Terje Vigen (1917)'s activity

Based on a poem by Henrik Ibsen, Terje Vigen (AKA A Man There Was) is a Swedish classic from the silent era, and like a lot of Scandinavian cinema, examines Christian values and means to instruct morally, without however name-checking religion. Terje is a man who loses everything in the British blockage of Norway in the early 19th Century, and later feels a deep need for revenge, which is all well and good when you're just raging at the treacherous sea, but becomes more complicated when you actually meet the British officer responsible for your misery. It's a simple moral fable, enlivened by star and director Victor Sjöström's sea-tossed cinematography - shooting the film is roiling waters off the masts of boats in ways that don't look safe at all. The interstitials are a much too descriptive of the action and you could jettison 80% of them, but perhaps their are straight out of Ibsen and would have been recognized at the time?