The Bride of Glomdal

Two neighbouring farms in Norway, one prosperous and one not. Berit, the rich farmer's daughter, and Tore, the poor neighbour's son, are in love. Her father is determined to marry her elsewhere, and the matter is caught between the stubbornness of two young people and one man's deeds. The film is not interested in a love story. It is interested in land: marriage here is not a feeling but the question of whether two farms will be joined. Its most tense sequence involves not the heart but a river in flood. The form leans on nature: real farms, the river, a mountain road, exteriors. The heavy, enclosed manner we know from Dreyer's later films is absent; this one is light and outdoors. The conditions of production were unusual. In an interview Dreyer said that time pressure forced him, for the first and only time in his career, to work without preparation: the film was shot day by day without a script. The source was two stories by Jacob Breda Bull, and the team largely worked straight from the pages of the book; the cast were on their summer break before the theatre season began. Who it is for: viewers curious about silent cinema, rural melodrama and an unfamiliar side of Dreyer. Who it is not for: anyone expecting his heavy, mystical work. This is plain, quick and almost light.