Bille August’s 1987 award winner is yet another full cinema meal, a deeply satisfying drama about working conditions among Scandinavian immigrants back when being poor was a life sentence. Max von Sydow’s performance is stunning, as an aging stock tender forced to begin again as a veritable serf. He and his good son Pelle are surrounded by little dramas dealing with injustices among the workers and servants, as well as between the landholders in the big farmhouse.
Pelle the Conqueror
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 150 min. / Pelle erobreren / Street Date May 30, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Pelle Hvenegaard, Max von Sydow, Erik Paaske, Bjorn Granath, Astrid Villaume, Axel Strobye, Troels Asmussen, Kristina Tornqvist, Karen Wegener, Sofie Grabol, Lars Simonsen, Buster Larsen, John Wittig, Troels Munk, Nis Bank-Mikkelsen.
Cinematography: Jörgen Persson
Film Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Original Music: Stefan Nilsson
Written by Bille August, Per Olov Enquist, Max Lundgren, Bjarne Reuter
from...
Pelle the Conqueror
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 150 min. / Pelle erobreren / Street Date May 30, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Pelle Hvenegaard, Max von Sydow, Erik Paaske, Bjorn Granath, Astrid Villaume, Axel Strobye, Troels Asmussen, Kristina Tornqvist, Karen Wegener, Sofie Grabol, Lars Simonsen, Buster Larsen, John Wittig, Troels Munk, Nis Bank-Mikkelsen.
Cinematography: Jörgen Persson
Film Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Original Music: Stefan Nilsson
Written by Bille August, Per Olov Enquist, Max Lundgren, Bjarne Reuter
from...
- 5/16/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A Song for Martin
Bille August's "A Song for Martin" is the most wrenching of love stories, for the film intimately details the trauma a disease can have on a passionate marriage. The strength of the film lies in its two central performances by Sven Wollter as the stricken composer and Viveka Seldahl as his desperate violinist wife.
The film is better made than nearly all those disease-of-the-week telefilms. Nevertheless, this doesn't make it any easier to watch. What helps, though, along with those two striking performances, is the realization that love can triumph in unexpected ways.
Martin Fischer (Wollter), a leading Scandinavian composer and conductor, and Barbara Hartman (Seldahl), first violinist in a symphony orchestra, meet well past middle age, when both are married with grown children. They fall deeply in love and, throwing all social caution to the wind, shed their spouses and wind up in Morocco on a honeymoon.
Their home becomes a center not only for their own loving and feverish creativity -- she both inspires and helps with his compositions -- but also for family gatherings that express the sheer joy of life itself.
Then Martin is struck by Alzheimer's disease. As the ugly disease tears away his identity and memory, the two initially fight the illness. He struggles to continue with his work and hide the symptoms, while she tries to maintain their life and cling to the man she married.
Then a change comes over Martin: He resists those who care for him, especially Barbara, and seemingly wants to plunge into his new "identity." Later, she comes to realize that these nasty quarrels and confrontations are her husband's last loving gift to her: He needs to push her into a new life without him and the physical demands of his care.
Wollter possesses an expressive face that is alive with intelligence and warmth in the early phases of the movie, then grows increasingly bewildered and lost as the disease takes its toll. His graceful body gradually sags into itself, a moving symbol of his inner collapse.
Seldahl goes through an even greater transition, from unspeakably happy love to fierce determination to fight the illness, then anger, sadness and finally resignation. One senses her inner struggle, the uncertainty over what course of action is best as she must act as a mother to her own husband.
To create the couple's many moments of crisis, though, August, who bases his script on Ulla Isaksson's novel, allows his heroine to act with almost foolish disregard for her husband's condition. The episodes of her leaving him alone, taking him out into the ocean and subjecting him to public appearances when he is long past such exercises make her at times almost unsympathetic.
August has created an impressive chamber work with this "Song". The pacing could have been a little quicker, as there is more than a little repetition here. But the duet at its heart has moments of melancholy lyricism. And kudos to composer Stefan Nilsson, who has penned several splendid concertos that stand for Martin's work.
A SONG FOR MARTIN
Moonlight Filmproduction
and Svenska Filmkompaniet AB
Producers: Lars Kolvig, Michael Obel
Screenwriter-director: Bille August
Based on the novel by: Ulla Isaksson
Director of photography: Jorgen Persson
Production designer: Anna Asp
Music: Stefan Nilsson
Costume designer: Katarina Kvist
Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Martin: Sven Wollter
Barbara: Viveka Seldahl
Biederman: Reine Brfynolfsson
Elisabeth: Lisa Werlinder
Karin: Linda Kallgren
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The film is better made than nearly all those disease-of-the-week telefilms. Nevertheless, this doesn't make it any easier to watch. What helps, though, along with those two striking performances, is the realization that love can triumph in unexpected ways.
