Good start, but then it gets ruined

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Utvandrarna and Nybyggarna The Swedish film Utvandrarna was shown in the U.S. with the title The Emigrants (1971). The film Nybyggarna was shown with the title The New Land (1972). Both movies were co-written and directed by Jan Troell. Troell was also the cinematographer and the editor of both. (Sounds crazy, but he did it.) The films are actually one long film, broken in half so that each could be seen separately. As can be guessed from the titles, the first film sets up the plot by showing us that, despite intelligence and hard work, many families couldn't make a living on the small plots of land in Sweden. The second film follows the family from Sweden to the United States. The situation for them in the U.S. isn't that much better when they arrive, but they have reasonable hope that they will succeed. Max von Sydow plays the husband, Karl Oskar, and Liv Ullmann plays his wife, Kristina. Both are extraordinarily talented. In addition, Von Sydow is handsome, and Ullmann is impossibly beautiful. The remainder of the cast is strong, and the acting by the children is wonderful. These movies will work better on the large screen, but we had to settle for the small screen. Both films carry very high IMDb rating of 8.0. I gave each a 10.

For a variety of reasons-economic, social and religious force residents of a Swedish area to leave and come to America.Liv Ullmann received a best actress nomination for the Oscar and I really don't know why. Yes, she had some good emotional outbursts at times, but she was often difficult to understand. Perhaps, she could have used some tips from Loretta Young, who gave us an authentic Swedish accent in 1947's "The Farmer's Daughter," and got an Oscar for it.Ullmann is married to Max Von Sydow who really uses her as a baby making service. She is constantly pregnant throughout the film.The real top acting honors in the film go to the harlot and deacon, both forced out for their religious views.Other than lice, death and general malaise, the scenes on board never are riveting.

Jan Troell, has truly captured the feeling of what inspires people to emigrate and the subsequent hardships that await in the land of hope. True masters of the craft, Sydow and Ullmann, are superb in their performances. They truly pull you into the time, the frame of mind and thus make you feel like you are sharing their voyage. A great film that is everything a film should be - moving. It is a mystery why this film did not win an Oscar for best foreign picture, best actress and best actor - though with all fairness, with both Caberet and The Godfather in the running, it would have required a miracle. If you should have the luck of stumbling onto this film at a rental shop, thank Fellini's ghost - grasp it and head for the check out.

Even without 40 minutes of its original running time (trimmed by the idiots at Warner Brothers, who couldn't see American audiences sitting through a 3-hour film), "The Emigrants" is one of the greatest films ever made in Sweden - and probably the finest so far about the immigrant experience.Troell's film was also the most expensive production to date (1971) in Sweden, which outraged many Swedes and made them attack the film quite unfairly. Box Office receipts worldwide, however, persuaded Hollywood that Troell was "bankable" and gave him a few shots at at fame and fortune ("Zandy's Bride" and "The Hurricane" - the latter to have been directed by Roman Polanski just prior to his banishment from America). Luckily, Troell failed in Hollywood and went back to Sweden.