Doktor Glas (1942) User Reviews

Triangle-drama without drama...

[Enchorde · 4/10 · 5 October 2004]

** HERE BE SPOILERS **

Doctor Glas (Rydeberg) become involved in the marriage problem of a couple where the man is an old priest and the woman a young beautiful girl. The young woman didn't marry the man out of love and now she is very unhappy. For some reason Glas agrees to try to help the young woman and falsely convinces the old priest that his heart is not all that well and that he needs rest and that his wife need rest. But the priest want a child above all and is not very keen to follow his doctors advice and his wife become increasingly unhappy. Doctor Glas is getting more and more involved with the girl and now has to fight his own conscience...

Not very catching movie. Rydeberg acts well as Glas and Christenson is good as the young wife. However the story, adapted from a novel, fail to lure me into its grip and otherwise the movie has little to offer... unfortunately.

4/10

attempt of filming a novel not adaptable for screen

[seglora · 21 June 2015]

The film is based on a short novel of Hjalmar Söderberg "Doktor Glas". The most famous film made from Söderbergs work is "Gertrud" by Carl Th.Dreyer in 1964.The "Doktor Glas" film is definitely not at that level but is still an interesting attempt of making a film of this novel, which some would say is not adaptable for screen. Doktor Glas is a very short introspective novel with long monologues and important memory sequences. The manuscript has been adjusted and some of the main character's acerbic remarks about life has been placed in the mouth of journalist Markel (Gösta Cederlund). The story ,very simplified, is about a lonely melancholic doctor poisoning the vicar, married to a woman, who have consulted him about their unhappy marriage. The story has the typical flair of fin de siècle with both Nietzscheanism and anti-clericalism. The role of the vicar (Rune Carlsten also the director of the movie) is played with certain panache but the main character Doktor Glas (Georg Rydeberg) is perhaps a bit too hieratic. The dream sequences are not totally convincing but the rhythm of the film is acceptable. Several of the minor characters are quite good as Doktor Glas's housekeeper Kristin (Hilda Borgström) and Markel (Gösta Cederlund) is always a reliable character actor. The film takes place in a restricted area in central Stockholm but the film does not feel like an ordinary Swedish film from the forties and has an almost French cinema style of the forties. The film is available on You Tube and there is an English subtitle downloadable. This film would feel exotic also for contemporary Swedes. Sweden, a country which has obliterated its past, now multi cultural (i.e.non cultural) and totally Americanised, so it could be interesting also for Swedes to see that their country was a European country long time ago. Other interesting films from Sweden made in the forties (apart from the earliest of Ingmar Bergman) are, Ett Brott 1940 (with Gösta Cederlund as the police inspector) and Två människor 1945(Georg Rydeberg main role) which is Carl Th. Dreyer's only film made in Sweden but totally disowned by the master director for inexplicable reasons.