The Outlaw and His Wife

(1918) The Outlaw and His Wife/ Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru SILENT DRAMA

Co-written, directed and starring Victor Sjöström, he plays an unknown drifter, Kari (Victor Sjöström) looking for work and ends up working at a farm, owned by Halla (Edith Erastoff). And as they begin to fall in love, it is then his past begins to catch up with him that his name is not Kari, but is really Eyvind suspected of escaping from prison. Adapted from the play "Eyvind of the Hills" by Jóhann Sigurjónsson.

A silent Swedish film that is reminiscent of a serious love story that has a complicated situation, that can be used as a basis for movies that come after it.

This film was Victor Sjöströms international break-through and it's not hard to understand why. It wasn't the first time Sjöström had used the wild and unpredictable nature as an illustrator or commentator, but this time the scenery and the acting was in the same level of quality. A wonderful piece of art.

It's hard to imagine, but only a few years before this film debuted, most films were only a few minutes long. And, full-length films really were a pretty new thing. So, to see a long, complex and cinematic film like "You and I" shows just how far the industry had grown. Victor Sjöström plays a man who is on the run from the law. Years earlier, he'd been sent to prison for stealing a sheep to feed his family and he'd eventually broken out of a tiny make-shift prison in Iceland. The film picks up when he's on the run in the interior of the country--looking for work and hoping no one recognizes him. In the process, a woman takes him in to work on her farm and eventually the two fall in love....at about the time the law shows up to claim him. The two run off together and live in the inhospitable wilds for the next 17 years (yikes). Exactly what happens is something you'll just need to see for yourself--but it does have some nice surprises.

The film is well worth seeing mostly for the nice acting and cinematography. Interestingly, in addition to starring in the film, Sjöström directed and co-wrote this film--and the look of the film can clearly be attributed to him. I also appreciate how he was able to recreate the look of Iceland nicely by apparently filming in the middle of no where AND in pretty inhospitable weather. A very good film--and it has some nice things to say about crime and punishment.

On my continued journey through silent film from the early 20th century, this is my favorrite one yet. I found the changing colors much less distracting, and at points even felt like the colors added to the tone of the scene. I particularly enjoyed the costumes in this film, and found the plot much easier to follow than other films of this category. I enjoyed seeing a strong female character, unlike in 'A Man There Was'. There are both laughs and cries throughout this film, and the ending I thought was beautiful. The title cards consisted of more dialogue than I'd seen in previous films, which helped to make the plot more understandable.

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) directed by Victor Sjöström is yet another impressive production in early cinema history.

The story revolves around a stranger who comes to work at a widow's (Halla's) farm. Halla and the stranger fall in love, but when he is revealed as Eyvind, an escaped thief forced into crime by his family's starvation, they flee and become two of the many outlaws of Iceland's mountains.

Victor Sjöström's early films are impressive in their own right. In The Outlaw and his Wife, he almost uses nature as a character, pressuring the humans of the film to the very brink of - and beyond - their moral values. This works effectively in driving a more abstract point of the film; what is one willing to do in order to ensure one's own safety and survival, and yet further abstract; what is good and evil as philosophical constructs?

It is similarly highly recommended for film buffs and those interested in cinema history just like Sjöström's earlier film Terje Vigen (1917), although The Outlaw and his Wife is not as contemporary as Terje Vigen. Lacking a score and being twice as long, it does not feel as focused although it definitely is more epic in its scale and production.