Das Mädchen vom Moorhof / The Girl from the Marsh Croft (1958)

Das Mädchen vom Moorhof (1958). Photo: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg.

[Suotorpan tyttö / Tösen från Stormyrtorpet] DE © 1958 Real-Film GmbH. P: Adolf Fischer, Werner Ludwig. D: Gustav Ucicky. Based on the tale Tösen från Stormyrtorpet (1907) and play (1913) by Selma Lagerlöf. DP: Albert Benitz – Agfacolor.
    Starring Maria Emo (Helga Nilsson), Claus Holm (Gudmund Erlandsson), Eva Ingeborg Scholz (Hildur Lindgren), Horst Frank (Jan Lindgren), Werner Hinz (father Erlandsson), Hilde Körber (mother Ingeborg), Hans Nielsen (councelor-at-law Lindgren), Wolfgang Lukschy (Per Eric Martinsson), Joseph Offenbach (Kalle), Berta Drews (mother Nilsson), Josef Dahmen (father Nilsson), Hans Zesch-Ballot, Inge Meysel, Alice Treff (mother Lindgren). 87 min.
    A beautiful InterNationes 16 mm print via Goethe-Institut with English subtitles.
    Viewed at Luckan, Helsinki, Film Society Arkadin, in the Heimat cycle of German films from the 1950s, 19 May 2005, introduced by myself.

The story is supposed to take place in Sweden in the 1880s, and people wear their regional Sunday best at all times. Visually, this is a folklore pastiche in bright colours.

Professionally made impersonal entertainment, not one of Ucicky's best, and far from the best of the six film adaptations of Lagerlöf's tale. Of them, the first, by Sjöström, is still the best. I kept projecting the actors of the 1940 Finnish film adaptation on the flat faces of this one (Regina Linnanheimo, Tauno Palo, Ester Toivonen, Joel Rinne, Aku Korhonen, Siiri Angerkoski... one of the best casts in our country ever). I love also the Sjöström original, its Biblically profound sense of inner justice which finds its way over the hard roads of the law and social pressures.

The fragile girl from the Marsh Croft shatters the lives of the mighty ones and the whole community by her sense of dignity. In this Ucicky film there is a superfluous flashback exposition, the intensity of the courtroom sequence is missed, and everything is heavy-handedly emphasized. An object lesson in a bad adaptation.

http://www.dels.nu/selmalagerlof/

16 mm prints have never been more beautiful.