Betty Nansen it would be great in the main role, but I don't miss she here: Lili Bech makes one of the best perfomances of her career. Maybe all we are used to see her playing the bad girl, but here she is great as the suffering mother.
I could be talking about this movie for hours. I just finish saying that my heart still hurts, and this means something, I guess. Anyway, thank you Herr Holger-Madsen, whetever you are, for helping to make cinema an incomparable experience for the spirit in such a wonderful way .
