Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

PodBill Just what I expected

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

chaswe-28402 No relief in this one. No let up. The conqueror escapes to nothing, nowhere; a wintry, frozen and empty sea-shore. Max can act, no question. So can Pelle the boy. The direction consummates the never-ending grimness and daily grind of the emigrant labourer, paid 100 kronor a year, about £10. It's virtual slavery, though the bodies are not sold. These slaves are especially abused and exploited because they are foreign. Life continues, a living death.Undeniably effective, but who would want to watch this twice ? Joylessness squared. Unpunished rape, unwanted child-murder, bullying, crippling poverty, death and decay. An existential inferno, where hope is eventually abandoned. What benefit is to be gained from seeing this relentless, unrelieved misery ? I give it eight stars, because it's a powerful movie, but recommend no-one to watch it. One flaw: the boy's dubbed American accent was annoying. It was out-of-place. The only man capable of bringing a little lightness to the company, with his musical squeeze-box, gets bludgeoned into mindless inanity.

MartinHafer I can see why "Pelle the Conqueror" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It's exceptionally well made. However, I am warning you that although it's worth seeing, it's not a particularly pleasant film--as it's grim from start to finish...VERY, VERY grim.The film is set in late 19th century Denmark. It begins with an older man (Max Von Sydow) and his young son, Pelle, arriving there from Sweden. According to the dad, Denmark is a land of many opportunities and there life will be so much better than it had been back home. However, soon they learn that life is dreadfully oppressive here in their new home. They are hired on as indentured servants of sorts--and even the young boy must toil very hard on this farm. In some ways, they are like slaves as the food is terrible, the hours long and there is almost no let up to the bleakness of their lives. Many awful things happen through the course of the film--murdered babies, people getting pounded in the head by a large stone, rapes, and Pelle ultimately learns that through all this, his father is a spineless wimp.This movie does seem to illustrate just how tough life was and does a great job of showing the lives of illiterate workers, but it's also a real chore to stick with it. Lovers of art films will probably be able to stick around for the almost three hour running time--most of the rest will not. In many ways it reminds me of other Oscar-winners like "The Last Emperor" and "The English Patient"--very grim and miserable films. However, at least with "Pelle" you actually care about the characters--which makes it worth seeing IF you are very, very patient. However, if you are depressed at all, do NOT watch the film--it might just push you over the edge.

paul2001sw-1 The harshness of life for immigrant agricultural labourers in 19th century Scandinavia is the subject matter of this film by one-time Bergman acolyte Bille August; and in places, it's every bit as depressing as it sounds, though livened by moments of black humour. Pelle, a young boy, is supported by, but increasing supports, his aged, and somewhat self-pitying father; the dynamic of their relationship is nicely conveyed, although the semi-idiot status of all the peasantry limits the subtlety of what can be conveyed. While it's welcome to see a costume drama that engages in no prettifying, personally I preferred August's 'The Best Intentions', based (in fact) on Bergman's early life, whose middle class setting provided a more sophisticated take on the nature of hardship.

jzappa Bille August's passionately directed epic, set in Denmark at the beginning of the twentieth century, uses its beginning, a humbling of our protagonists' dreams, in an interesting way. Through the seasons that follow during a long year on a hellish farm, the very young title character's decrepit old father's idealistic vision malleates and stays stubbornly alive inside him, even though life seems stacked to punish him for his hope of a better life.Life on the farm is defined by the land, the seasons, and the personalities of the people who live there. The owners, the Kongstrups, only sporadically appear. They live in a big manor house far removed, angled at a position of power from the barns, stables and farm buildings, and Mrs. Kongstrup spends her agonizing days drinking while her despicably proud husband chases tail, with no shame, not even about the one hapless wench who appears at his front door time and again with their illegitimate child. In the laborers' quarters, life is the bullying of the manager, who ascertains weaknesses in his farm hands and feels only inclined to exploit them. Modeling himself after him is the insecure trainee, a bully compensating atop his high horse who feels particularly fulfilled in tormenting Pelle.Pelle is played by an impressive young boy, but the film's real star is Max von Sydow, that masculine brick house of vitality and frankness, who rivals Brando in the natural practice of never resonating a trace of visible acting, of not appearing to be, not acting, but being absolute and guileless even in complex and heavy-handed scenes. Von Sydow's work in the film has been honored with an Academy Award nomination for best actor, well deserved, particularly after a distinguished career in which he stood at the center of many of Ingmar Bergman's greatest films. But there is not a bad performance in the movie, and the young actor, Pelle Hvenegaard, is quite convincing, having been literally born to play this part, as in real life he was named after the character in the original novel. When another actor calls to you while the cameras are rolling, and your real name is not your character's, that is a basic and obvious psychological obstacle. When that actor calls your real name in the same circumstance, it is a gift.The film is an absorbing entertainment because it is a richness of events. There are scenes of punishingly taxing toil in the fields and the stables, under the eye of the Manager. Invigorating friction between the Manager and a defiantly free-spirited worker. The chicanery in the mansion, where Mrs. Kongstrup wrests a distinctly caustic revenge on her psychologically abusive philanderer of a husband. The heartbreak of a farm worker, who has fallen in love above her class. Most of all, for me, there are so many great movies that give us heart-swelling mother-child relationships, and here is a tear-gushing father-child one.