Film Forum

Denmark, 1968
Directed by Zetterling
Screenplay by Zetterling, David Hughes
Adapted from the novel Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg
Starring Per Oscarsson, Lone Hertz, Ulf Palme
DCP. Approx. 83 min.

A tale of sexual obsession and moral hypocrisy told in flashbacks, as bourgeois Doctor Glas (Per Oscarsson) becomes infatuated with pastor’s wife Lone Hertz. As Hertz confides in him her disgust at older husband Ulf Palme’s attempts to force himself on her, Glas first seeks to dissuade the man, and then considers other options….Adapted by Zetterling and then-husband David Hughes from a 1905 epistolary novel by Hjälmar Soderberg, controversial for its treatment of women’s rights, marital rape, abortion, and euthanasia. Both social critique and psychological study, with Glas’s surreal and nightmarish visions shot in high contrast by cinematographer Rune Ericson. The only Scandinavian film scheduled for the 1968 Cannes festival, and perhaps the least-seen of Zetterling’s films.

Reviews

“A SUPERB AND SENSITIVE FILM…Zetterling has come into her own not only as a stylist but as a filmmaker of stature whose perceptions are without pretension, sensitivity without sentimentality…Per Oscarsson is shattering as the doctor…Lone Hertz is remarkable as the pretty and rather foolish wife…and Ulfe Palme is both repulsive and pitiable as the ungodly pastor…But the star is Mai Zetterling, Dealing with the darkest of passions, she has achieved a lyricism of tone and a throbbing humanism that will not leave you untouched.”
– Judith Crist, New York magazine

“DOKTOR GLAS had us all talking. About motivation, about patriarchy, about abortion, about murder, about justifications. Any film that can get a room full of people volleying interpretations at each other is worth talking about. Doubly so considering that no one talks about Zetterling.”
- Scout Tafoya

“Zetterling’s harshest examination of loneliness.”
–Derek Elley, Variety