Ingeborg Holm

Ingeborg and her husband open a grocery. He falls ill and dies, the debts remain and the shop is lost. She is taken into the poorhouse with her three children. Under the rules the children are separated from her and placed with other families. She has to ask permission to see them, and as the years pass the youngest does not know her. The subject is not poverty but the system of relief doing the damage. Nobody treats her badly; everyone applies the rules, and the destruction comes precisely from those rules working. Its best-known scene is the moment a mother realises her child does not recognise her. The form is remarkably plain for 1913. Victor Sjöström drops the exaggerated acting of silent cinema; Hilda Borgström's performance is built on small pauses rather than large gestures. The camera is fixed and the scenes are long. Its effect ran past cinema. The film set off a political argument in Sweden and entered the debate over the poor law; new poor relief legislation was adopted in 1918. The source is a 1906 play by Nils Krok, who had served on a local board of guardians and knew the system from inside. Who it is for: viewers curious about early silent cinema and social film. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a lively narrative; the film is short but extremely heavy going.