Ordet

The film was adapted from Ordet, the play Kaj Munk wrote in 1925. Differences of faith inside the Borg family, who live on a farm, stand at the centre of the account. Johannes, one of the sons, is a mystic whom those around him take to have lost his reason, and he preaches. Victor Sjöström plays Knut Borg, the head of the family. Rune Lindström, who plays Johannes, also wrote the screenplay. The film stays close to Munk’s text and keeps most of the scenes of the play. The same play was filmed again in Denmark twelve years later by Carl Dreyer, and that version is far better known. This one opened in Stockholm just after Christmas in 1943; Kaj Munk was killed by the Gestapo in Denmark shortly afterwards. Gustaf Molander’s hundred and eight minute Swedish film was completed in 1943.