Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32583 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-04-19
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Swedish, English
• Running time: 157 minutes

Review
Pelle the Conqueror is that rare instance of a film winning the approval of the oft-times demanding jury at Cannes (where it won the Palm d'Or) and the generally conservative members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who honored it with an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It is, in short, a serious work of art that is also accessible and universal in its appeal. Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard) and his father, Lasse (Max Von Sydow), are a co-dependent pair. Lasse, an older widower with few employable skills, is forced to work under degrading conditions in his new home on a Denmark farm, and while the young Pelle watches his father's humiliations, he comes to understand his own need to for independence. It's a coming-of-age story with a bitter difference; Pelle must grow up before he even reaches puberty or else he'll be mired in the same meager existence as his Pappa. Writer/director Bille August doesn't rush this story, allowing occasional rays of hope to beckon Lasse and Pelle to a better life. Lasse courts a local woman until her husband, presumably lost at sea, shows up, while Pelle is taken in by the farm owner's kindly wife until she stabs her husband in a jealous rage and decides to care for him instead. The film has the feel of the classic Italian postwar neorealist dramas, honestly presenting the everyday lives of downtrodden people without apology or excuse for their miserable conditions. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

On the DVD
ccWidescreen presentation
Scene selection
Digitally mastered
Audio: English 5.1 (Dolby Digital), English 2.0, Swedish
Trailer
Subtitles: English
English closed captioning
Interactive menus

Synopsis
Long but rewarding, the Danish-Swedish Pelle the Conqueror is based on the early passages of Martin Andersen Nexoe's four-volume novel. Pelle (Pelle Hvengaard) is the son of a 19th-century Swedish farmer (Max Von Sydow). Seeking escape from their poverty-stricken surroundings, father and son emigrate to Denmark. Upon arrival, however, they are treated like indentured servants, leading to a profound ideological turnaround for the impressionable Pelle. In the original novel, Pelle ended up embracing Communism. Nexo's political overtones are soft-pedalled in the film, which concentrates on the close, indestructable relationship between Pelle and his father. Adapted for the screen by Bille August, Pelle the Conqueror won the 1988 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Elend, elend, elend,...
Max von Sydow magnificently plays a certain type of Scandinavian man, maybe his best film of the ones I've seen. I saw the movie when it came out, remembered it as fantastic but forgot the details, then watched the video again recently. Tried to watch it with my 7 and 12 year old sons, but the older one couldn't take it: too much sadness. The theme of the movie: unfathomable human cruelty, that 'happiness' is only an illusion. How to know that the movie was filmed on Bornholm? The Rundkirk in a burial scene.

Moving
The story behind this movie was very touching. My Great-Great Grandfather went AWOL and came to America about the time this movie is set. The movie helped reveal to me why my family carries some of the attitudes it has and why he stopped speaking Danish or speaking of Denmark the day he stepped on American soil. This movie is a must for anyone of Scandinavian ancestry.

5-star movie, 4-star DVD
Pelle the Conqueror is an utterly flawless film with regards to acting, cinematography, score, storytelling, etc. It won Best Foreign Film honors at the Academy Awards and was even nominated for Best Picture. Of course, the politics of Hollywood could never have allowed it to claim that honor, otherwise a precedence would have been set of acknowledging that foreign films might be (gasp!) better than a lot of the [stuff] Tinseltown shovels out.

Personally, I watched the Oscars that year exclusively to cheer for Pelle the Conqueror and even more specifically for Max Von Sydow, who turned in the performance of a lifetime. From the moment I began watching the film to the moment it ended, I never lost my sense of absolute immersion. It was, in truth, a grueling experience... because like so many Scandinavian films, Pelle is not a "feel good" story and doesn't have a happy ending. It doesn't have a happy beginning or middle, either. I'm straining my memory to remember a full happy minute, actually. Max Von Sydow is so thoroughly convincing as the widower father of 12-year-old Pelle Hvenegaard that I couldn't help but bear his anguish as all his hopes for a better life for his son get trampled. Even though I was fairly young when the film came out, Von Sydow led me to understand a poor father's burden. When I saw this movie in the theater in 1988, I was told by a friend it was "part one" and that the subsequent film would give viewers a little more resolution as young Pelle escapes to try to reach America... I waited and waited for that sequel, because I believed in these characters and wanted a better life for them; that's how powerful the film was to me.

So why only 4 stars? Because the DVD (to date -- these things sometimes change) does not contain the whole film. 22 minutes were hacked from the original to fit into American time slots, and they were inexplicably not restored when the film went to DVD. The DVD also lacks special features such as "making of," background story, director's comments, etc. that would have been fascinating, especially considering this is such an epic foreign film from a country American viewers know so little about.