The Red Mantle

A saga, by dictionary definition, is not just a long story about families; it is specifically a long story about medieval Icelandic families. The Red Mantle is a saga--very medieval, very Icelandic (it was filmed there), and in its way, very beautiful.

As in all the classic sagas, there is no development of character. Dialogue only occasionally breaks through the long silences, and when it does, it is something less than crackling ("Will you go with me, Sigrie?" "I will go with you, Hagbard"). Violent emotions are registered only by the slightly flared nostril and the widened eye; mothers receive without a single word the news that several of their sons have been killed, and the heroine watches her lover fighting for his life with all the apparent pity and terror of a spectator at a close chess match. Yet in its own archetypal terms, The Red Mantle is strangely evocative, with the darkling colors of its fierce fiords and stone-strewn wastelands, its misty trysts under the midnight sun, and the dreamlike, impersonal quality of its carnage.

The plot in this Danish-Swedish film--directed by Danish Director Gabriel Axel--is a version of the ancient Romeo and Juliet conflict of love and blood. The three sons of King Hamund ride forth to avenge their father's death at the hands of neighboring King Sigvor, played by the noted Swedish actor, Gunnar Bjoernstrand. They are met by Sigvor's three sons. All six of them are blond and beautiful and brave; they hammer at one another all day in endless rounds of mounted combat. Then they declare the blood feud over and retire to a sauna romp and a brotherly banquet, at which

Sigvor's daughter Signe and Hamund's son Hagbard fall in love.

Before long, though, the old feud is heated up again. It culminates in a six-man battle on a beach by the bleak northern sea that is like some scene from the Morte d'Arthur. Heads are stricken from shoulders and go bouncing down the sand; bodies are spitted on spear and sword. The effect is stately as a tapestry, stylized as a morality play.

The ending is appropriately tragic.

Surprised in bed together, the lovers pay with their lives, leaving behind the shining triumph of a love stronger than death. "Had I known how great their love was," says King Sigvor, covering his face with his hands ' in a rare display of emotion, "I would not have let them die for all the kingdoms of the earth."

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