Formerly, very reserved about the possibilities of adapting Henrik Ibsen's works to the screen, “Victor Sjostrom did not see how the style of the Norwegian author could be reconciled with the prevailing fashion for comedies and thrillers.
"[4] Consequently, he did not immediately accede to the wishes expressed by Charles Magnusson (1878–1948), founding director of the Svenska Biograph, who desperately wanted him to film Ibsen's poem.
The trip was not the catalyst for making the movie, as producer Magnusson already had a script by the fall of 1915, written by newcomer (and future director) Gustaf Molander but Sjöström's time in the location that inspired Ibsen almost certainly influenced the film's conception.
[7] The film also marks a significant development in Sjostrom's technique, with more dramatic camera setups, faster editing, and less reliance on intertitles to carry the story.
Vigen's inner feelings are powerfully visualized by cutaway shots to the sea which becomes a mirror of his soul, capable of far greater expression than the human face could show.
The Swedish Film Institute's newly color-graded 2006 restoration captures the tinting and toning of the original release, switching in parts from cerulean blue to magenta.
The film premiered on January 29, 1917, simultaneously in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Copenhagen, with a full program with Ibsen's poems in extenso, posters by the artist Eigil Schwab, and specially composed music.
The press raved, with W. Stephen Bush in "The Billboard" calling it, “Truly a masterpiece,” and most everyone agreeing with Burns Mantle in Photoplay: “It is so simple as to story and continuity and cutting and acting that one wonders why some of our output, not nearly so mighty, should use up so much energy and emerge with so much ostentation.”[9] Another journalist wrote: “Seastrom - (his name in English speaking countries) - should come to America to teach his competitors how to make films.
Miller of Radiosoul Films, to place full-page advertisements in the trade publications announcing that the critics’ voices had been heard and the intertitles were being cut down and rewritten.
One wonders, though, how much Miller really understood his product given that he placed it as a double feature with Mack Sennett's Down on the Farm, starring Ben Turpin and the dog-and-cat pairing of Teddy & Pepper.
To make the evening's entertainment complete, the Broadway Theatre included a girlie revue called “The Ushers’ Quartet,” featuring four young ladies chosen from the personnel of the various Moss theaters.
"[12] It is said that audience members recited stanzas during the screenings, prompted no doubt by intertitles taken directly from the poem, and spectators of the time felt an additional emotional tug given similar blockades then in force in the North Sea due to World War I. Terje Vigen is a fundamental milestone in the director's work.