Considering how rare a Carl Theodor Dreyer comedy is, it's something of a surprise to find how many laughs the Danish director of the stale Leaves from Satan's Book and gloomy Ordet gets out of the gentle humour to be found in this lightweight tale. Looking and behaving more like a 21st Century hipster than an 18th Century Man of God, Einar Rod plays a luckless young man who, upon securing a position as a village parson so that he may wed his fiance, discovers that a condition of the new job is that he must wed the former parson's widow. Much of the humour is mined from the way that his attempts to steal a few hours with his fiancé are repeatedly foiled by his new old wife, played to perfection by Hildur Carlberg (who sadly died before the film's premier).
Review of The Parson's Widow
