A Man There Was (1917)
Directed by Victor Sjöström

Film Review

Henrik Ibsen's epic poem Terje Vigen is masterfully transposed to the big screen in this stunning visual odyssey of the silent era, a landmark in Swedish cinema which established its director, Victor Sjöström, as one of the foremost masters of his craft.  With a budget of 60,000 Swedish Kronas, it was the most expensive film made in Sweden up until this point and coincided with a significant shift in policy for the country's leading film company, Svenska Biografteatern (the forerunner of Svensk Filmindustri), which opted to make fewer, more expensive films to bolster its reputation at home and abroad.  Known to the English-speaking world as A Man There Was, this was the film that heralded the beginning of Sweden's golden age of filmmaking, which would continue for the next seven years with Sjöström playing a crucial part in sustaining this unprecedented era of cinematic artistry.

Sjöström had already proven himself to be a formidable and highly innovative filmmaker, through such groundbreaking social dramas as Ingeborg Holm (1913).  He was also a highly accomplished actor, although in this capacity he is now best remembered for his leading role in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957), which he played towards the end of his life.  In Terje Vigen Sjöström appears in front of the camera in his late thirties, not the weary oldster we remember so fondly from Bergman's film, but a young man of fiercesome vitality.  In some scenes, Sjöström's portrayal of the title character is as wild and furious as the seas that rage about him - indeed, he comes to personify the unremitting, seething anger of the stormy waters that rant and rave for reasons we can only guess at.

By the standards of its time, A Man There Was was a phenomenally ambitious film on account of its extensive, incredibly daring sea-bound sequences.  For Sjöström, the use of real locations that evoke the majesty and might of nature was an essential component of his art.  No visual realisation of Ibsen's poem would have worked without stark images of the sea at her most unforgiving.  The sea is the driving protagonist in the original poem and it is fitting that it is so in Sjöström's film.  With the camera strapped to boats of various description, often venturing out in the most hazardous of conditions, Sjöström's ace cinematographer Julius Jaenzon manages to give the sea an overwhelming presence in the film, the most powerful manifestation of nature's supremacy over man and its power to guide his destiny.  Anyone who has seen Jaenzon's remarkable work on Mauritz Stiller's Sir Arne's Treasure (1919) will already appreciate his genius.  His work on A Man There Was is just as breathtaking, and just as effective in reminding us how puny we are compared with nature at her most untamed and capricious.

The film also marks a significant development in Sjöström's technique, with more dramatic camera set-ups, faster editing and less reliance on inter-titles to carry the story.  For the dramatic sequence in which the title character attempts to evade capture by the English, crosscutting is used to great effect to build tension and heighten the emotion of the moment.  In a later scene, when the prematurely aged Vigen is confronted with the man who ruined his life, a short flashback avoids the need for an explanatory title card.  Throughout the film, Vigen's inner feelings are powerfully visualised by cut-away shots to the sea, which becomes his soul's mirror, capable of far greater expression than the human face can ever show.  Before this, there was probably no other film that employed the sea to such incredible dramatic effect.  A Man There Was represents cinematic innovation of a very high order and it continues to enthral with its extraordinary narrative power and stark visual poetry.

Film Synopsis

On the wave-lashed coast of Norway there lives a man who is never comfortable on land, preferring instead a life of danger and excitement on the open sea.  Terje Vigen is his name, a young seafarer whose love of the sea is matched only by the love he has for his wife and infant daughter.  These three live an idyllic life, until the drums of war reach the rugged Norwegian shores.  In 1809, the English navy sets up a blockade which prevents food and essential supplies from reaching Norway.  With his family facing starvation, Terje sets out to sea in a rowing boat in a desperate bid to fetch food from Denmark.  On his return, Terje is captured by the English and thrown into prison by a ruthless captain who mocks his entreaties to let him return to his starving wife and child.  Five years later, Terje is released and heads back to his home, only to find that the two people who are dearest to him have been laid to rest in a pauper's graveyard.  The shock of this calamity is more than the seafarer can bear.  Shunning the society of others, he comes to hate the sea that has robbed him of his dear ones.  After years of bitter solitude, he sees a small yacht caught in the fury of the raging waves.  His compassion gets the better of him and he comes to the yacht's aid, only to discover that its skipper is the very man who had mocked and imprisoned him all those years ago.  At last, the hour of vengeance has come...