overview
This adaptation of a story by Knut Hamsun is about the impossible love between miller’s son Johannes and Victoria, the daughter of a manor house owner. Created as a co-production with ZDF, Widerberg adapted the original with fidelity to each and every detail while placing his own emphasis along the way. The translation of the dialogue into English – for production technical reasons – heightens the artificiality of the film, which can also be seen as creating an ironic distance to the romantic material. VICTORIA exhibits numerous similarities to ELVIRA MADIGAN, but remains more reserved, calmer, more autumnal. The film’s poor reception was one of the reasons why Widerberg was only able to make three more features in his final 18 years of life.