A Young Woman Missing (1953) User Reviews

Good manuscript, maybe a bit theatrically acted

[OJT · 6/10 · 18 September 2011]

The film "Ung frue forsvunnet" by acclaimed female Norwegian film maker Edith Calmar starts off this story in 1949 with a husband come home from a mountain trip, finding his young wife for two years, being traceless missing. She's been gone for days, and the police is immediately contacted. A couple living on boat finds the woman's hat floating, and it seem she's dead either by being killed or falling into the river.

The manuscript is quite well done, and the story unfolds as the husband tells about his life with his wife, from meeting her casually. There's a secret she's never told him, because he didn't want to hear it. This secret obviously is the reason for her disappearance.

In many aspects I like seeing how Norway was back then. So many things have changed, and still so many things are the same. Edith Calmar has been very acclaimed as both female actor and director. After acting in only two films, she started directing, and this is her third film after the sensational debut "Døden er et kjærtegn". She actually has a cameo as a drugstore customer in this film.

--- possible spoiler ahead--- Whitout telling too much this is a film about drug addicts in the 40'ies. The story is good, but I can't help in todays standards feeling the story is too theatrically acted. of course the actors are theater actors, but still I fell I really don't believe in their problems.

Calmar is heavily influenced by the foregoing film of Hitchcock. She deals mainly with crime stories. So this film appears to be. Though the story is rather a kick to the upper parts of society, expecting people to be more than they really are.

It's strange to see young Astri Jacobsen, Wenche Foss and Espen Schønberg, and the great Guri Stormoen, Lalla Carlsen, and the introducing of Adolf Bjerke and famous film critic (and also Cannes jury member) Arne Hestenes in this film. Calmar easily could get anyone to work for her already in her 3rd directing task.

I've seen this film twice. The first time I rated it 4 out of 10, the second time I voted it a 5. Maybe it is a 6 out of 10. it all comes down to the acting. Though having fine actors, I really don't think Calmar succeeded in getting the best out of them this time. This is not one of her bests films, though still it has some value.

A tragic tale from Norway

[robert-temple · 7/10 · 27 March 2024]

This is a sad and tragic tale. It was released with English subtitles as A YOUNG WOMAN IS MISSING. The film is interesting in several ways. For one thing, it shows what life was like in Oslo a few years after the Nazis left. Everyone wears their overcoats indoors most of the time because there is not enough heat for the houses. The streets and many homes are extremely grim and desolate. The story concerns a young married woman named Eva who suddenly vanishes. But we do not then have a police investigation film, instead we have a series of flashbacks which explain everything step by step. Eva is a very naïve country girl with little education. She has a sweet nature. She is married to an archaeologist. In fact, there is one exterior scene where we see them both coming out of the new Kon Tiki Huset, an archaeological museum created by Thor Heyerdahl. Eva's husband Dr. Berger is heavily intellectual, and his social friends are also. Eva feels crushed by their supercilious put-downs, due to their being intellectual snobs without even realizing it. She feels inadequate and worthless. But she has worse problems than that, of which her husband has been blissfully unaware. And through the flashbacks of her history told by her previous lover, a drug addict, we learn the full horror of what Eva has gone through and continues to go through. We are therefore the horrified viewers of what morphine addiction was like. The film then turns into a tale of addiction, and what it does to people's lives. Can Eva be found? Can she be saved? The performance of Astri Jacobsen as Eva is very touching. The film was directed by a woman, Edith Carlmar (1911-2003), who was also an actress, and she appears uncredited in the scenes in the pharmacy. It is doubtful whether a man could have directed this film with the same amount of empathy. Carlmar later appeared as an actress in a feature film and also subsequently a mini-series about the author Knut Hamsun, one of Norway's Nobel Prize Winners for Literature.