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Victoria
Based on Knut Hamsun's 1898 Norwegian novel about first love, Bo Widerberg's 1979 film is very good at approximating the lyricism of Hamsun's prose. The mood shifts between exhilaration and despair as a miller's son (poor and proud and determined to become a poet) and a landowner's daughter (a typical Hamsun heroine, aggressive in her affections but coy when her sense of independence is threatened) try to build a relationship in the face of their parents' disapproval. Widerberg illustrates the hypocrisy and cruelty of the upper classes in several well-staged scenes, and despite the melodramatic possibilities of the material, the emotions remain understated, conveyed more often through a tiny gesture or a sideways glance than through the dialogue (inexplicably dubbed into English). A sense of doom, the consequence of urbanization, hangs over the alluring country setting (Nordland, Hamsun's birthplace). With Stephan Schwartz and Michaela Jolin. |
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