AllMovie

Danish novelist Herman Bang's epic re-telling of the country's defeat to Bismarck's Prussia in 1864 is given a melodramatic treatment by Knud Leif Thomsen. Lone Hertz plays the church warden's naive daughter, Tine, whose tragic love affair with a married woodsman (Jørgen Reenberg) parallels the rise and fall in Danish military fortune. The eventual Danish defeat and the disastrous loss of the dutchies of Schleswig-Holstein (a national tragedy felt into the 20th century) is given second place to the all-too-familiar star-crossed lovers. The only memorable performance is given by the veteran Johannes Meyer as Tine's increasingly insane father.