Martin Fischer (Wollter), a leading Scandinavian composer and conductor, and Barbara Hartman (Seldahl), first violinist in a symphony orchestra, meet well past middle age, when both are married with grown children. They fall deeply in love and, throwing all social caution to the wind, shed their spouses and wind up in Morocco on a honeymoon.
Their home becomes a center not only for their own loving and feverish creativity -- she both inspires and helps with his compositions -- but also for family gatherings that express the sheer joy of life itself.
Then Martin is struck by Alzheimer's disease. As the ugly disease tears away his identity and memory, the two initially fight the illness. He struggles to continue with his work and hide the symptoms, while she tries to maintain their life and cling to the man she married.
Then a change comes over Martin: He resists those who care for him, especially Barbara, and seemingly wants to plunge into his new "identity." Later, she comes to realize that these nasty quarrels and confrontations are her husband's last loving gift to her: He needs to push her into a new life without him and the physical demands of his care.
Wollter possesses an expressive face that is alive with intelligence and warmth in the early phases of the movie, then grows increasingly bewildered and lost as the disease takes its toll. His graceful body gradually sags into itself, a moving symbol of his inner collapse.
Seldahl goes through an even greater transition, from unspeakably happy love to fierce determination to fight the illness, then anger, sadness and finally resignation. One senses her inner struggle, the uncertainty over what course of action is best as she must act as a mother to her own husband.
To create the couple's many moments of crisis, though, August, who bases his script on Ulla Isaksson's novel, allows his heroine to act with almost foolish disregard for her husband's condition. The episodes of her leaving him alone, taking him out into the ocean and subjecting him to public appearances when he is long past such exercises make her at times almost unsympathetic.
August has created an impressive chamber work with this "Song". The pacing could have been a little quicker, as there is more than a little repetition here. But the duet at its heart has moments of melancholy lyricism. And kudos to composer Stefan Nilsson, who has penned several splendid concertos that stand for Martin's work.
A SONG FOR MARTIN
Moonlight Filmproduction
and Svenska Filmkompaniet AB
Producers: Lars Kolvig, Michael Obel
Screenwriter-director: Bille August
Based on the novel by: Ulla Isaksson
Director of photography: Jorgen Persson
Production designer: Anna Asp
Music: Stefan Nilsson
Costume designer: Katarina Kvist
Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Martin: Sven Wollter
Barbara: Viveka Seldahl
Biederman: Reine Brfynolfsson
Elisabeth: Lisa Werlinder
Karin: Linda Kallgren
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/8/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A Song for Martin
Bille August's "A Song for Martin" is the most wrenching of love stories, for the film intimately details the trauma a disease can have on a passionate marriage. The strength of the film lies in its two central performances by Sven Wollter as the stricken composer and Viveka Seldahl as his desperate violinist wife.
The film is better made than nearly all those disease-of-the-week telefilms. Nevertheless, this doesn't make it any easier to watch. What helps, though, along with those two striking performances, is the realization that love can triumph in unexpected ways.
Martin Fischer (Wollter), a leading Scandinavian composer and conductor, and Barbara Hartman (Seldahl), first violinist in a symphony orchestra, meet well past middle age, when both are married with grown children. They fall deeply in love and, throwing all social caution to the wind, shed their spouses and wind up in Morocco on a honeymoon.
Their home becomes a center not only for their own loving and feverish creativity -- she both inspires and helps with his compositions -- but also for family gatherings that express the sheer joy of life itself.
Then Martin is struck by Alzheimer's disease. As the ugly disease tears away his identity and memory, the two initially fight the illness. He struggles to continue with his work and hide the symptoms, while she tries to maintain their life and cling to the man she married.
Then a change comes over Martin: He resists those who care for him, especially Barbara, and seemingly wants to plunge into his new "identity." Later, she comes to realize that these nasty quarrels and confrontations are her husband's last loving gift to her: He needs to push her into a new life without him and the physical demands of his care.
Wollter possesses an expressive face that is alive with intelligence and warmth in the early phases of the movie, then grows increasingly bewildered and lost as the disease takes its toll. His graceful body gradually sags into itself, a moving symbol of his inner collapse.
