A Man There Was (1917)
…………………………………………………
A Man There Was Movie Review
A Man There Was is a 1917 Swedish silent drama film directed by and starring Victor Sjostrom. It’s such an effective, progressive picture.
………………………………………………….
“On a barren, remote islet,
there lived an odd, grizzled man“
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
The protagonist lives happily with his wife and little girl on a small island in Norway. In 1809, because of the English blockade, poor people start starving and he decides to row to Denmark to bring food to his family. On the way back, he is captured by a ruthless English captain and sent to jail in England. When he was finally freed in 1814 and can return home, he finds that his wife and daughter have died.
He takes up a solitary life in his house overlooking the sea. One night he sees a British yacht in distress in a storm. He rushes to her help and discovers that the skipper is the same man that had taken him prisoner and broken his life many years before. He decides against vengeance and rescues the skipper along with the skipper’s wife and child.
Needless to say, this is a very powerful story that was simply way ahead of its time in terms of its ending. It is very much an anti-revenge storyline that, although difficult even for me to grasp in this brutal context, is still very much human and such a powerful statement for sure.
The storytelling is superb, there is no doubt about it. However, the movie is just pretty good and not great because simply the pacing is rushed and the runtime is ridiculously short at one hour for such a strong, powerful, epic story. That ruined somewhat the movie for me as it was an obviously bad choice.
But otherwise A Man There Was is technically arresting. It’s one of the rare movies from the 1910s that heavily rely on natural landscapes and certainly its desolate island provided a terrific backdrop for the inner turmoil in the main character.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
The cinematography is stunning, and even groundbreaking for its time. The direction and acting from Sjostrom are both terrific, and a further showcase of how versatile this man was during his heyday. The score is also great, and the intertitles are solid, though a bit too sparse. The mood of the film is very evocative of loneliness and despair, and it is its strongest aspect.
A Man There Was is most definitely overly short in runtime and way too rushed, but in terms of storytelling and cinematography it is groundbreaking. Its anti-revenge narrative is very modern, the overall story is memorably dark and the film is gorgeously shot, and also highly striking in its atmosphere.
