This Swedish film was directed by Molander towards the end of a career which had started in 1910 as a script writer for films by the famous directors of the silent era Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller. He eventually began directing himself and had a career that spanned almost five decades. Internationally, he is most famous for "Intermezzo" (1936) and as the director who discovered Ingrid Bergman. This film "Enhörningen" ("The Unicorn") has been forgotten, for which there is an easy explanation, namely Ingmar Bergman. During the 1950s Bergman's films began to conquer the world and naturally crowded out other films, especially those by older directors such as Molander. Retrospectively, Bergman's best films were done in the 1950s and this film was supposed to be dated by comparison. However, Ingmar Bergman cooperated with Molander, and had a very high opinion of his filmmaking and great respect for him. In fact, there is a strong influence of Molander in the earlier Bergman films and anybody seeing this film would certainly agree. Molander was considered an accomplished craftsman with an excellent film technique. This is evident in the beautiful black and white photography in this film. The oppressive feeling in the hospital scenes and, in particular, the interesting mass bird scene outside the hospital are a bit reminiscent of Hitchcock. There are always interesting camera views, beautiful use of shadows and striking deployment of a moving camera, e.g. in the very odd short nightclub scene in Paris. So why has this film been forgotten? Apart from competing with superior films from Bergman's best period from the 1950s, perhaps this high-strung melodrama and the very theatrical acting would put some people off. One might complain that the ages of the actors are not appropriate for their roles. Inga Tidblad (aged 55 at the time) plays the main character, including her younger self when recalling the main events of her life, and so we see her in the role of a 20 year-old woman alongside a younger actress (Isa Quensel) playing her mother. Nevertheless, this film features some of Sweden's most famous stage actors. Inga Tidblad was a contemporary of Greta Garbo at theatre school but, unlike her, chose to stay in Sweden and had a distinguished and long career, mainly in the theatre. She was acclaimed in plays by Shakespeare and Strindberg, and was also the first Mrs Tyrone in the world premiere of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night", which took place in Stockholm. Another doyen of Swedish theatre, Edwin Adolphson, plays the lady-killer in "The Unicorn". His position in Swedish theatre and film was not unlike that of Laurence Olivier in Britain, and I would say that there is also some physical resemblance. As an interesting casting decision, which rarely occurs in films, he appears alongside his own daughter, Kristina Adolphson (aged 18), who plays the daughter of the lady-killer. Edvin Adolphson had a 60-year career and, as a curiosity, one of his earlier wives was Harriet Bosse, the veteran actress once married to the playwright August Strindberg. It is rather astonishing that the music composed for the film by the renowned composer Lars Erik Larsson is not mentioned in the credits. The music is very suggestive but used carefully and sparsely throughout the film, indeed only in the most dramatic moments. The whole production is well crafted.
Review of Enhörningen
