Olaf Ussing Movies

Ole Ernst plays Peter von Scholten in this historical film biography. Appointed by King Frederick VI (Henning Moritzen) as governor of the Virgin Islands, Peter fights for the education and liberation of the island's black residents, former slaves, while keeping a black mistress on the islands and a wife at home in Denmark. Peter establishes schools for the children and avoids a bloody insurgence from locals bent on violent overthrow of the government. The former governor is charged with treason and dies a dejected man soon after the unfair charges are overturned. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Kurt and Valde (Lars Knutson and Arne Hansen) are a down-on-their-luck duo who seem destined to bumble their way through life riding high on farce and outrageous fortune, yet director Hans Kristensen has opted to round out their human traits -- a noble idea, but it is at odds with the slapstick-style humor. Both men have been dodging hotel bills as they move from one place to the next, when suddenly they find themselves (in disguises) mistaken for the buddies of an inventor who has just accidentally blown himself up before his formula for an artificial gasoline could be handed over to the proper authorities. Now people believe that Kurt and Valde have the formula -- and the chase is on. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Leif Panduro's novel Traditions, My Behind was a sensation among Danish youth of the 1950s in a similar fasion to American J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye which appeared at about the same time. This movie is based on Panduro's well-loved tale. In the story, David is an upper-class teen whose response to his discovery of the overwhelmingly offensive hypocrisy which surrounds him is to bite the offender's thighs, or simply to kick them on the backside. His uncomprehending mother immures him in a psychiatric nursing home. There, he endures the meandering platitudes of the psychiatrist and befriends a genuinely mad old fellow. The madman, who is highly paranoid, and David, amuse themselves by tossing around small bombs. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) is set in 1623 Denmark, where Anne Pedersdotter (Lisbeth Movin), the second wife of a Danish pastor, grows to loathe her husband for his self-asceticism and instead falls in love with the minister's son - with whom she spends an inordinate amount of time. Locals overhear her wishing aloud for her husband's death; when he dies of a stroke not long after, she is accused of witchcraft, a charge taken seriously enough to be punishable by death. Eventually, the poor woman is tortured and traumatized to such a point that she actually believes she is a witch - and she gives in to being burned at the stake. Yet Dreyer then shifts the perspective from internalized - illustrating the woman's paralyzing fear - to externalized, a point of view that enables the director to depict his subject's spiritual purification. Even allowing for the aura of raw terror, Dreyer never loses sight of the eroticism inherent in the concept of witchcraft. Based on a play by Wiers Jensen, Day of Wrath was filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and not released abroad until after the war, and the director reportedly had to flee his native country when he angered the government with the film's political content. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi