Vilhelm Glückstadt

The young clerk Poul Wang is squandering his fortune on festive pleasures while being shadowed by a mysterious unknown figure. The following day, payment is due and Poul has to clandestinely visit a local loan shark. The growing interest rates tempt Poul to steal from his workplace, but he is discovered by a watchful colleague. In desperation, he robs his own family’s savings, narrowly avoiding being fatally shot by his own wife, who mistakes him for a common burglar. Just as everything looks impossibly bleak, the mysterious stranger comes to the rescue. (Stumfilm.dk)

FRAGMENT | Prince Udo von Freundsberg leads a carefree and irresponsible life in the company of false friends and the beautiful Countess Irma, but in reality he is deeply in debt. At his seaside home, he meets the innocent Flora, daughter of a gardener. She is deeply in love with the prince, prompting a battle between the forces of light and dark inside the prince. Can Udo escape Irma’s seductive clutches? And how is he to reclaim his ancestral possessions, lured away from him by false friends? With the help of faithful supporters and Flora, Udo sets out for the place where his family’s treasure lies buried: on the Isle of the Dead. (Stumfilm.dk)

In 1911 the German poet Hugo von Hofmansthal wrote a new version of the medieval morality play Everyman, and this was staged in Danish translation at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in 1915. At the time, it was radical example of symbolist abstraction. Its success inspired a film version, Enhver [Everyman], directed by Vilhelm Glückstadt for Filmfabrikken Danmark. The film, however, was set in a modern-day environment. It depict the moral choice confronting its protagonist at struggle because two attendant spirits, one good and one bad. The protagonist is tempted by dark figure of evil and succumbs, rejecting God and leading a life of iniquity, but he is then haunted by guilty visions until he finally dies, asking God for forgiveness at the last moment.