Värmlänningarna

Although based on a play , "Värmlannigarma "(the people of Värmland) bears a distant resemblance to Gustav Edgrun 's "driver dagg faller regen"( 1947°(after the dew, the rain) ,a movie loosely based on a Birgit Sonderholm's novel : the feud between the families ( in "people von Värmland" ,it remains vague, in the 1947 work ,it's much more detailed) ; if one reverses the roles (the girl becomes a poor servant,the boy ,the son of a wealthy bourgeois) , it amounts to the same ;one will note many similarities : the girl saying "no" in front of the whole congregation,hints at the sprite /fairy of the river, the waterfall where the girl almost gets drowned .......

But the 1957 effort is a musical , the rustic and aristocratic balls as well as the dancing numbers are dazzling ; on the other hand the songs are (except for the first one ) sometimes dull .The colors are splendid ,glittering , recalling the atmosphere of Douglas Sirk's melodramas (he was Nordic ,Danish to be precise ,being born Detlef Sierck ) of the fifties .The lovers are a beautiful couple , but Kerstin Meyer ,who plays Brita , the would be rival,overplays and her character verges on caricature ;so does her father. And the last ten minutes are full of filler.

See it for the nice cinematography ,a feast for the eye in this restored version.