Birgitte Federspiel Movies
Danish character actress Birgitte Federspiel, former lead in international films, appeared onscreen from the '50s. ~ All Movie Guide- 2002
Martin Schmidt's horror film Kat stars Liv Corfixen as Maria, a woman who is having a difficult time in her life. Maria and her cat move in with her friend Isabella (Charlotte Munck), and she is having trouble with both law school and her boyfriend. Isabella's grandparents hold a meeting from which unfamiliar noises issue forth. A series of killings performed by a gigantic monster begin soon afterward, and Maria's cat begins behaving in very odd ways. Kat was screened at the Dark Wave Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liv Corfixen, Charlotte Munck, (more)
- 1995
- R
Carl Dreyer is still regarded as one of Denmark's greatest filmmakers, though during his life, his films were largely unappreciated. Dreyer was a complex, enigmatic figure and this Danish documentary attempts to chronicle his life using interviews with people who knew and worked with him. The film also makes extensive use of Dreyer's own recorded thoughts as well as archival photographs, letters, scripts and articles. The filmmakers also visit the locations of some of Dreyer's best known films. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
- R
The passionate love between an elderly couple is chronicled in this tender romance. Both Carlo and Ester are octogenarians. Carlo, a bricklayer and racing champion lives with his wife Viola, who suffers severely from Alzheimer's, in a nursing home. Ester is a widow who lives alone in a small apartment. They meet at a funeral and soon fall in love. Their children and friends are appalled; especially after the two begin an ill concealed sexual relationship. Ester understands, that despite their passion, Carlo needs to spend most of his time with Viola. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gerda Gilboe, Aksel Rasmussen, (more)
The Danish/French Babette's Feast is based on a story by Isak Dinesen, also the source of the very different Out of Africa (1985). Stephane Audran plays Babette, a 19th century Parisian political refugee who seeks shelter in a rough Danish coastal town. Philippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martina (Birgitte Federspiel), the elderly daughters of the town's long-dead minister, take Babette in. As revealed in flashback, Philippa and Martina were once beautiful young women (played by Hanne Stensgaard and Vibeke Hastrup), who'd forsaken their chances at romance and fame, taking hollow refuge in religion. Babette holds a secret that may very well allow the older ladies to have a second chance at life. This is one of the great movies about food, but there are way too many surprises in Babette's Feast to allow us to reveal anything else at this point (except that Ingmar Bergman "regulars" Bibi Andersson and Jarl Kulle have significant cameo roles).. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stéphane Audran, Jean-Philippe Lafont, (more)
- 1987
The aged actresses in this film have had their day in the sun, and now they have settled down to a life of genteel poverty at the Actors' Home, a retirement home for theatrical has-beens, funded by a stingy and very dictatorial charity organization. The grand old gals' in this film really want to get a glass veranda put on one side of their rest home and can't spring the money from the rest home's board of directors. Nothing daunted, they take advantage of the fact that they are still big names, and they sell the rights to tell the intimate story of their current lives to a weekly magazine. Each lady vies with the others to be seen as the most important actress of the lot, but despite a lot of posturing, what they are really doing is keeping themselves interested in life. They are assisted in their endeavors by a pack of aging beaus, who gallantly do what they must to help these fine women feel appreciated. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Birgitte Federspiel, Kirsten Rolffes, (more)
- 1984
In this satire on familial relationships, a conniving, selfish grandmother (Bodil Udsen) finds her match in her six-year-old grandson, and the two have a series of conspiracies in her large urban apartment that are meant to keep her widower son from marrying again. Little Sörmand (adroitly interpreted by Mikkel Egelund) is a boy open to bribery and mayhem if it furthers his interests, which often coincide with those of his grandmother. The two make a difficult team to beat in this otherwise safely gray treatment of what was meant to be a decidedly black comedy. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bodil Udsen
- 1978
This Danish film explores the same vein as the very similar movie, The Office Christmas Party, and concerns the shenanigans and misdeeds of a crew of otherwise straitlaced factory workers and their bosses during their once-a-year summer picnic at Copenhagen's Deer Park. After an increasingly riotous and strenuously drunken day, miraculously, everyone shows up for work the next day none the worse for wear. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joergen Ryg, Preben Kaas, (more)
This provocative sci-fi outing is set in an over-populated, horribly polluted 21st century where child-bearing has become illegal. To help ease the tension and stress caused by not procreating, married couples use robot dolls to substitute for children. One couple decides to break the law and have a real baby in secret. Unfortunately, their neighbors find out and demand that the couple share the baby with them. The other couple does so, but finds that the neighbors get too attached to the infant. They stop sharing their child, and the neighbors becomes so angry that they report them to authorities. The couple and their baby are arrested and sentenced to death. Fortunately, the clever husband anticipated this and made a few plans in advance. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1968
