User Reviews

The tragic tale filmed three times but best known is the 1967-bo-widerberg-version: the real-life-story of the famous German-Danish tightrope walker Hedvig Jensen (stepdaughter to the circus owner John Madigan) and her lover Lieutenant Sixten Sparre, the Swedish officer, married and father to two children. A doomed love from start, told as skillingtryck, here the Swedish text of Elvira Madigan (and music): "Sorgeliga saker ..." with music an Danish text here..." ... . The movies last shot, a friezed picture of her, catching a butterfly in a meadow, telling Sixten, who dares not to take the final step: "You have to", "No, I do not want it", "You must, There is no other way out" She makes it easier for him by catching a butterfly. Not men but wo-men know better when nothing is left of life and what to do, told by reality beyond fantasy. The sound of his shot and the film shot freezes: having the butterfly in her hands. These last scenes are soundless. How could it have been without the suicide, money, finding something to eat in the grass, Sixten, having left behind his family, not listening to his friend, trying to lead him back. A deserter from the army.How could it have been beyond the movie without suicide for them both? It could have been as it was for the upper class pupil at Sigtuna, 16, Pia Degermark: seduced by fame and trapped in the the downward spiral after the shooting of the movie. Igor Klysocki in the Moktòw Fängelse tells that you cannot warn others but have to confront yourself the experience to have come down to the bot ten. The cruel rule is: we are not able to listen to others experience but have to face it ourself. It is this what Pia Degermark had to learn, described by herself in her book "God counts womens tears", 2006. Not to forget that it is her own colored tale, repeated in a Swedish radio/television, TV4-interview.

Lots of dreamy soft-focus shots of the two principals wandering across landscapes and through towns, gazing at each other lovingly, oblivious to the fact that their love can go nowhere. In the end, they are faced with only the option of suicide, and the soldier shoots first Elvira then himself; I recall that the spot of blood on her blouse was touchingly filmed as a coda to their doomed affair. Frankly, this film would have been relegated to the curiosity pile long ago and forgotten, except for the fact that the soundtrack featured the highly talented pianist Geza Anda playing, repeatedly, the languid and lovely second Andante movement of Mozart's achingly beautiful piano concerto in C, K467. The soundtrack made such a huge impression that generations of movie-goers who had never heard Mozart before may have been inspired to give him a listen -- so much so that Deutsche Grammaphon, the producer of the album, named the Mozart K467 concerto the "Elvira Madigan" concerto, and so it has been informally known ever since to much of the public.

I'm not usually a fan of these pure-love-conquers-all type of films, but I really liked Widebergs "Elvira Madigan". It's funny to see how many Americans think of it as "slow" and "boring" because there are so few dialogs and you already know the end. Old Scandinavian movies kind of follows their own way of building a story, nowadays they follow the American style more, which isn't bad either, just different. But even though a movie is made in a different way than you are used to, it might be worth giving it a chance. "Elvira Madigan" needs to be read between the lines, you have to notice all the details to see the beauty and the complexity of the story, and since it's so "slow" you get a lot of time to do that. The dialogs are very few, but they all mean something. I especially liked when Sixten talked to his friend about that the world could be just one straw (if that's the right word?) of grass and that love is when you want to See the world from your lovers eyes. Often when you try to explain love, all your words become clichés but in this film it's like you have never heard about love before. But actually I didn't really notice how good I thought this film was until the ending, when the beautiful picture of Hedvig capturing a butterfly froze to the sound of the gunshot. Thanks to that frozen image, the beauty became immortal. It wouldn't have been the same if you could actually see them dying. It left a nice, warm feeling in my chest that I think will stay for long.

Have you ever heard Rachmaninoff's Brief Encounter Piano Concerto? Don't you just love Beethoven's Clockwork Orange Symphony? What about Schubert's Barry Lyndon Piano Trio?

No, I thought not. Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat are never referred to by those nicknames, even though those works are prominently featured in the films of those names. "Elvira Madigan" has achieved the virtually unique feat, for a film, of bestowing a nickname on a famous piece of Classical music. When I first discovered Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 as a teenager in the late seventies I wondered why it was often referred to as the "Elvira Madigan Concerto". (I had not seen the film at that time. Was the mysterious lady Mozart's lover or the dedicatee of the work?) Indeed, the name is still sometimes used, even though the film itself is today much less famous than it once was.

The true story on which the film is based is well-known in Sweden and Denmark; this was one of three cinematic versions, but the only one to have become well-known outside Scandinavia. (There was another Swedish version from 1943 and a Danish one, also from 1967). In the summer of 1889 Lieutenant Count Sixten Sparre, an aristocratic officer in the Swedish Army, deserted and eloped with a Danish tightrope dancer named Hedvig Jensen, even though he was married with two children. (Hedvig worked under the stage name of Elvira Madigan, hence the title of the film). They spent about a month wandering through the Danish countryside, but eventually died together in a suicide pact after they ran out of money. (No, that's not a spoiler; the opening titles make the eventual fate of the young couple quite clear from the start). Despite Sparre's aristocratic status, he does not appear to have been wealthy.

The film tells the story of this tragedy in a simple, unadorned way. We see almost nothing of Sixten's life in the military or Elvira's life with the circus. Apart from the two lovers, the only character of any significance is Kristoffer, Sixten's friend and brother-officer, who tries to persuade him to return to his wife, his children, his country and his duty as a soldier. He fails, of course; Sixten realises that there can be no turning back to his old life and that as soon as he steps on Swedish soil he will be clapped in jail as a deserter.

