Song of the Scarlet Flower

Mauritz Stiller, 1919: the son of a wealthy farmer loves a maid, is thrown out, and walks a line of women across the country before the scarlet flower of the title brings him back. From Johannes Linnankoski's novel. Lars Hanson is the boy. Finnish story, Swedish production, Jaenzon's camera. It is Stiller before Hollywood, already directing desire as a landscape, and Hanson as a man the land will not keep.