Available to stream from 11 to 13 August 2024 at https://stummfilmtage.culturebase.org
Standing at the deathbed of her ex-husband, Thora van Deken learns that he has left the majority of his fortune to a nursing home for women. After his death, Thora steals his will and claims to have burnt it at her late ex-husband’s express wish. This way, their daughter Esther can claim the inheritance she is entitled to. But at what price? Pauline Brunius, who also worked as a director, shines in the leading role of the mother torn between her desire to care for her own child and her sense of moral duty.
The film is based on a short novel written in 1900 by the Danish 1917 Nobel Prize laureate Henrik Pontoppidan, “LilleRødhætte” (Little Red Riding Hood). It was adapted for the stage in 1914, retitled “Thora van Deken”. John W. Brunius directed the play in Stockholm in 1916, and his film version features several cast members from that production.
Considering Brunius’s previous work with Pontoppidan’s story on stage and the fact that the film is mostly set indoors, it is interesting that here he doesn’t fall into the use of a theatrical tableau staging style. Instead, THORA VAN DEKEN, with its first-class camerawork, editing, and narrative structure, is an intense cinematic drama which brilliantly reflects its characters’ psychological conflicts.
Much of THORA VAN DEKEN’s strength undoubtedly rests on Pauline Brunius’s stunning performance in the title role, which is arguably the best of her film career. (Pauline Brunius, who also directed a few films on her own, had only a limited screen acting career and is today best known as a stage diva and the first female director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.) Interestingly, the film is consistently structured around Thora’s – and, in few scenes, her daughter’s – point of view.
THORA VAN DEKEN is one of the foremost examples of films by the minor directors of the Swedish “Golden Age”. Yet sadly it has been overshadowed by the work of the masters Stiller and Sjöström in both film history and screening praxis.
Magnus Rosborn, Casper Tybjerg, in: Le giornate del cinema muto Catalogue. Pordenone 2017
