A Man There Was

On the Norwegian coast, the fisherman Terje Vigen lives with his wife and child. During the Napoleonic wars the British blockade brings famine to the village. Terje rows out to sea to fetch grain from Denmark. On the way back an English ship takes him and the officer tips the grain into the water. He serves five years. When he comes out, his family is dead. The subject is not revenge but the moment of letting revenge go. Years later the same officer is wrecked on Terje's shore in a storm and he has to decide whether to save them. The whole weight of the film gathers on that decision. The form is one of the founding examples of Swedish silent cinema. The sea passages were shot not in a studio but on a real coast in real swell; nature is used not as scenery but as a force equal to the characters. That approach became one of the basic features of later Nordic cinema. The source is Henrik Ibsen's long poem of the same name. Victor Sjöström both directed and played Terje. The production is counted among the first works to bring international attention to Swedish cinema, and Sjöström was later called to Hollywood. Who it is for: viewers who like early silent cinema and narratives grounded in nature. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a feature length; the film is short and told in the language of its period, through intertitles.