1924 film by Holger-Madsen

Countess Ysabel is a young and rich woman with many suitors. An elegant and adventurous baron has managed to win her heart, but she anyway continues to play with other men’s feelings. Nemesis hits her when a young man with a broken heart kills himself, and the baron at the same time reveals a horrible secret. Ysabe'ls world seems to fall apart.

Sci-fi is a rapidly changing genre. It loses impact even more rapidly than horror. Therefore it's virtually impossible to see a sci-fi movie from the past (from the pre-space period, i.e. late 50s) that isn't laughable in some sense. First serious sci-fi epics appeared in the very early 50s, and bearing in mind the first space yarn was filmed by Melies in 1902, we get about 50 years of sci-fi without the very basic concepts of space travel. Where The Trip To The Moon can be dismissed as a funny experiment, The Trip To Mars cannot. This is a serious film. The makers didn't know about weightlessness or the absence of atmosphere in space, plus about a hundred more things we know today. That was the period, when everybody was raving about the channels on Mars, so they naturally assumed there was intelligent life on that planet. Melies shows frogmen and other strange creatures on the Moon; in 1924 there appears the still popular tinfoil dress for Martians in Russian film Aelita. So, in between, we get the Egypto-Greek fairy-tale world of this film: wise old priests being wise; and virgins prancing around, praising virtue in the world, where virtue obviously is as normal and unnoticeable as metabolism. Enter the Earthlings, introducing death and sin. Well, nothing spectacular follows: they soon are "cured" and learn the ways of the righteous. This film is a total orgy of enjoyment. The double feature released by the Danish Film Institute (together with a disaster film from 1916, The End Of The World) boosts their usual superior quality. The Danes began storing and archiving their films very early, so you get a very clean second generation copy from a period when most of US films withdrawn from circulation went to the glue or comb factory. It's a pity this film with so many different locations isn't color tinted. The rather uninspired piano accompaniment, another trade mark of the series from the DFI, tends to grow a bit tedious too. But nevertheless, a remarkable film and something you can show to your friends without being afraid that they'll think you're a weirdo.

贫苦的小镇上，传教士极力想解救痛苦的灵魂，却受尽镇民讪笑怒骂。小镇青年在损友的怂恿下，逐渐步入犯罪边缘，笃信上帝的女友也随之陷入绝望，传教士及时阻止年轻人的犯行，并缓缓道出自己的荒唐过去。 　　为了凸显明星魅力，影片甚至以演员研读剧本、揣摩角色开场，并在背景投射出主角在片中的剧情转折。因为欧洲各地民情的差异，结局便拍了三种版本，三种结局也反映出丹麦、俄罗斯、瑞典完全不同的民族性。