Cinema
A Crime
Ett brott
Anders Henrikson · 1940
Synopsis
Andreas von Degerfelt, a Supreme Court councillor, is preparing to celebrate his sixtieth birthday with his children. The day before, his brother Hugo returned from a long stay abroad: a morphine addict, forger and usurer, he is everything the magistrate would prefer not to have in his family, and the latter tries to send him away again. The same evening, his son Rutger goes to borrow money from this uncle, with his wife Maud. The quarrel turns bad. The next day, amid the preparations for the party, the family learns that Hugo has been found dead at home.
Context
The film is based on a play by Sigfrid Siwertz, first staged at the Lorensbergsteatern in Gothenburg on 13 October 1933, then at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in March 1934 by Alf Sjöberg; three of the actors had already played the roles they take up here. All the production companies turned down this grave drama whose hero is a murderer; only Lorens Marmstedt, for Terrafilm, accepted. The 1940 critics were enthusiastic: one wrote that it was the rare case of a filmed play better than the stage version, another that the scenes of explanation had a force almost unknown in Swedish talking pictures.
Who it is for
Ninety-two minutes, in Swedish. It helps to know that a real case provides its material: in 1932, a Stockholm magistrate was killed at home by his son, whose wife was present.
Prizes and reception
The film that brought Swedish cinema out of the light comedy of the thirties, and that has been regarded as the most important of the following decade.
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