Original title: Ingeborg Holm
Year: 1913
Runtime: 1 hour, 12 minutes
Country: Sweden
Language: Silent
Subtitles: English inter-titles
Genre: Drama
Director: Victor Sjöström
Cast:
Hilda Borgström … Ingeborg Holm
Aron Lindgren … Sven Holm, Older Eric Holm
Erik Lindholm … Employee in Shop
Georg Grönroos … Poorhouse Superintendant
William Larsson … Police Officer
Richard Lund … Doctor
Carl Barcklind … House Doctor
Plot/Synopsis:
Ingeborg Holm’s husband opens up a grocery store and life is on the sunny side for them and their three children. But her husband becomes sick and dies. Ingeborg tries to keep the store, but because of the lazy, wasteful staff she eventually has to close it. With no money left, she has to move to the poor-house and she is seperated from her children. Her children are taken care of by foster-parents, but Ingeborg simply has to get out of the poor-house to see them again…
Over the weekend I watched ‘Ingeborg Holm’ (1913), directed by Victor Sjöström, and starring Hilda Borgström as Ingeborg. This early Swedish feature is 96 minutes long, and it has recently been released by Kino Video. I must admit that the film rather astonished me because of the quality of pacing, of acting, of story – nearly everything; others from this year and before that were anything near a feature length, [and] for the most part, are exceedingly antiquated by modern standards. ‘Ingeborg Holm’ is anything BUT antiquated. [...] The story concerns what were called ‘workhouses’ in Scandinavia. It begins by showing Ingeborg Holm’s husband, through diligence and good economic behavior, being able to begin to operate his own grocery store. Unfortunately, just after opening, the husband suffers a hemorrhage and dies. Ingeborg takes over the running, but unfortunately, through the untoward grafting of an employee she ends up bankrupt. She and her three children are left with a choice to take 20 kronor a month or for Ingeborg to go work in a workhouse. She chooses the latter. I won’t give away all the plot, but you can be sure that she suffers the incredible inhumanity that was inherent in that system at the time. It is said that this film nearly single-handedly began an improvement in the social system of Sweden.
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Ingeborg Holm (1913)
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