A Man There Was

On a Norwegian coast under the British blockade of 1809, sailor Terje Vigen rows to Denmark for food and is captured on the return. Years later he comes home to find his wife and child dead of hunger. Living as a recluse by the sea, he one night spots a wrecked English yacht whose captain is the officer who once took him prisoner. Faced with the man's wife and child in the water, Terje must choose vengeance or mercy. Sjöström's adaptation of Ibsen's poem made the sea itself a principal character.