“This is without doubt the most beautiful film in the world!” declared French director and critic Louis Delluc, struck by Sjöström and cinematographer Julius Jaenzon's stunning landscape photography in The Outlaw and His Wife. One of the first of Swedish Biograph's “quality” films to reach the continent, the film was widely seen as a breath of fresh air for an industry stifled by the devastation of World War I. Expansive landscapes contrast with claustrophobic interiors in Sjöström's adaptation of Jóhann Sigurjónsson's play about a couple's withdrawal from society and their love outside the law. The good-hearted outlaw Berg-Ejvind-pursued for stealing a sheep to keep his family from starvation-finds his way to the farm of a wealthy young widow, Halla. They fall in love, but when the law closes in, Halla must forsake everything to follow him into a precipitous future in an unforgiving wilderness.