In the fifties Swedish cinema had been dominated by the figure of Ingmar Bergman, but in the sixties younger directors like Bo Widerberg were reacting against Bergmanism, and, visually, "Elvira Madigan" is about as different from the gloomy monochrome look of a Bergman film as one could imagine. Hedvig (she prefers to refer to herself by her real name) and Sixten wander together through a beautiful, verdant summer landscape lit by almost perpetual sunshine. (There is one brief scene set in a rainstorm). The dominant colours are the green of the vegetation and the gold of the ripening corn, of the sunlight and of the lovely Pia Degermark's hair. The one contrasting colour is the red dress of a little girl who appears in several key scenes. Mozart's wonderful slow movement fits in well with the general ethereal mood.

Degermark received "Most Promising Newcomer" nominations at both the Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards and won "Best Actress" at the Cannes Film Festival, and her charm and innocence, quite different to the more worldly beauty of a Hollywood superstar, played a vital role in the success of the film. She did not, however, go on to become a star herself, making only a handful of films (none of them well known) after this one. Her co-star Thommy Berggren has become a well-known actor in Sweden (he starred in, among other things, "Joe Hill", also directed by Widerberg) but is less well-known internationally.

The popularity of the film at the time of its release, and possibly also its comparative neglect in more recent years, can be explained by the way in which Widerberg seemed to capture the spirit of the sixties so well, even though the story was set in the nineteenth century. Sixten and Hedvig can be seen as hippies born eighty years before their time; they have "dropped out" of society to embrace nature and the simple life, rejecting both militarism and materialism and proclaiming, by their actions, that "all you need is love". Of course, man (and woman) cannot live by love alone, and they have to pay the price for defying the values of their society. The central question posed by the film is whether the blame for their tragedy lies with that act of defiance, or with those very values themselves.

Another question is whether their freedom from social values has been bought at too great a cost to others. We hear from Kristoffer that Sixten's wife Henrietta has attempted suicide following his desertion of her. Sixten dismisses this as a lie, but it is clear that his behaviour must have caused great distress to his family.

"Elvira Madigan" can be seen as a sixties artefact, just as much as a mini-skirt, a lava lamp, an E-type Jaguar or a Beatles LP are sixties artefacts, but that does not necessarily mean that it is of no interest today. Its visual beauty, and the rather naive idealism with which it is infused, help to make it watchable nearly fifty years after it was made. 7/10

Looking for a rare and good film to watch for Valentines Day ? Director Bo Widerberg's classic 1967 film Elvira Madigan is tailor made for lovers. It was a big hit in the 60's, when love and individual freedom was the popular philosophy. In fact, looking at this film, audiences must have sighed in relief that such a case as that of Elvira Madigan and Lt. Sixten Sparre would not have occurred in their time. Elvira Madigan (played by the beautiful Pia Degermark) is a tightrope walker for the circus. She falls in love with the married Lt. Sixten Sparre (Thommy Berggren). The 19th century world they live in shuns their love and is even after them. A life on the run is at first tolerable. At least they are able to eat picnics in the forests and make love. This scene, by the way, is the most romantic in the film. The Mozart Piano Concerto 21 second movement, andante, is played repeatedly as the romance theme. It became so popular that even the concerto was named the "Elvira Madigan" concerto though surely Mozart would have none of it.

The acting may appear stilted and pantomime, and there are plenty of moments in which there is no talk but visually and dramatically it's a very well-done film. Also in the score is Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The story is said to have been based on an actual event in the 1850's. A pair of lovers on the run killed themselves in the woods. The movie has set the time to either late 1890's or early 1900's. The reference to Toulousse Latrec and the style of dress gives it away. This movie is very romantic and haunting. It will move you to tears.

Whether it still has the same power is a matter of opinion. The DVD picture quality does not compare with the original film which was rather soft focus Eastman type colour. The sound track, with it's subtle overlays of the sounds of summer, birds, insects buzzing and twigs snapping - somehow that doesn't come across so well as it does, or did, in the cinema. The magical stunning ending with the frozen image of Elvira releasing the butterfly and gunshot... followed by a second gunshot... suspended in time, well that simply doesn't have the same impact outside the picture house. It's a true art house movie with high production values that are as vulnerable and delicate as the subject matter. However, on re-watching the film on video I was able to appreciate the wider social context and commentary which is pointedly antagonistic, rigidly class based and basically "loveless" - in fact the complete polar opposite of the the star struck lovers. The chamber music scene, the tavern scene, the encounter with a less than talkative automaton woodsman, the unsympathetic army pal... they point to a social dead weight pressing down on the couple. Similarly, romantic scenes such as Elvira's practising her tight rope walking on a clothesline and the watching children's faces, or the forlorn Sixtus after a row born out of desperation staring into the water of a stream and seeing a piece of note paper float by: "Forgive me!" Yes, even on the DVD it moves us to cheer!

An infinitely superior movie about young love to Hollywood's "Love Story". The Mozart/Vivaldi soundtrack, to be found on DG in both LP and CD versions, adds the final poetic seal of wonderful movie making.

I saw this film first run when I was living in Stockholm. The story and the characters, particularly the actress playing the title role, have haunted me ever since. A bittersweet film, it's well worth watching. It's very pretty, with great images and a good story. Apparently it's based on a true story. The classic line is when the title character chides her soldier lover. She says to him: "War isn't parades, Sixten. It's the smell of burning flesh." Nearly thirty years on, I still remember her voice... Without spoiling the ending, let's just say that there's a reason that it's a bittersweet and not just a sweet film. I hope you enjoy it like I did.