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In Norway in 1871, Peer Gynt's mother Aase
chastises her ne'er-do-well son for failling to provide for the family.
She warns him that his sweetheart, Ingrid Haegstad, is about to marry Mads
Moen, a shy villager at whom Peer sneers. Although Peer promises to
bring honor to his mother, he continues to tease her, shun work and mistreat
women.
Later, at Ingrid's wedding, he terrorizes the
other villagers but is stopped in his tracks by the arrival of a beautiful
newcomer, Solveig. Solveig, however, spurns his rough attentions and,
in response, he abducts Ingrid, carries her into the mountains and seduces
her. Afterward, she begs him to marry her, but he pushes her away and
runs to the forest, where three cowherd girls ply him with fruit and kisses.
Deep in the forest, Peer meets the Woman in
Green, who tells him she is the daughter of the Dovre-King, or the Boyg, a
troll who rules the mountains. At first they play together, but she
soon leads him to her father's castle, where he is imprisoned, tied to a
stake and threatened by masked figures. As Peer is attacked, the Boyg
taunts him but Peer eventually escapes.
He builds himself a hut in the mountains, where
Solveig soon arrives to inform him that she has run away from her family in
order to live with him. Just as they settle into domestic happiness,
however, the Woman in Green returns, now an old hag with a disfigured child,
who she claims is Peter's son. She informs him that only when he
banishes Solveig will she return to her beautiful form and, when he refuses
to do so, she warns him that she will plague them forever. To protect
Solveig, Peer leaves, asking her to wait for him. He returns to his
mother's cottage just in time to comfort her before she dies, after which he
leaves for the seacoast.
Within five years, Peer, now known as Sir Peter
Gynt, has earned a fortune as a trader and lives in Morocco. One
night, three competitors ply him with drinks until he signs a contract
turning over all his assets to them, rendering him bankrupt once again.
When he wakes the next day, he travels through the desert, stopping to
seduce a famed dancer named Anitra. After charming her into falling in
love with him, however, he leaves.
Years later, Peer, now a ship captain in the
North Sea, battles a storm that capsizes the ship, and saves himself at the
cost of another man's life. He returns once again to his hometown in
Norway, where he witnesses his own funeral. Feeling doomed by this
vision, he wanders the hill, and when a thin man asks him where he can find
Peer Gynt in order to save him, Peer scornfully instructs him to search in
South America.
Soon after, a button molder approaches and
informs Peer that, because of his evil ways, he must melt Peet down into raw
materials, like a button. Now desperate for his life, Peer argues that
he has not been complete failure as a man, but cannot convince the button
molder until he hears Solveig, now an old woman, singing. The button
molder, realizing that Solveig's vision of Peer can redeem him, agrees to
give him one more chance to "set his home in order."
Notes
The film's opening title card reads: "Henrik Ibsen's
Peer Gynt." Although Peer Gynt was published in Copenhagen,
Denmark in 1867, it was not produced on the stage until Feb 1876, when it opened
in Christiania, Norway. Peer Gynt was made in 1941, as an
independent experiment, welding Ibsen's drama visually, and building the action
of the play around the pulse and mood of Grieg's music. A cast of
non-professionals with little theatre acting experience was employed.
Locations in Northern Illinois and Wisconsin, including the shores of Lake
Michigan and a Norweigan-style village, were utilized to achieve a remarkably
authentic atmosphere. The produciton bears evidence of influences from
films such as Disney's Fantasia and Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's
Dream, in its fusion of drama and music. Peer Gynt was Charlton
Heston's first screen role; he was then 17. Both he and producer/director
David Bradley went on to make other films together, notably Julius Caesar made
in 1950. Shortly after, both embarked on separate Hollywood careers."
Although both Audrey Wedlock and Sarah Merrill are
listed in the onscreen credits as "Woman in Green," Wedlock plays the character
as a young woman and Merrill plays her after her transformation in to a hag.
The film was produced as an independent experiment by then-twenty-one-year-old
Northwestern University student David Bradley. Bradley shot the film
entirely in black and white, except for the section in the kindgom of "The Boyg,"
which is tinted first green, then blue, and finally red when "Peer" is under
attack. According to an Aug 1941 Chicago Tribune article, the cast
and crew went without pay, and the film was shot entirely on location in Starved
Rock, Wisconsin Dells, Waukegan and Gary Dunes, WI, as well as in Northern
Illinois and Lake Michigan. According to a 1942 IP article, stock
footage of "exotic locations" was used.
In 1941, upon being drafted into the Army, Bradley
had to hurriedly wrap post-production. Although the film had its premiere
in its rough version in Aug 1941, it was not until 1965 that Bradley was able
re-edit the film the way he desired and add new material, including the voice of
silent movie star Francis X. Bushman as "The Boyg." The credits for the
1965 version, which was released by The Willow Corporation, also include
Katherine Bradley, Anty Ball, Alice Badgerow, Robert Cooper, Rod Maynard and
Jane Willanovsky, but it has not been determined if these actors appeared in the
1941 version without credit, or appeared for the first time as part of the new
footage added to the 1965 version. The 1965 version also names Thomas A.
Blair and Roy Eggert, Jr. as associate producers. |
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