Ingeborg Holm
About Ingeborg Holm
Sven and Ingeborg Holm open a shop in Stockholm with their three children. Sven contracts tuberculosis and dies. Ingeborg cannot keep the shop, falls ill, and asks the poorhouse board for help. The board will not support her outside the workhouse. She sells the shop and the house, and the children go to foster homes. A letter says her daughter Valborg is sick. Ingeborg slips out at night, is chased by the police, and reaches the girl. Allowed later to see her younger son Erik, she finds he does not know her. She tries to make him a doll from her scarf. He cries and turns to his foster mother. Ingeborg is put in the ward for insane women, where she cradles a plank as if it were a child. Fifteen years on, the grown Erik, a sailor, visits. She does not know him until he shows a photograph of her inscribed to him. Her memory comes back.
Cast & crew
More about Ingeborg Holm
Victor Sjöström directed. Nils Krok wrote the 1906 play and the film script. Hilda Borgström plays Ingeborg. Henrik Jaenzon photographed it. Charles Magnusson ran Svenska Bio. The premiere was October 27, 1913. English sources give 73 minutes. Gustav Erbs is credited with music on the Swedish record of the film. Aron Lindgren plays both Sven and the adult Erik. Georg Grönroos plays the poorhouse superintendent. The play had opened at Helsingborg City Theatre on November 5, 1906. Swedish Wikipedia gives 96 minutes. English Wikipedia gives 73, which matches copies in circulation. The premiere was at the Cosmorama in Gothenburg; Stockholm followed on November 10.
Themes
Background
The picture opened in Sweden on October 27, 1913, and the argument it started about the workhouse was still live when parliament replaced the 1871 poor-relief rules in 1918.
Making
Sjöström had toured in Krok's play and then left the script in a drawer. Borgström's expiring contract, in the summer of 1913, is what put it in front of the camera.
Look
Henrik Jaenzon shot the interiors at Svenska Biografteatern's studio on Lidingö and the exteriors on Lidingö and in Stockholm.
Music
Gustav Erbs is credited with music for the film on the Swedish record. The picture itself is silent.
Preservation
Prints survive and circulate, including a copy posted for viewing.
Notes
- An English release title is Margaret Day.
- Krok offered the script to Svenska Bio and to Nordisk in 1911. Both passed. He gave it to Sjöström the next year.
- In the summer of 1913 Borgström had 17 days left on a contract that paid her 5,000 kronor for 30 days, the highest acting wage at the company. She and Magnusson used the time on this film.
Scenes
- Erik, a small boy, does not know his mother and turns to the foster mother. Ingeborg is left holding a plank in the women's ward.
- Fifteen years later the sailor Erik shows her the photograph inscribed "To Erik from mother," and she knows him.
Influenced by
- Ingeborg Holm (Nils Krok play)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-ingeborg-holm)
