Ingmar Bergman called Victor Sjöström’s film “the keystone of my cinematographic world.” Film historian Peter Cowie observes: “By 1920, Sjöström was at the peak of his career. He was eager to experiment with form, even if it meant tampering with the work of one of Sweden’s most respected authors, the Nobel Prize–winning Selma Lagerlöf.” The film creates a complex flashback structure in adapting the morality tale of a drunkard (played by Sjöström himself). Its startlingly inventive visual technique, in Cowie’s words, “demonstrates that Julius Jaenzon was as brilliant a cinematographer in his time as Sven Nykvist.”