Shot during a Norwegian summer, this romantic drama – about a wealthy farmer’s daughter falling in love with a poor farmer’s son, despite having been promised to a rich suitor she dislikes – includes room for comedy and action (most memorably a thrilling climax involving a torrential river). But Dreyer’s inspiration was the pastoral films of Sjöström and Stiller, and it’s the way he combines his expressive sense of landscape with an attention to delicate emotional nuance that makes the film so affecting. 

“For The Bride of Glomdal, Dreyer went again to Norway, which seems to have acted as a fountain of youth for him as it did before with The Parson’s Widow. Although The Bride of Glomdal has touches of the same quirky humour as the earlier Norwegian film, it is distinguished by the sense of sweeping lyricism that runs through it and that owes a considerable debt to (but surpasses) Mauritz Stiller’s Jonah.” (Tom Milne)

Showing as part of a season of Carl Dreyer’s greatest films throughout April.