Seldahl goes through an even greater transition, from unspeakably happy love to fierce determination to fight the illness, then anger, sadness and finally resignation. One senses her inner struggle, the uncertainty over what course of action is best as she must act as a mother to her own husband.
To create the couple's many moments of crisis, though, August, who bases his script on Ulla Isaksson's novel, allows his heroine to act with almost foolish disregard for her husband's condition. The episodes of her leaving him alone, taking him out into the ocean and subjecting him to public appearances when he is long past such exercises make her at times almost unsympathetic.
August has created an impressive chamber work with this "Song". The pacing could have been a little quicker, as there is more than a little repetition here. But the duet at its heart has moments of melancholy lyricism. And kudos to composer Stefan Nilsson, who has penned several splendid concertos that stand for Martin's work.
A SONG FOR MARTIN
Moonlight Filmproduction
and Svenska Filmkompaniet AB
Producers: Lars Kolvig, Michael Obel
Screenwriter-director: Bille August
Based on the novel by: Ulla Isaksson
Director of photography: Jorgen Persson
Production designer: Anna Asp
Music: Stefan Nilsson
Costume designer: Katarina Kvist
Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Martin: Sven Wollter
Barbara: Viveka Seldahl
Biederman: Reine Brfynolfsson
Elisabeth: Lisa Werlinder
Karin: Linda Kallgren
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The film is better made than nearly all those disease-of-the-week telefilms. Nevertheless, this doesn't make it any easier to watch. What helps, though, along with those two striking performances, is the realization that love can triumph in unexpected ways.
Martin Fischer (Wollter), a leading Scandinavian composer and conductor, and Barbara Hartman (Seldahl), first violinist in a symphony orchestra, meet well past middle age, when both are married with grown children. They fall deeply in love and, throwing all social caution to the wind, shed their spouses and wind up in Morocco on a honeymoon.
Their home becomes a center not only for their own loving and feverish creativity -- she both inspires and helps with his compositions -- but also for family gatherings that express the sheer joy of life itself.
Then Martin is struck by Alzheimer's disease. As the ugly disease tears away his identity and memory, the two initially fight the illness. He struggles to continue with his work and hide the symptoms, while she tries to maintain their life and cling to the man she married.
Then a change comes over Martin: He resists those who care for him, especially Barbara, and seemingly wants to plunge into his new "identity." Later, she comes to realize that these nasty quarrels and confrontations are her husband's last loving gift to her: He needs to push her into a new life without him and the physical demands of his care.
Wollter possesses an expressive face that is alive with intelligence and warmth in the early phases of the movie, then grows increasingly bewildered and lost as the disease takes its toll. His graceful body gradually sags into itself, a moving symbol of his inner collapse.
Seldahl goes through an even greater transition, from unspeakably happy love to fierce determination to fight the illness, then anger, sadness and finally resignation. One senses her inner struggle, the uncertainty over what course of action is best as she must act as a mother to her own husband.
To create the couple's many moments of crisis, though, August, who bases his script on Ulla Isaksson's novel, allows his heroine to act with almost foolish disregard for her husband's condition. The episodes of her leaving him alone, taking him out into the ocean and subjecting him to public appearances when he is long past such exercises make her at times almost unsympathetic.
August has created an impressive chamber work with this "Song". The pacing could have been a little quicker, as there is more than a little repetition here. But the duet at its heart has moments of melancholy lyricism. And kudos to composer Stefan Nilsson, who has penned several splendid concertos that stand for Martin's work.
A SONG FOR MARTIN
Moonlight Filmproduction
and Svenska Filmkompaniet AB
Producers: Lars Kolvig, Michael Obel
Screenwriter-director: Bille August
Based on the novel by: Ulla Isaksson
Director of photography: Jorgen Persson
Production designer: Anna Asp
Music: Stefan Nilsson
Costume designer: Katarina Kvist
Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Martin: Sven Wollter
Barbara: Viveka Seldahl
Biederman: Reine Brfynolfsson
Elisabeth: Lisa Werlinder
Karin: Linda Kallgren
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/19/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'Jerusalem'
After the tepid response to his star-packed version of Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits" a few years back, Swedish director Bille August returns with "Jerusalem", a long, engrossing epic set mostly in his native country late in the 19th century.
