Main Cast: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Jan Troell, Eddie Axberg, Allan Edwall
Release Year: 1971
Country: SE
Run Time: 191 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Director/writer Jan Troell's expansive saga deals with the Larsen family, who during the 19th century famine in Sweden emigrate to the more fertile fields of Minnesota. With painstaking detail, the director follows the Larsens as they make the perilous (and, to some of their fellow immigrants, fatal) journey by foot, steamer, train, and paddle boat. The film, which originally ran 190 minutes but was pared down to 150 by its director for American consumption, earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Direction, and Best Actress (Liv Ullmann). The Emigrants was followed by a sequel, Nybyggarna ("The New Land"); both films have been edited together for TV release under the title The Emigrant Saga. The subsequent American TV series The New Land (1974) starred Bonnie Bedelia in the role created in The Emigrants by Liv Ullmann, and Scott Thomas in the patriarch role originated by Max von Sydow. In 1991, Sven Nykvist directed a "prequel" to The Emigrants titled The Ox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the very few foreign-language films to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, the once-popular The Emigrants seems to have been forgotten in the decades since its release. Part of this may be due to the fact that the original subtitled version of the film is difficult to find, and the more accessible dubbed version is vastly inferior. Still, even the latter features much of Jan Troell's sometimes-dazzling cinematography, with its sweeping vistas of the alternately freezing and searing Minnesota landscape. While Troell's direction sometimes goes for the obvious, he still paints a beautiful, if often bleak and unrelenting, picture and gives the film the epic sweep it demands while still creating an intimate portrait of a determined and loving family. As the heads of that family, Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow could not be better. Ullmann brings her special talents to bear here, using her ability to be both expressive and reserved at practically the same time, and her natural beauty has rarely been captured so effectively. Von Sydow creates a towering figure, but one with surprising gentleness when necessary. While the film's endless trials may daunt some viewers, it is a rewarding experience for those who can stick with it. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Americans in general and those of Scandinavian extraction especially will find these films helpful in understanding their own past. The film itself is a family's odyssey from rural poverty in Sweden to a new life in Minnesota, without the gloss one expects from films intended for American audiences, yet sympathetic to the people whose deepest desire was the material security which land plus their hard work and sacrifice might obtain.The film's depictions of the settlers' interactions with native Americans takes no sides, showing both the atrocities committed against the settlers in the Dakota wars as well as the hardships visited on the Indians culminating in the mass hanging of many Dakotas by Abraham Lincoln's government.
