After losing his sight in the First World War, the talented artist Wilbur Crawford lives a reclusive life with his mother. He meets a widowed Red Cross nurse and eventually marries her. An operation in the USA restores Wilbur’s sight. But how is he supposed to recognise his wife back home when he has never seen her to begin with? After the scandal surrounding his film HÄXAN (1922), which is now considered a classic, Danish director Benjamin Christensen made this clever marital comedy containing a breakthrough performance from Willy Fritsch, who would go on to become a popular leading man.

The film is lit with great skill by the cinematographer Frederik Fuglsang, who was one of several Danish cameramen who came to work in Germany in the years after 1913. Danish cinematographers wererenowned at the time for the exceptional quality of their work. There are,furthermore, many touches that reveal Christensen’s hand.

Besides the obligatory champagne-drinking scene,there are some shots toward the end which display the intricate light-and-shadow interplay of which Christensen was so fond. We see a wide corridor at night, lit only by the moonlight which slants in through a row of tall windows on one side, the shadows of the window bars falling in criss-cross patterns across the floor and the characters moving about in the hallway. The film is lit throughout in key lighting, bringing out faces and details. This may be somewhat unconventional for comedy, but it gives the film a feel of elegance and stylishness. Both the look of the film and its doubled mistaken-identity story are distinctly fairy-tale-like. Even the publicity photographs stress the oriental elements of the décor, so that the film despite its modern trappings becomes suffused with the heady atmosphere of the Arabian Nights.

Casper Tybjerg, in: Benjamin Christensen: An International Dane. New York 1999

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