1972: The Emigrants
Saturday, September 29, 2018 at 4:36PM
Editor's Note: We will now resume our intermittent investigation into 1972 films for the impending smackdown -- though it will not be this weekend due to unfortunate delays. Here's Eric Blume on the Oscar favored foreign epic The Emigrants, available to rent on Amazon or iTunes.
It’s fun (and by fun, I mean zero actual fun) to watch Jan Troell’s 3 hour and 20 minute epic film The Emigrants and try to figure out how this slow-burn, where nothing good happens to any of the characters for the entire running time, made it into the Oscar race, not in one year but in two! Due to different rules than we have currently, The Emigrants was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971, and then for the 1972 Oscars was nominated for a whopping four of the big eight categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Liv Ullman), and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Emigrants mostly follows a peasant family in rural Sweden in the mid-19th century. Despite back-breaking work, the father (Max von Sydow) and mother (Liv Ullman), realize that they cannot survive on their farm. A series of horrible events befall them before they decide to leave for a 10-week boat journey to America in hope of a better life. Another family, who leave for the promise of religious freedom, joins them for the grueling ordeal...
The farm portion occupies about 90 minutes of screen time, then the boat journey takes up the next hour, and then the final 45 minutes track their final voyage to Minnesota. This film serves up lice, scurvy, vomit, infant death, and an assortment of other elements that usually do not scream “Oscar”. The characters don’t have movie-convenient arcs, and to say the pacing is “leisurely” would be incredibly kind. So how did it end up on the Best Picture list alongside The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, and Sounder?
Troell’s film remains a singular achievement. His approach feels almost like a documentary: the camera follows these characters as if it’s simply catching moments here and there in their daily life. You don’t feel like scenes are set up for you in the way you’re accustomed to seeing. Troell is shaping the film dramatically nonetheless: the seemingly-nothing moments contribute forcefully to a coherent whole. You’re enveloped in the texture of these peoples’ lives. Troell never makes you doubt the authenticity of this world. He creates an almost new kind of storytelling which still feels revolutionary.
As a result, the actors aren’t really the focus of this film, because they don’t have showy moments to play. It’s fair to say that von Sydow and Ullman are two of the greatest actors who have ever lived, and they’re featured here in all their glorious blondness: these are two powerful camera faces, and their natural ability to hold a screen helps Troell enormously. That said, it’s a surprise that Ullman made it onto the Best Actress list that year, as she doesn’t have a large range of emotions to play here, and her character doesn’t have incredible complexity either (purposefully so). The best performance in the film comes from Eddie Axberg, who plays von Sydow’s brother with an intoxicating blend of intellectualism and sensuality.
The Emigrants is the first half of this family’s story, which continues in another three-hour epic called The New Land, following the family’s story once they've arrived in Minnesota. The New Land was nominated for Best Foreign Film in 1972, the same year that The Emigrants was up for its big four awards! But of the ten foreign films that have received Best Picture nominations, The Emigrants is the longest and slowest-moving, and the one least designed for mainstream audience satisfaction (although Cries and Whispers and Amour give it a run for the money).
Have you seen Troell’s majestic epic? Did you admire its unrelenting toughness? What epic foreign film is your favorite?
Reader Comments (12)
I loved both The Emigrants and The New Land. And I couldn’t disagree more about the pacing. The running time flew by for me, perhaps because so many of the scenes are so short and all so beautiful.
This film is a transcendent experience for me every time I see it. When Sight and Sound had it's last "10 Greatest Films of All Time" poll (2012) and I made up my personal list, this was on it, and to my surprise, it was even on one of the "official" lists, (which was one more than I was expecting!) - director Mike Leigh's. I try to restrain myself whenever I talk about it for fear that I'm overselling it, but sticking just to the acting, I'll just say the entire cast - Max von Sydow, Eddie Axberg, Monica Zetterlund, Allan Edwall could not be improved. And the great Liv Ullmann has never been better - unless The New Land counts as a separate film. Should have won all 5 Oscars.
I saw both films recently as it is a major feat in cinema in its 2 parts as it is a film that fits in the idea of what an epic is but it's also a very intimate film.
Keep in mind that when these films played commercially they, were both cut down to around two hours each. I haven't seen the short versions, and detest cutting by distributors once the director has delivered his/her cut, but maybe the shorter versions are more... palatable for a mainstream audience. It probably did help CINEMA PARADISO, after all, that it was first released here in a shorter version.
Maybe I’ve been worn down by decades of watching Bresson and Bergman but, while this is of course unrelentingly punishing, I also kinda found it to be a good hangout movie.
I've seen The Emigrants, with The New Land still to come. (I've got the Criterion double bill.) I liked The Emigrants a lot. Dan H is right that when it was released in the US it was a shorter version (I think it was more like two and a half hours) and possibly dubbed. I haven't seen that version, but I can't imagine that it would have changed the style massively. The directing is of an observational kind that we also see in parts of The Deer Hunter later in the decade. I found the pace both slow and quick, if that's possible! Slow because it takes its time to show us the family's realisation that their farm will continue to fail and that they may be better off emigrating, quick because it's all so compelling you can't wait to see what happens next. I think it's a worthy nominee in all its categories, and it's a film I find myself recommending. I can't wait to see The New Land!
Trivia: Ullmann did win the NYFCC & Golden Globe for her performance here
Reminded of Bette Midler's immortal crack when Ulmann's film Lost Horizon opened: "I call it Lost-Her-Reason." I never miss a Liv Ulmann musical!"
I'd take Ullman,Tyson and Smith in 72 out of the line up and put Carol Burnett,Tuesday Weld and Joanne Woodward.
I just watched it for the first time in the course of catching up with the 1972 Best Actress nominees. It is extraordinary and definitely deserves greater prominence here in the US. No surprise that Mike Leigh put it on his Sight & Sound list, as I know his taste is similar to mine.
Interestingly enough, the farm where my grandpa grew up, while in Wisconsin, is quite close to the Nillsons' farm in the film, so it had special resonance for me. Perhaps that is why I felt differently about Ullman's performance - I could see that woman evolving through generations into so many women I know.
Jan Troell wanted to film in the Upper Midwest, but it was too industrialized, so both The Emigrants and The New Land were filmed in Sweden. I am eager to see The New Land, I just have to make the time. (Both The Emigrants and The New Land are on Filmstruck through the end of the year, along with a number of other Von Sydow films.)
Loved your take on this movie. It's an extraordinary film. Together with The New Land, maybe the best "nature epic" ever shot, with apologies to Herzog.
Markgordonuk: I'd replace exactly those actresses, too! I thought I was the only who thought that way. My roster would have Woodward as well, but also Streisand ("Up the Sandbox") and Susannah York ("Images").