'Terje Vigen' is probably the purest example in Sjostrom's work of the conflict between the natural world and civilisation. It is this theme, his facility with action narratives, and his privileging of monumental landscapes that bring him closer to the American Western than his most famous compatriot and pupil, Ingmar Bergman.
'Terje' is based on an epic poem by Ibsen, a writer most famous for his plays. The plot is simple enough - Terje Vigen is a salty old sea-dog in the early 19th century, tired of a hard, marine life, who settles down to blissful domesticity with his weaving wife and young child. After five years, however, the Napoleonic Wars break out, and the resulting blockade by the English forces the small community into starvation. Vigen decides to row to a village across the sea to smuggle food for his family; evading the English naval lookout on his way out, he is captured on his return, and thrown into jail for five years. Returning a forgotten man, he finds his house occupied by strangers and his family long dead. He becomes a broken, reclusive lighthouseman; one stormy night, he rescues his captor with his family. Will Vigen get his bitter revenge?
'Terje' features sequences still unequalled in sea dramas - Vigen's clambering onto the huge yardarm to unfurl the sail; the entire smuggling sequence, from the silvery ripples of the water as Vigen rows away from his wife, radiating away from her towards his doom, to his first evasion from the navy, hiding in an improvised hole, to the terrifying hunt, a brilliantly edited suspense sequence, with one man, old Vigen, chased by a crew of young professionals, to the messy, tortuous climax, Vigen struggling and diving, being shot at by frankly inept sailors.
These action scenes, in which the natural world is an impassively fierce presence, are contrasted with the domestic - the scenes where he greets his wife and first meets his new child and plays with it are as touching and believable images of family life as anything in cinema ('Thomas Graal's first child' confirms Sjostrom's rare facility with children), while the communal scenes of near-famine are harrowing.
But there is no easy split between nature and civilisation - Vigen's house is ominously framed by the vast sea, while his adventures on the waves are provoked by domestic needs. Neither is there a simplistic dichotomy between the 'truth' and 'honesty' of nature, and the hypocrisy of society. The latter might cause the murderous war and Vigen's imprisonment, but it also tempers Vigen's warped nature in the aftermath of his loss, where the sight of a family checks his destructive urges. The film closes with an astonishing image, a lingering shot of his family's grave overlooking the sea at sunset. It has an immense, metaphysical, enigmatic, uncanny impact, somewhat frightening in its restfulness, that is closer to Bergman (the sing-song, ye-olde-Englishe translation of Ibsen's verse in the intertitles are unintentionally, distractingly comic)
'Terje' is based on an epic poem by Ibsen, a writer most famous for his plays. The plot is simple enough - Terje Vigen is a salty old sea-dog in the early 19th century, tired of a hard, marine life, who settles down to blissful domesticity with his weaving wife and young child. After five years, however, the Napoleonic Wars break out, and the resulting blockade by the English forces the small community into starvation. Vigen decides to row to a village across the sea to smuggle food for his family; evading the English naval lookout on his way out, he is captured on his return, and thrown into jail for five years. Returning a forgotten man, he finds his house occupied by strangers and his family long dead. He becomes a broken, reclusive lighthouseman; one stormy night, he rescues his captor with his family. Will Vigen get his bitter revenge?
'Terje' features sequences still unequalled in sea dramas - Vigen's clambering onto the huge yardarm to unfurl the sail; the entire smuggling sequence, from the silvery ripples of the water as Vigen rows away from his wife, radiating away from her towards his doom, to his first evasion from the navy, hiding in an improvised hole, to the terrifying hunt, a brilliantly edited suspense sequence, with one man, old Vigen, chased by a crew of young professionals, to the messy, tortuous climax, Vigen struggling and diving, being shot at by frankly inept sailors.
These action scenes, in which the natural world is an impassively fierce presence, are contrasted with the domestic - the scenes where he greets his wife and first meets his new child and plays with it are as touching and believable images of family life as anything in cinema ('Thomas Graal's first child' confirms Sjostrom's rare facility with children), while the communal scenes of near-famine are harrowing.
But there is no easy split between nature and civilisation - Vigen's house is ominously framed by the vast sea, while his adventures on the waves are provoked by domestic needs. Neither is there a simplistic dichotomy between the 'truth' and 'honesty' of nature, and the hypocrisy of society. The latter might cause the murderous war and Vigen's imprisonment, but it also tempers Vigen's warped nature in the aftermath of his loss, where the sight of a family checks his destructive urges. The film closes with an astonishing image, a lingering shot of his family's grave overlooking the sea at sunset. It has an immense, metaphysical, enigmatic, uncanny impact, somewhat frightening in its restfulness, that is closer to Bergman (the sing-song, ye-olde-Englishe translation of Ibsen's verse in the intertitles are unintentionally, distractingly comic)