Highly effective award bait, Pelle the Conqueror won all the biggest accolades and prizes, despite being a very average film. The trick was to film a child protagonist going through a lot of hardships, in the countryside with grandiose Bertolucci-like cinematography. Pelle gets mistreated in a host of deplorable but screen-friendly ways while doing crowd-pleasing child melodrama stuff like telling a young man who aborted his unborn "Papa would never kill me!". Culminates in a tear-jerker ending.

Excellent production with great performances, it will always be the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of feudalism. As striking as it was, though, I always felt a little too detached from the content, which made the experience a bit tedious despite my appreciation for it..

Don't see this film if you can't appreciate irony

Very bleak, with tragedy looming around every corner, but with enough small triumphs to keep it from becoming unbearably depressing. Hvenegaard does quite well in the title role, but one cannot overlook Von Sydow as his well-meaning but somewhat ineffectual father... it's one of his best performances. August does some wonderful work directing his own screenplay. The austere aura of the farm evokes a feeling of quiet desperation, while the wide snowy vistas harbor the hope for a better world.

Nice Movie