User Reviews

"Brudeferden I Hardanger" ( The Bridal Party In Hardanger )was directed by Herr Rasmus Breistein in the silent year of 1926. It's a wonderful silent film that must be discovered and enjoyed by any silent film fan around the world. The film depicts a truncated love story through the whole life of the youngster fraulein Marit Skjolte ( Frau Aase Bye ) who is in love with Anders ( Herr Henry Gleditsch ). The latter promised Marit to marry her when he was returning from a two year absence from their little town. But the fact is that never will happen because after four years of Marit having no news or letter from Anders, finally she discovered that he's to marry a wealthy fraulein in the church of their little town. "Brudeferden I Hardanger" has remarkable aspects that made this film a very special one with peculiarities connected with the surroundings that decisively influence the lives of the main characters of the film. As in many Nordic films, nature is always a very powerful and important film character in the story and plays a prominent role in accordingly developing the film narrative that the director needed or wanted depending on his own personal artistic interests. In "Brudeferden I Hardanger", nature is in the background but, at the same time, is a fundamental character that is used by Herr Breistein very wisely. From the very start of the film, we view the beautiful landscapes of the Hardanger fjord which witnessed a social tragedy, the massive emigration of the inhabitants of the little town to America who flee from a beautiful but impoverished land. It's a land, however, that is incapable of giving enough resources to the population and they begin searching for a better life out of the country. Nature becomes a relevant and even cruel master that has no mercy with the people who live in the surrounding areas. The hard conditions in the fjord are suffered by our heroine when she applies for a post with the county judge for a job in where she is treated harshly by the judge's wife. After the shock of her fiancée's marriage she is forced to take a post with an old cotter up in the mountains. These situations together with her sad feelings, don't change until she finally decides to marry Tore ( Herr Vilhelm Lund ) a rich farmer who always loved her in (spite her indifference) and it's a last chance for Marit, certainly. In this part of the movie, nature is especially used as a decisive character that emphasizes the difficult social conditions and the social class differences in the fjord. But nature has its more aesthetic part in the film as can be seen especially during the bridal voyage down the Hardanger fjord and its beautiful and evocative scene inspired by one of the most well-known paintings in Norwegian art history. Certainly Herr Breistein captures its beauty and romantic scent with an inflexion point in the film that accelerates the pace in a dramatic way. Because Marit waited for years for the return of her fiancée and then realized that her waiting was in vain, the previous timid, innocent and young fraulein grows into an embittered, resented old woman ( Frau Gunhild Schytte Jacobsen ) who never will forget the betrayal Anders did to her. It's a terrible deception and that hate that even will transmit to her own sons. The human portrait of Marit is certainly outstanding and, is well transmitted by the two actresses that perform the character within the different times of main character's life. Depicted are events that transform a good and hopeful young woman in a selfish and vindictive old woman. In the end Marit realizes this and accepts that in a way she has lost her whole life, living one that she didn't want to, The transition between youth and old age is a small lapse of time within the film culminated and reflected upon in the last scene of the film. It's a beautiful but terribly sad scene in where two old people are finally reunited at the end of their lives, aware of their lost time that will never be recovered and keeping only memories of better but old times. The film was recently restored by the Norwegian Film Institute in what it was an enormous and complicated task that, thank Gott, was a successful one. This can be appreciated in the available pristine copy of the film with superb music arranged, composed and adapted by Herr Halldor Krogh which enhances the beauty and sorrow that involved in this excellent silent film. And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must take a boat voyage down any Teutonic estuary, the Galitzien version of the Norwegian fjords.