Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

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Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

stephanlinsenhoff The tragic tale filmed three times but best known is the 1967-bo-widerberg-version: the real-life-story of the famous German-Danish tightrope walker Hedvig Jensen (stepdaughter to the circus owner John Madigan) and her lover Lieutenant Sixten Sparre, the Swedish officer, married and father to two children. A doomed love from start, told as skillingtryck, here the Swedish text of Elvira Madigan (and music): "Sorgeliga saker ..." with music an Danish text here..." ... . The movies last shot, a friezed picture of her, catching a butterfly in a meadow, telling Sixten, who dares not to take the final step: "You have to", "No, I do not want it", "You must, There is no other way out" She makes it easier for him by catching a butterfly. Not men but wo-men know better when nothing is left of life and what to do, told by reality beyond fantasy. The sound of his shot and the film shot freezes: having the butterfly in her hands. These last scenes are soundless. How could it have been without the suicide, money, finding something to eat in the grass, Sixten, having left behind his family, not listening to his friend, trying to lead him back. A deserter from the army.How could it have been beyond the movie without suicide for them both? It could have been as it was for the upper class pupil at Sigtuna, 16, Pia Degermark: seduced by fame and trapped in the the downward spiral after the shooting of the movie. Igor Klysocki in the Moktòw Fängelse tells that you cannot warn others but have to confront yourself the experience to have come down to the bot ten. The cruel rule is: we are not able to listen to others experience but have to face it ourself. It is this what Pia Degermark had to learn, described by herself in her book "God counts womens tears", 2006. Not to forget that it is her own colored tale, repeated in a Swedish radio/television, TV4-interview.

Pierre Radulescu You say the Andante from the 21 Piano, you add, it's the Elvira Madigan. As you know, the nick does not come from Mozart times. It is due to a Swedish movie made by Bo Widerberg in 1967: Elvira Madigan; the Andante was its leitmotiv, played again and again, with the coming of each love scene. Other parts of that movie were scored with fragments from Vivaldi's concertos: the first movements from the Summer, and from L'Amoroso.Maybe the association between the movie and the 21 Piano is not fortunate. Or is it? The Andante is divine, and it deserved a cinematic pair: a movie to render the same nobility, the same bouquet with nuances of discretion and delicacy, in the same dosage. But Mozart is unique! Many people today haven't seen Elvira Madigan. But forty years ago, this movie was loved. And those who watched it should remember the childish tune that starts and ends the movie: it's Den blomstertid nu kommer, an old Swedish song, celebrating the coming of summer. It was composed by Israel Kolmodin in 1695. Then, in 1819, Johan Olof Wallin published a new version. Pupils in Sweden sing it each year in the last day of school.The story in the movie is real. In 1889 a Swedish aristocrat, Count Sixten Sparre, felt in love for a young tight rope dancer, Elvira Madigan. Sparre was married and had two children, but his passion proved overwhelming. He left his family, deserted from the military (he was a lieutenant in the Swedish army) and ran with Elvira in Denmark. They lived a passionate love for several months, being constantly on the run. After spending all the money they had, overdone by hunger, in impossibility to get lodging any more, they didn't find other solution than death. Sparre shot Elvira and then shot himself. They were buried together and, as it happens, their story overpassed reality and entered the realm of legend: one of those famous romantic loves in which the second part of the nineteenth century excelled. Their graves became a pilgrimage place for young couples. Later Johan Lindström Saxon would put the story in a ballad, the Doggerel about the Love and Cruel Death of the lovely Evira Madigan.No wonder this story attracted the filmmakers. The first Elvira Madigan was made in Sweden in 1943. The other two Elvira Madigans came on the screen in 1967. One of them was produced in Denmark, the other was the Swedish movie (featuring Pia Degermark in the titular role), and this version became famous (and gave the nickname to the Andante from the 21 Piano).Watching this Swedish version from 1967 makes obvious some reasons of its fame. The musical background is great; the scenes give the impression of coming from the brush of one of the French masters of the nineteenth century; and generally each sonic or visual detail is treated with care. It is a feast for the ear, and for the eye.However the movie attracted also critical reviews. It was noted that the final (though a real story) lacked artistic motivation. It is not enough that it really happened; it should also be convincing on the screen. After all, as someone exclaimed after watching the movie, why shooting yourself when hungry and penniless? Steal a chicken instead, and leave the serious decisions for the next day. And generally, the story of these two lovers, as it entered the legend, lacks consistence. Much more likely the reality was about morbid obsession on the part of Sparre, while Elvira wanted to escape the misery of circus life and find a husband no matter what.I think these critics miss the point. The movie is not recreating a novel, to be concerned too much about the likeliness of the story, or about the consistence of the decisions taken by the heroes. It is a ballad, playing a love story like a fairy tale. Love in all purity, with no connection with any earthly reality, unaware of any moral issue, of any obligation. A meditation about the ephemeral nature of love: as beautiful and short as summer in Sweden is. The tragic outcome is told from the very beginning and then is suggested in each scene: each moment has the awareness that summer will end before long, happiness will not last. You see, it is the only awareness of the heroes. They celebrate the beauty of each moment while they know that soon it'll be over.Love, as beautiful, careless, and ephemeral, as the days of summer, as the butterfly caressed by Elvira in the final scene.

duksoe I happened to watch this film, about 20 years ago, on 14-inch-screen TV. I don't remember the details of the film now. However, the touching feeling that I had from the film still remain in my mind. Especially, the cinematography was so beautiful. The 14-inch-screen-TV might not be a proper device for fully enjoying the cinemas, especially for this type of art films. However, even on 14-inch-screen, this film impressed me with its beautiful scenes. Now, I don't recall most of its scenes. My memory of actual scenes was pretty much faded by time but in my mind, the aftertaste of this film still remain the same as when I watched the beautiful impressionist paintings. I think the director expressed very well the inner feelings of the leads through cinematography. For me, this film was such beautiful and powerful. The classical piano piece that was flowing though out the film was also very good. I'd like to watch this film again on a huge screen and to have the touching feeling from this tragic but pure and powerful love story again.

zinkster Lots of dreamy soft-focus shots of the two principals wandering across landscapes and through towns, gazing at each other lovingly, oblivious to the fact that their love can go nowhere. In the end, they are faced with only the option of suicide, and the soldier shoots first Elvira then himself; I recall that the spot of blood on her blouse was touchingly filmed as a coda to their doomed affair. Frankly, this film would have been relegated to the curiosity pile long ago and forgotten, except for the fact that the soundtrack featured the highly talented pianist Geza Anda playing, repeatedly, the languid and lovely second Andante movement of Mozart's achingly beautiful piano concerto in C, K467. The soundtrack made such a huge impression that generations of movie-goers who had never heard Mozart before may have been inspired to give him a listen -- so much so that Deutsche Grammaphon, the producer of the album, named the Mozart K467 concerto the "Elvira Madigan" concerto, and so it has been informally known ever since to much of the public.