Den starkaste

It was forty years since I'd seen director Alf Sjöberg's first movie "Den Starkaste /The Strongest, a Tale from the Arctic Ocean" and it was re-assuring at Pordenone to find it as imposing as I'd remembered.

In one of the last great silent movies, we see an environment, where the sealing waters go to the strongest. Sailor become farm hand become sealing ship marksman Sivert Brækemo has to assert his claim to the contested rifle, the position of gunner and the retiring captain's daughter in the middle of clambering round the real ice flows, where they filmed. Attention is riveted. Hard to relate it's Arctic realism with the director's great, later Strindberg films, beyond the authority he already showed.

This one should have been circulating to acclaim for the last seventy years.