This is a faithful adaptation of the eponymous poem by Henrik Ibsen, and all inter-titles are quotations of Ibsen's original text. The film follows an innovative non chronological structure. In the brief opening scene, old grey-haired Terje Vigen is contemplating a stormy sea. It is followed by a long flash back showing his past life first with his wife and daughter, his trip to Denmark, his capture by the English, his life as prisoner in England, and finally his return home. There is even a flashback in the flashback when, while in jail, Terje Vigen remembers his wife and daughter. The last part starts with the same scene as the opening one, followed by the rescue of the British yacht. It is interrupted by a brief flashback when Terje Vigen realises the Captain of the yacht is the Englishman who had taken him prisoner. The most remarkable aspect of the film is the outdoor on-location filming on the coast and on small boats, which gives great authenticity to the action, in particular the very realistic chase and sinking of the dinghy in the middle of reefs. Editing is brisk, cross-cutting between views of the two boats and then between the English boat and Terje Vigen trying to escape by swimming underwater.See more and a link to the full film at: a-cinema-history.blogspot.com/2013/12

This film was terrible, terrible! As I said in my title, Adolf Hitler loved this film because it put the British in a very bad light. Among other things, Hitler was not known for his good taste! Yes, this film has other problems. First of all, its depressing! A guy (Virgen) gets food for his family, but is captured by the British and held prisoner for five years. When Virgen, on bended knee, tearfully explains what his skiff was doing in the water, the British laugh in his face. When he's finally released from prison, he comes home to see that his wife and child have starved to death. A bit later in the film, he goes out to rescue a yacht in trouble and sees that it's none other than the commander of the ship who imprisoned him five years earlier, along with his wife and baby. Herein lies another problem. It gets kind of fuzzy about whether or not Virgen ultimately rescues these people. You see someone else do that while Virgen is raging at them. Then there's the ending, which I will go ahead and tell you because I don't want you to waste your time on this turkey. Now, in the scene before the end, Terje is waving at these British people. I could have ended there (and gotten a "2" or "3" from me). But nooooooooooooooo! He dies and it shows his grave! Gee whiz! Again, I say, do yourself a favor and DO NOT watch this!

I've been wanting to see more Sjostrom, hoping for something on the level of PHANTOM CARRIAGE. Although this one has nothing but rave reviews on IMDb, it didn't grab me as much. A melodrama about a man driven mad by tragic misfortune and cruelty, but it's hard to feel too sorry for him because he really didn't have a very good plan. Maybe I'm being harsh, but despite a strong performance by Sjostrom I just wasn't emotionally invested enough to care that much about his troubles. However, technically it's very impressive for its time and features some stunning nautical cinematography and a haunting final image that serves as a strong counterpoint to the redemptive theme. You can also see Sjostrom's man vs. nature motif emerging, further developed in THE OUTLAW AND HIS WIFE and of course THE WIND.

"Terje Vigen" is one of the best films of the 1910s. It's extraordinarily well crafted for 1917, with some brisk, modern editing (e.g. the capture scene) and, especially, outstanding photography throughout. In this respect, the only slight criticism I could give the film is that it's rather short, at about 53 minutes on the Kino DVD; regardless, the pacing is good. The intertitles from Ibsen, despite whatever is lost in translation, I think also add to the film's rhythm and mood.Most of the drama takes place outside, at sea, which avoids some of the dimensional and framing awkwardness, or theatricality, of shooting indoors that so afflicted early filmmakers. Much of it also occurs at night, and the reconstructed blue tinting is very good. Moreover, director Victor Sjöström and cinematographer Julius Jaenzon's photography is not only naturalistic; they make nature into the defining presence of the picture. They do so quite economically, too. Reportedly, the location was less than ideal--settling for the closer and calmer shoreline of Stockholm rather than the real Norwegian island and including in the story a man-o'-war and village, both of which they show very little of. Yet, they didn't need them.Sjöström seems to have been one of the first to make nature a central character in his films in a significant way and returned to the conflict between man and nature in such films as "The Outlaw and His Wife" (1918) and "The Wind" (1928). In "Terje Vigen", it's not only the warship or its commander that challenges and affords him, or provides the plot, but also the stormy waters, the foliage that disguises him and his boat as part of the natural environment, the isolation of the island, the entrapment of the sea. Nature as a catalyst and reflection of the plot and character development become most evident in the film's climax.To top it off, Sjöström plays the lead, Terje Vigen, in a restrained and convincing performance, especially in his transformation from robust youth to embittered and isolated old man. There's no wonder upon seeing these early performances in his own films that later he would so easily fall back upon acting after his directorial career ended. By 1917, however, Yevgeni Bauer and D.W. Griffith were the only two directors to my knowledge to display such mastery, although for very different uses, of the art form.