The mountain slopes of Iceland are shown to excellent advantage in the Scandinavian epic Hagbard and Signe. The story, based on an ancient legend, concerns Hagbard (Oleg Vidov), the son of a slain Norse king. Seeking revenge against the rival clan responsible for the killing, Hagbard calms down long enough to establish a truce. He also falls in love with Signe (Gitte Haenning), daughter of his onetime enemy. Signe's former beau, sizzling with jealousy, breaks the truce and makes it appear that Hagbard was responsible. The young prince escapes, but returns disguised as a woman to his beloved Signe. Thanks to a treacherous handmaiden, both lovers are imprisoned and sentenced to be hanged. Rather than undergo this final ignominy, Hagbard and Signe enter into a suicide pact. A Danish/ Swedish/ Icelandic coproduction, Hagbard and Signe was released throughout Scandinavia as Den Rode Kappe, Den Rodda Kappan and Rautha Skikkjan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gitte Haenning, Oleg Vidov, (more)
- 1967
In this drama, a young woman is pretty enough to draw lovers to her like flies to honey. Among her suitors are her wealthy business-magnate employer and her lesbian landlady. Unfortunately for all of them, the young woman only has eyes for her childhood sweetheart. The would-be lovers prove themselves to be poor sports and mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Set in the late 1800s, Hunger is about a struggling, starving Norwegian writer (Per Oscarsson) who rejects charity, even though he lives penniless in the streets, because he believes in the strength of his talent. Oscarsson won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his remarkable performance. The film is based on Knut Hamsun's novel, Sult. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Per Oscarsson, Gunnel Lindblom, (more)
- 1964
A whodunit author, Peter Sander (Poul Reichardt), runs out of gas on a stormy night and is soon involved in his own real-life murder mystery. With the aid of a precocious young boy (Jan Priiskorn-Schmidt), he manages to discover who killed the elderly hermit and left him in an abandoned farm house. Director Erik Balling -- better known for his many satirical comedies -- publicly decried the fact that the public rejected one of the few crime dramas in an age over-burdened with bucolic farces. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Poul Reichhardt, Helle Virkner, (more)
- 1962
A routine costume adventure by Hannelise Hovmand offering more for children than adults, this tale features Jens Osterholm as the Musketeer who galvanizes the population in a time of saber-rattling. Set in the 18th century when Denmark was threatened by invasion from strong Swedish forces, the Musketeer realizes that he has to start organizing a real defense against the Swedes or everyone is in trouble. The story deals with how he manages to put together a band of fighters in the end, in time to engage the Swedish troops and save Denmark from a foreign conquest. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirch Passer, Birgitte Federspiel, (more)
- 1960
This film is a typically stark Scandinavian melodrama in which a lonely widow takes in a stranger, later revealed to be the man who killed her husband. Set on a cold, deserted beach in the aftermath of the German occupation (the husband was a member of the resistance, the stranger a German collaborator), this serious, well-mounted film ran into censorship problems prior to its April 1965 New York premiere. The reason was the seduction scene, filmed in medium-close shots, and with the woman fully clothed. Less objectionable, apparently, was the closing scene during which the woman kills her eerie intruder. A two-character play filmed by the unfairly forgotten Johan Jacobsen, A Stranger Knocks offers deeply felt portrayals by Carl Theodor Dreyer regulars Preben Lerdorff-Rye and Birgitte Federspiel. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1955
With his masterful Ordet (aka The Word, [1955]), legendary Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer examines the conflict between internalized personal faith and organized religion. Dreyer sets the drama in a conservative, super-pious Danish town, where widower Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg) -- the father of three boys -- cuts against the grain of the community with his constant heretical doubt. One of his sons, Mikkel Borgen (Emil Hass Christensen), is entangled in an interfaith romance with a fundamentalist's daughter, while the second, Anders Borgen (Cay Kristiansen), is an agnostic, and the third, Johannes Borgen (Preben Leerdorff-Rye) -- a devotee of Søren Kirkegaard -- believes that he actually is Jesus Christ -- a conviction ridiculed by almost everyone as pure insanity. Also known as The Word, Ordet was the only film that Dreyer made in the 1950s. The author of the play on which the film was based (and which was previously filmed in 1943) was Kaj Munk, a Danish pastor murdered by the Nazis for daring to announce his fidelity to Christ over Hitler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, (more)
- 1953
A nice family man and a pillar of a small Danish community (Per Buckhøj) creates quite a stir when he is caught smuggling a "dirty" book into the country after a trip to Paris. The book winds up circulating among the indignant citizenry, some of whom (and a few less secretly than others) suddenly obtain a new outlook on life in general and their sex-lives in particular. Tame by modern standards but hailed as a pungent satire on hypocrisy and Christian morality in it's day, Adam Og Eva marked the second film of Erik Balling who later reached legendary status as the creator of the Olsen Banden series of heist comedies. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
