"Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd"

"Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd"
1982
International title: "Flight of the Eagle"
Genre: Historical/Drama
Running time: 135 minutes
Language: Swedish

Directed by Jan Troell

Cast includes:

Max von Sydow as S.A. Andrée
Sverre Anker Ousdal as Knut Frænkel
Göran Stangertz as Nils Strindberg

Synopsis: "Based on the novel by Per Olaf Sundman, Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd (Flight of the Eagle) tells the real-life story of a Swedish engineer's attempted expedition to the North Pole in a hot air balloon. Jan Troell directs this over two-hour adventure drama set in 1897. Max Von Sydow stars as Salomon August Andrée, the engineer who leads the tragic journey in a balloon called The Ornen (The Eagle). He is accompanied by explorers Nils Strindberg (Goran Stangertz) and Knut Fraenkel (Sverre Anker Ousdal). Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the 1983 Academy Awards. Using his experiences making this film, Troell went on to make the hour-long documentary En Frusen Drom (Their Frozen Dream) in 1998 with archival information from the remains of the expedition found in 1930 on an island near the North Pole. (Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide)"


From 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael: "The Flight of the Eagle (1982) Jan Troell's account of the 1897 North Pole expedition by balloon undertaken by the Swedish engineer S.A. Andrée and two colleagues -- all of them pitifully inexperienced aeronauts. When the balloon falls, the movie takes off, and it has the emotionally devastating effect of a major novel. (There's a heft to Troell's sensibility.) This is an epic about the suppressed hysteria and the male obsession with proving oneself by great, daring achievements which we associate with Victorianism. Troell's moviemaking here is a one-of-a-kind mixture of stolidity and lyricism, with a touch of the uncanny. He is both the cinematographer and the director, as he was on his two-part epic The Emigrants and The New Land, and also, once again, the film editor and one of the collaborators on the script. (It's based on the 1967 book by Per Olof Sundman.) With Max von Sydow as Andrée; Göran Stangertz as Nils; huge, burly Sverre Anker Ousdal as Knut; and Clément Harari as Lachambre, the balloon manufacturer. In Swedish. Color."