Prästänkan (1920)

Director:

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writers:

Kristofer Janson (story)
Carl Theodor Dreyer (adaptation)

Release Date:

4 October 1920 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A young man is elected by a small village to be its parson. As part of his duties, he is required to marry the widow of the parson before him...

Plot Keywords:

Waterfall | Nursing Back To Health | Dancing | Drunkenness | Wedding

Cast

Greta Almroth	...	Mari
Einar Röd	...	Söfren
Hildur Carlberg	...	Margarete Pedersdotter
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Olav Aukrust	...	First Candidate
Emil Helsengreen	...	The Gardener
Mathilde Nielsen	...	Gunvor
Lorentz Thyholt	...	The Beadle
Kurt Welin	...	Second Candidate

Also Known As:

The Witch Woman (International: English title) (USA)
The Fourth Marriage of Dame Margaret
The Parson's Widow
Youth to Youth
A Quarta Aliança da Sra. Margarida (Brazil) [pt]
Die Pastorenwitwe (Germany) [de]
La quatrième alliance de Dame Marguerite (France) [fr]
La vedova del pastore (Italy) [it]
Papinleski (Finland) [fi]

Runtime:

USA:71 min (2003 alternate version)

Country:

Sweden

Language:

Swedish | Danish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

USA:TV-14 (TV rating)

Filming Locations:

Lillehammer, Norway

Company:

Svensk Filmindustri (SF)

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood" (1995)

Dreyer treats subjects amusingly, and sentimentally, that he would later treat seriously

The Parson's Widow is not entirely a really great silent film; it loses some of its strengths as a satire on marriage and (partially) religion when it starts to get a little sentimental towards the end. But for a while, one sees a film by the master Danish filmmaker Carl Th. Dreyer flexing his directorial muscles on something that is something one might not expect from seeing such pieces of perfect tragedy like Joan of Arc or Day of Wrath. Here we get the story of Sofren (Einar Rod), an unconventional would-be Parson who 'auditions' for the position by going on about the devil in an off-beat manner (yes, off-beat). He learns that in order to become the village Parson, he needs to marry the presumed local old witch, Miss Pedersdotter (grim-faced Hildur Carlberg), who lures him in with a piece of cursed cod and has him succumb to marry her - but he really wants Mari (Almroth), and cannot until she dies. But when?

There's some splendid comic set-pieces set in here, like with Sofren trying to scare the old Miss in a devil-disguised sheet, only to be foiled by his own slippers, or when Sofren tries to sneak out at night to see Mari and continually gets caught (or, in one case, another old woman in the bed!) But what's more amazing here is Dreyer's choices in casting. Rod is perfect for this kind of frustrated, ambitious but conniving sort, with great and imaginative eyes that do a lot while seeming to do little (one compared this as Dreyer doing Day of Wrath as a Chaplin, but I don't see much of Chaplin in his main male lead), and Carlberg is so dead-on for this old widow who may or may die (depending on if a life-lengthening potion works) that it's among some of Dreyer's best actors in one of his movies.

While Dreyer sometimes loses his footing in the story, as mentioned towards the end, he makes up for it with some curious scenes, like the dance at the wedding, or the specific use of colored tints. When Sofron has the weird dream state of seeing a 'young' Miss Pedersdotter, we see it in a haze of light red (or maybe blue), and it's completely dazzling for a moment. It might be a slightly lighter affair than his more 'serious' pictures, but for the curious digging into Dreyer's catalog, it's not at all a disappointment. At its best Parson's Widow has a good, hard farcical grip on the subject matter.