For this week’s Family Pictures Podcast, MBS and I discussed the 1972 masterpiece The New Land, a film adapted from a novel chronicling a Swedish family’s emigration to Minnesota in the 19th century. I had never heard of the film until Michael recommended it for our series on “Families on the Frontier,” and I have to say: it made a deep impression. I loved this movie for all kinds of reasons, but to steal one of my faithful podcast partner’s insights—it is truly unique in the way it deals with the physical and existential labor of parenthood.
The film slows the traditional idea of the western down to a near-hypnotic pace, focusing instead on the quotidian demands and endless toil of having, affording, and raising a family. And Liv Ullman as the young Swedish émigré wife and mother Kristina is absolutely extraordinary. Her performance as an ambivalent immigrant is a tour de force: utterly breathtaking in the way she inhabits the supple existential angst at the heart of an expat pioneer perched on the edge of forever. It’s fascinating how many of the preoccupations and hardships of raising a family have changed dramatically—and yet remained the same—all at once.
Liv Ullman as Kristina, a young wife and mother 7,000 miles away from her native Sweden in the Minnesota territory
I have much more to say about this film in relation to the domestic visions of the West we explored in both Shane and The Searchers—the two other films we’ve discussed so far—but I wanted to make a quick note about something MBS and I both noticed when watching The New Land.
There’s a scene where Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) is caught in a blizzard with his young son Johan while riding their newly acquired (and prized) ox. The passage home becomes blocked, and Karl Oskar is forced to cut through a fallen tree. In the meantime, Johan is freezing to death. Once Karl Oskar realizes this, he makes the desperate decision to kill the ox and cut it open to warm his son and save his life. Just a heads-up: it’s a rough scene.
Sound like any other scene you’ve ever seen—namely in a little 1982 film called The Empire Strikes Back?
MBS and I immediately wondered whether the scene in The New Land served as the inspiration for the moment when Han Solo opens up the Tauntaun to save Luke from freezing on Hoth. It’s one of the most memorable moments in the film, and I have to think George Lucas and Irvin Kershner were aware of The New Land—just as Lucas was clearly influenced by The Searchers when shaping the scene in A New Hope in which Luke discovers the bodies of his aunt and uncle after the stormtrooper raid.
If that connection holds, it only makes me respect Lucas even more for the way he pulled so many varied references into one of the greatest cinematic universes ever built… even if it only lasted for 2.5 episodes.
I don’t know whether ‘The New Land’ was the inspiration for ‘Empire’ but the act of cutting open a pack animal and surviving in the carcass is a well-established trope, so much so that when I watched ‘Empire’ back when it came out I was already aware of it (and dutifully rolled my eyes at Lucas & co. being derivative once again).
I have to track down some other examples of this in films cause I was sure I hit gold here in terms of inspiration/provenance. I remember it from the Revenant (which come smuch later), but where else does it come from? Any links to lit or films where you saw this before?
Hi Jim,
I thought I could remember a book with this technique, but my memory fails. I did find:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls098551015/
You might particularly enjoy the last item.
Sorry, this commented was getting flagged as spam, I fixed that. Damn, sowing immigrants in sharks? 1933? Sign me up for I Cover the Waterfront. What a bizarre sounding film. Also, interesting The New Land is not on that list, it is the greatest movie I have never heard of, thus far at least 🙂
Speaking of families in danger, I remember seeing this little gem in theaters back when it first arrived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_the_Wilderness_Family
I didn’t have much experience with high drama, and intrigue or the threat of wild animals, but the wolves threatening the kids,… that hung with me for a long time. That and all the struggles. This was in that time period between when Jeremiah Johnson hit theaters and close to when Grizzly Adams was on NBC.
Funny you should say that because Jeremiah Johnson is going to be the film we end with, and that whole idea of threats from the other is everywhere in these films, and the idea of the domestic space as somehow the ideal to build and protect to prevent those threats is both basic (in terms of tropes, to Stephen’s point above) but also powerful because you begin to take that simple division for granted.