Based on the play by Icelandic author Johann Sigurjonsson, The Outlaw and His Wife gave Sjöström the expanse of character and theme he needed to finally garner international recognition. In fact, Louis Delluc, the most influential of French critics at the time, declared that The Outlaw and His Wife was "without a doubt the most beautiful film in the world... It is the first love duet heard in the cinema." Like many heroes of the Nordic sagas, Berg-Ejvind, played with a touch of exaggeration by Sjöström, is a man of integrity unable to accept the rigid values of society. As the film begins, he secures work at the farm of a well-to-do widow and wins her favor through his physical stamina and depth of personality. Forced to flee, the outlaw and his bride head for the snow-capped mountains where, after much hardship, they fall prey to a bitterness of spirit. The mountains tower over this film, representing both shelter from society's rules and the weight of inescapable destiny. It is Berg-Ejvind's tragic flaw that he cannot comprehend the magnitude of his fate; and, thus, his place of refuge becomes the source of his destruction. Peter Cowie writes: "In Sjöström's world, the peaks and valleys, fields and streams, play a tangible role in human destiny. Like the couple in Elvira Madigan half-a-century later, Berg-Ejvind and his Halla find that without society's acceptance they cannot survive." But Sjöström used more than the landscape to depict the tenor and spirit of the film. In one scene, a flock of sheep emerges out of the mist, indistinct at first, then identifiable in its hazy isolation. It's as if Sjöström were creating the sheep out of the stuff of cinema, light taking shape in composition.