A year before Danish playwright and Lutheran pastor Kaj Munk was murdered by the Gestapo, his play 'The Word' was committed to celluloid by one of Sweden's finest directors Gustaf Molander. It has of course been overshadowed by Carl Dreyer's spellbinding version from 1955 but the earlier film has great merit.
Molander's style of direction it totally different from that of the Danish master and the performances here are more 'animated' and full-blooded, not least that of Victor Sjostrom who pulls out all the stops as the family patriarch Knut Borg. The mystic Johannes is played by a mesmerising Rune Lindstrom who also wrote the screenplay. Great support from all concerned and a taking performance from a young Gunn Wallgren as the ill-fated Kristina.
Dreyer's film is set partly in the village where Munk had been vicar but apart from the prologue we see little of the countryside whereas Molander has opted to take the piece out of the proscenium arch and there are views of the landscapes that have shaped these characters' lives.
As one would expect, Dreyer's austere and slowly paced masterpiece is more faithful to the original and deeply spiritual but Molander's treatment is more filmic whilst his depiction of mental instability, crisis of faith, grief over loved ones lost and eventual reconciliation brought about by virtue of a 'miracle' is no less moving.
