The Execution
About The Execution
A French woman condemned for killing her two children sits in a cell. A priest and a guard lead her through a door and up a sunlit gangway. A man in a top hat lifts his hat and helps take her out of the frame. The priest watches them go and wipes a tear. In the lost ending she kneels at a guillotine.
Cast & crew
More about The Execution
Peter Elfelt directed and photographed Henrettelsen. Christian Lundgaard and Carl Scheel Vandel wrote it. Francesca Nathansen plays the condemned woman. Victor Betzonich is also in the cast. It opened at the Panoptikonbygningen in Copenhagen. Elfelt’s protocol lists the original negative at 40 meters.
Themes
Making
Elfelt was a still photographer. He staged a French murder case instead of filming a Copenhagen street.
Look
Elfelt used one stationary setup. The story moves when the priest, the guard, and the woman walk toward something offscreen.
Music
Silent. No composer is credited.
Preservation
The only known copy is incomplete: 25 meters of a 40-meter negative. The shot of her kneeling at the guillotine is among what is missing. A copy of the fragment is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The English title is Capital Execution. The Danish title is Henrettelsen.
- It is the first fiction film made by a Danish filmmaker.
- The story is taken from a French case.
- The camera stays fixed. People enter and leave toward events the lens never shows.
Scenes
- She sits in the cell before the priest and the guard come for her.
- On the sunlit gangway a man in a top hat takes off his hat.
- The priest wipes his eye after she has left the frame.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Henrettelsen (1903).webm)
