The Virtuous One
About The Virtuous One
Merchant Momme, played by Oscar Stribolt, comes home to a wife who is late and decides she has a lover. She has been sitting for a portrait, a birthday present for him. Each new mix-up makes him surer. He goes to confront the poor painter he suspects, Smørum, and the visit does not turn out the way he planned.
Cast & crew
More about The Virtuous One
Lau Lauritzen Sr. directed from a script by Poul Gregaard. Sophus Wangøe photographed it. The Danish title is Dydsdragonen. Other titles are Privatlivets Ufred and Dickchen ist tugenhaft. Nordisk negative 1633 is 397 meters of tinted 35mm. It opened at the Biograf-Theatret in Copenhagen on March 25, 1918.
Themes
Making
This is one of Lauritzen's Nordisk farces built on a fat suspicious husband, the part Stribolt played over and over in 1918. The painter and the sculptor are there so the jealousy has somewhere to go.
Look
Sophus Wangøe shot it on tinted 35mm.
Preservation
The Danish Film Institute holds the Nordisk negative, 397 meters, tinted. A digital copy is in circulation.
Notes
- Agnes Andersen plays Mrs. Momme. Lauritz Olsen plays Smørum, the portrait painter.
- Ragnhild Sannom plays the model. Rasmus Christiansen plays Klin, a sculptor.
- The Danish Film Institute lists the short at 19 minutes. A Danish Wikipedia entry gives 13 minutes for the same 397 meters.
- The joke is the birthday portrait. Momme reads every delay as an affair.
Scenes
- Mrs. Momme comes home late from what is only a sitting for her husband's birthday portrait.
- Momme marches off to accuse the painter Smørum and walks into the surprise the short is built on.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-dydsdragonen)
- Wikimedia Commons (Dydsdragonen (1918).webm)
