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Elvira Madigan (1967) DVD Review
Elvira Madigan (1967) DVD Credits:
Elvira Madigan (1967) Directed by:
Bo Widderberg
Elvira Madigan (1967) Written by:
Bo Widderberg
Elvira Madigan (1967) Cast:
Cleo Jensen, Thommy Berggren, Pia Degermark
Elvira Madigan (1967) Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
2
Elvira Madigan (1967) DVD Release Date:
1st January 2006
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Elvira Madigan (1967) Synopsis:

Based on a scandal of the late 1800s, an army officer elopes to the country with a beautiful tightrope walker.

Elvira Madigan (1967) DVD Review:

Hedvig Jensen is a well-known ropewalker who uses the 'Stage Name' Elvira Madigan. She meets Lieutenant Sixten Sparre (Thommy Berggren), a Swedish officer who is married and has two children. They both decide to run away, but since Sixten deserted the army, he cannot find any job and the couple encounter many hardships.

Elvira is a young woman in love and on alienated from the circus she has lived with all her life. One minute she has a high flying career (literally), the next she is on a thorny journey of love. She is struck down by poverty, pain and uncertainty.

Pia Degermark, winner of the Best Actress Award at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1967 is a delight. As Elvira Madigan (or Hedvig as she prefers to be known by her lover) she is a beautiful goddess like woman, yet also naïve and childlike.
The lovers have little money, and no home. They run from place to place. Unfortunately they don’t find peace. They are plagued by tragedy. Like so many they get beaten down by circumstance.

Elvira Madigan is sad story and there are no happy endings. Fiction was defined as a story with a happy ending by some wit but this particular fiction doesn't follow that. As Elvira puts it to Sixteen: "don’t you understand what we have to do? We must........"

I would thoroughly recommend this film, it is a classic example of how Love as a passion takes over lives. It's a doomed romance like Romeo and Juliet. Why are we fascinated by that? What Truth attracts us to this theme? The film questions other forms of passion such as seduction; temptation; lust and entrapment. Sometimes they get confused and mistaken for love.

The whole fim poses the question: is love enough to keep it all together? Or to put it in the traditional form: Can Love conquer all?

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Elvira Madigan (1967) DVD review written by: Jacqueline Sharp

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