The Parson's Widow

1920
The Parson's Widow
7.1| 1h34m| en| More Info
Released: 04 October 1920 Released
Producted By: SF Studios
Country: Sweden
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A young man is elected by a small village to be its parson. As part of his duties, he is required to marry the widow of the parson before him. This poses two problems--first, the widow is old enough to be his grandmother, and second, he is already engaged to another woman.

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Edgar Soberon Torchia I do not know if Dreyer's first feature, "The President" was a big hit, to speculate if he had strong doubts about what his next films would be. In any case, it did not take long before he started shooting again, for the next year he released "Leaves Out of the Book of Satan" and next "The Parson's Widow", a production made and financed in Sweden. The story tells how a young man, when selected as the new parson of a community, marries his predecessor's old widow (who claims her right to do so), but brings along his own fiancée to live with them, making her pass as his sister. There is opportunism on both the parson's and the widow's sides, but this being a comedy these matters are treated lightly, as are eluded reflections on the options we may have in old age or youth, when facing the possibility of losing everything, as in the widow's case, or the shaping of a career and a happy life, in the young man's. Yet this is a strange comedy, for melancholy is always present, mainly reflected on the old but still beautiful and dignified face of actress Hildur Carlberg; and if it is true that Dreyer was not intent on making an ethnographic treatise, one of the most interesting aspects of his film is the portrait of rural settings, customs and rites, as religious sermons, feasts, weddings and funerals. If you ask me I prefer "The President" to this film, but it was a firm step in the filmography of the creator of "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc", "Vampyr" and "Ordet".
Hitchcoc It took a while to latch on to this story because its characters aren't initially very likable. A young parson is willing to do anything to get a job, including marrying the past parson's widow. Since she is quite old, he figures she can't last long. He continues this charade, even moving his fiancée into the house (pretending to be his sister). Meanwhile the widow, a homely woman who has had to endure this rule more than once, bides her time, lives her life, and has no pretensions of anything other than mutual living space. As time passes, she begins to grow on the young man. He sees her for the caring, loving person she is. There is not romantic involvement, only the saving of a soul and the reclamation of a charlatan. This is a simple film that has an excellent message.
MisterWhiplash The Parson's Widow is not entirely a really great silent film; it loses some of its strengths as a satire on marriage and (partially) religion when it starts to get a little sentimental towards the end. But for a while, one sees a film by the master Danish filmmaker Carl Th. Dreyer flexing his directorial muscles on something that is something one might not expect from seeing such pieces of perfect tragedy like Joan of Arc or Day of Wrath. Here we get the story of Sofren (Einar Rod), an unconventional would-be Parson who 'auditions' for the position by going on about the devil in an off-beat manner (yes, off-beat). He learns that in order to become the village Parson, he needs to marry the presumed local old witch, Miss Pedersdotter (grim-faced Hildur Carlberg), who lures him in with a piece of cursed cod and has him succumb to marry her - but he really wants Mari (Almroth), and cannot until she dies. But when? There's some splendid comic set-pieces set in here, like with Sofren trying to scare the old Miss in a devil-disguised sheet, only to be foiled by his own slippers, or when Sofren tries to sneak out at night to see Mari and continually gets caught (or, in one case, another old woman in the bed!) But what's more amazing here is Dreyer's choices in casting. Rod is perfect for this kind of frustrated, ambitious but conniving sort, with great and imaginative eyes that do a lot while seeming to do little (one compared this as Dreyer doing Day of Wrath as a Chaplin, but I don't see much of Chaplin in his main male lead), and Carlberg is so dead-on for this old widow who may or may die (depending on if a life-lengthening potion works) that it's among some of Dreyer's best actors in one of his movies.While Dreyer sometimes loses his footing in the story, as mentioned towards the end, he makes up for it with some curious scenes, like the dance at the wedding, or the specific use of colored tints. When Sofron has the weird dream state of seeing a 'young' Miss Pedersdotter, we see it in a haze of light red (or maybe blue), and it's completely dazzling for a moment. It might be a slightly lighter affair than his more 'serious' pictures, but for the curious digging into Dreyer's catalog, it's not at all a disappointment. At its best Parson's Widow has a good, hard farcical grip on the subject matter.
Leif Allmendinger Prästänkan (literal translation of title: The Parson's Widow). The Parson's Widow is significant for two reasons– It is one of the very few national romantic films, and it's one of the very first films to make extensive use of locations. National romanticism was a 19th century movement that glorified pure hearted, independent farmers (as opposed to the aristocrats) and looked to the hinterlands as a source of pure culture and moral inspiration. It was particularly influential in Norway, the film's location. As The Parson's Widow begins, Søfren, a divinity student, is offered a position in a rural parish¬– provided he marries the parson's elderly widow. He accepts, despite his betrothal to Mari, whom he passes off as his sister. This theme could exist only in a land where poverty and hunger were facts of life. Modern audiences may find The Parson's Widow overly moralistic and sentimental. It has a 19th century feel– owing more to romantics like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson than to more modern novelists like Knut Hamsun, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920, the year the film was made. At that point, national romanticism was on its way out. The story has a few supernatural overtones, but this is no horror film. In The Parson's Widow, the fantastic elements originate from folk beliefs and function primarily as cultural references. Set in an indefinite past, The Parson's Widow makes extensive use of locations at a time when few filmmakers ventured beyond studio doors. It idealizes rural life in a way that anticipates Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran. And, like Flaherty's film, The Parson's Widow meticulously recreates practices that were rapidly disappearing. The opening scenes were shot at Garmo stavkirke (stave church) in Maihaugen– the open air museum in Lillehammer, Norway. The farmstead scenes are probably shot at the same place, and the older extras would have been the last generation to learn the crafts they demonstrate as part of daily life. People today will view The Parson's Widow primarily because it is an early film of director Carl Theodore Dreyer. But this is no beginner's work. Beautiful composition, expressive lighting, and obsessive attention to detail are signature marks of the director who gave us The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr. The Parson's Widow stands as a minor masterpiece in its own right, but the romanticism is unlikely to resonate with today's audiences.