Liv Ulmann's directorial debut also had her co-authoring the screenplay (with poet Peter Poulsen) as based on a Henri Nathansen's 1932 novel about an affluent late 19th century Jewish merchant family in Copenhagen. Ulmann focuses on strong-willed daughter Sofie's progress through life: a love affair with a gentile painter, an arranged marriage , childbirth and ever more fateful challenges.
Direction
Ullmann's debut wields Bergman's intimacy with feminist fury.
Acting
Mynster's face contains multitudes of swallowed words.
Production
Copenhagen's Jewish bourgeoisie rendered in suffocating detail.
Director
Liv Ullmann
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The film excavates Denmark's assimilated Jewish elite, a community nearly erased by the Holocaust decades later.
Ullmann cast Erland Josephson—her former lover and Bergman collaborator—as Sofie's father, layering their real history into the patriarch's oppressive gaze.
DK
