The Emigrants

The Emigrants (1971)

Utvandrarna

a new land... a new hope... a new dream

Karl and Kristina Nilsson work on a farm in a cold and desolate area of 19th century rural Sweden. Growing privations, combined with increasing social and religious persecution, motivate the Nilssons and many of their neighbors to strike out for the United States. Following a treacherous ocean crossing and an equally grueling land passage, the emigrants find themselves in seemingly idyllic Minnesota.

Date of release
1971-03-08
TMDB
7.4 / 10 (133)
Runtime
3h 11m
Genres
Drama, History, Western
Director
Jan Troell
Collection
The Emigrants Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Emigrants and Unto a Good Land
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 6. Including: Silver nugget for the best foreign film

The Emigrants is a 1971 Swedish drama film directed and co-written by Jan Troell, and starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Allan Edwall, Monica Zetterlund, and Pierre Lindstedt. It and its 1972 sequel, The New Land (Nybyggarna), which were produced concurrently, are based on Vilhelm Moberg's The Emigrants, a series of novels about poor Swedes who emigrate from Småland, Sweden, in the mid-19th century and make their home in Minnesota. This film adapts the first two of the four novels–The Emigrants (1949) and Unto a Good Land (1952)–which depict the hardships the emigrants experience in Sweden and on their journey to America.

Production

Plans for adapting The Emigrants novels began late in 1967. Its author, Vilhelm Moberg, had seen Jan Troell's film Here Is Your Life before producer Bengt Forslund approached him about an Emigrants film. SF Studios wished to adapt all four novels, although it was uncertain how such a film structure would work.

Moberg requested Forslund and Troell meet him, and the three men mapped out a plot, with 98 scenes, finishing in March 1968. They also envisioned Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Eddie Axberg as the ideal stars. Troell and Forslund went location scouting in the United States in September 1968, but found many of the lands were too developed or could not accommodate film equipment.

The scenes set in Chisago Lakes were actually filmed at Lake Krageholm in Scania, Sweden. Filming took place from June 1969 to January 1970, and then from May to August 1970.

Ullmann said that for The Emigrants and The New Land, which were shot at the same time, the actors had to learn historic methods of laundry, and also that the brief scene in The Emigrants where she is on a swing took two days to film.

The film employed 20 actors and 500 extras. The combined cost of the two films was kr 7 million, making them the most expensive Swedish film produced until that time.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended