edwagreen
For a variety of reasons-economic, social and religious force residents of a Swedish area to leave and come to America.Liv Ullmann received a best actress nomination for the Oscar and I really don't know why. Yes, she had some good emotional outbursts at times, but she was often difficult to understand. Perhaps, she could have used some tips from Loretta Young, who gave us an authentic Swedish accent in 1947's "The Farmer's Daughter," and got an Oscar for it.Ullmann is married to Max Von Sydow who really uses her as a baby making service. She is constantly pregnant throughout the film.The real top acting honors in the film go to the harlot and deacon, both forced out for their religious views.Other than lice, death and general malaise, the scenes on board never are riveting.
Erik Konze
Jan Troell, has truly captured the feeling of what inspires people to emigrate and the subsequent hardships that await in the land of hope. True masters of the craft, Sydow and Ullmann, are superb in their performances. They truly pull you into the time, the frame of mind and thus make you feel like you are sharing their voyage. A great film that is everything a film should be - moving. It is a mystery why this film did not win an Oscar for best foreign picture, best actress and best actor - though with all fairness, with both Caberet and The Godfather in the running, it would have required a miracle. If you should have the luck of stumbling onto this film at a rental shop, thank Fellini's ghost - grasp it and head for the check out.
Jim Colyer
The Emigrants is a Swedish film based on the novels of Swedish author Wilhelm Moberg. It is about the emigrants who sailed from Sweden in the 1850s to come to the United States. Max von Sydow is patriarch Karl Oskar. Liv Ullmann is his faithful wife, Kristina. The film shows the unbearable conditions which existed in Sweden, the agony of the ocean voyage and the promise of a better life in Minnesota. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA turned the novels into a musical in the 1990s. The music is Swedish folk music. They are trying to get an English version to Broadway. The Emigrants and its 1972 sequel, The New Land, provide a wonderful learning experience.
Oblomov_81
When Jan Troell's "The Emigrants" was released in the U.S. in 1972, it opened to excellent reviews and received the honor of being one of the few foreign-language films to receive a Best Picture nomination. It didn't win anything, though, and seems to have been forgotten over the years. Perhaps this is because the public has since found other Swedish films to be more noteworthy, in particular the works of Bille August and the later works of Ingmar Bergman.Sad to say, because "The Emigrants" is a film that closely examines two very different cultures in an effective and insightful way. A diverse group of Swedish peasants (among them a married couple, a priest, a prostitute, and a young upstart) endure back-breaking labor in their homeland to little profit. They decide to move to the states after being influenced by the exaggerated stories spread abroad (everyone has more than enough food, everyone is filthy rich, etc.). The audience sympathizes with them not just because they endure so much in Sweden, but also because they believe the stories they hear about frontier life in America. Yes, they will obviously have to strive and struggle to survive in their new home, but they are all the more admirable because of their adherence to the American dream."The Emigrants" is harsh and often unrelenting in the straightforward way it depicts the realities encountered by the Swedish settlers. The scenes where they travel across the ocean in a small, cramped, and diseased ship are appropriately claustrophobic and terrifying. Later, the family at the center of the story threatens to break up when Liv Ullmann's character, a fragile young mother, loses track of her daughter while hurrying to board a steamboat.Although most of the characters were better developed in the sequel to this film, "The New Land," Troell's story is very moving in its sincere depiction of how outsiders came to this country to pursue their hopes and dreams.
AD