Based on Nobel Prize-winning Selma Lagerlof's turn-of-the-century collection of stories, the First Look Pictures release was bypassed by the Academy for a best foreign film nomination, but it's destined to generate respectable business with art house audiences when it opens commercially in March. In a quirk typical of domestic distribution of international cinema, "Jerusalem" arrives when August's newest film, "Smilla's Sense of Snow", should still be in theaters.
Other than small roles played by Max von Sydow and Olympia Dukakis, the large and talented Scandinavian cast of "Jerusalem" is led by newcomers or veterans unfamiliar to domestic audiences. But those who fall under the film's spell will be rewarded with a romantic tragedy that illuminates an obscure bit of history with rich characterizations and moral conflicts.
The main thrust of the narrative concerns the unrealized love of Ingmar (Ulf Friberg), a young farmer whose inheritance is stolen, and his childhood sweetheart Gertrud (Maria Bonnevie), who falls under the spell of a charismatic preacher (Sven-Bertil Taube).
Standing in their way is Ingmar's insensitive sister Karin (Pernilla August), who survives a bad marriage with a drunken thief (he stole the money Ingmar needed to purchase the family property). When Karin leads many of the townspeople in embracing a strict religious movement, she turns the farm into a kind of commune.
Eventually, the religious rebels ignore family ties and make plans to emigrate to the Holy Land. Although he loves Gertrud, Ingmar marries a rich woman and gets the farm back. In one of many ironic developments, it's revealed too late that Gertrud had found the missing inheritance.
The story then follows the fates of Gertrud and Karin when they travel to Palestine and take up with a cult headed by a stern "model" Christian (Dukakis). More tragedy ensues, and the conclusion has a few genuine surprises.
JERUSALEM
First Look Pictures
Writer-director Bille August
Producer Ingrid Dahlberg
Based on the novel by Selma Lagerlof
Director of photography Jorgen Persson
Production designer Anna Asp
Costume designer Ann-Margret Fyregard
Music Stefan Nilsson
Editor Janus Billeskov-Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Ingmar Ulf Friberg
Gertrud Maria Bonnevie
Karin Pernilla August
Tim Reine Brynolfsson
Barbro Lena Endre
Gabriel Jan Mybrand
Hellgum Sven-Bertil Taube
Running time -- 166 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Based on Nobel Prize-winning Selma Lagerlof's turn-of-the-century collection of stories, the First Look Pictures release was bypassed by the Academy for a best foreign film nomination, but it's destined to generate respectable business with art house audiences when it opens commercially in March. In a quirk typical of domestic distribution of international cinema, "Jerusalem" arrives when August's newest film, "Smilla's Sense of Snow", should still be in theaters.
Other than small roles played by Max von Sydow and Olympia Dukakis, the large and talented Scandinavian cast of "Jerusalem" is led by newcomers or veterans unfamiliar to domestic audiences. But those who fall under the film's spell will be rewarded with a romantic tragedy that illuminates an obscure bit of history with rich characterizations and moral conflicts.
The main thrust of the narrative concerns the unrealized love of Ingmar (Ulf Friberg), a young farmer whose inheritance is stolen, and his childhood sweetheart Gertrud (Maria Bonnevie), who falls under the spell of a charismatic preacher (Sven-Bertil Taube).
Standing in their way is Ingmar's insensitive sister Karin (Pernilla August), who survives a bad marriage with a drunken thief (he stole the money Ingmar needed to purchase the family property). When Karin leads many of the townspeople in embracing a strict religious movement, she turns the farm into a kind of commune.
Eventually, the religious rebels ignore family ties and make plans to emigrate to the Holy Land. Although he loves Gertrud, Ingmar marries a rich woman and gets the farm back. In one of many ironic developments, it's revealed too late that Gertrud had found the missing inheritance.
The story then follows the fates of Gertrud and Karin when they travel to Palestine and take up with a cult headed by a stern "model" Christian (Dukakis). More tragedy ensues, and the conclusion has a few genuine surprises.
JERUSALEM
First Look Pictures
Writer-director Bille August
Producer Ingrid Dahlberg
Based on the novel by Selma Lagerlof
Director of photography Jorgen Persson
Production designer Anna Asp
Costume designer Ann-Margret Fyregard
Music Stefan Nilsson
Editor Janus Billeskov-Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Ingmar Ulf Friberg
Gertrud Maria Bonnevie
Karin Pernilla August
Tim Reine Brynolfsson
Barbro Lena Endre
Gabriel Jan Mybrand
Hellgum Sven-Bertil Taube
Running time -- 166 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 2/13/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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