Stefan Zweig wrote countless novels, poems, plays, biographies and essays. The Austrian author was a master at portraying the contradictions of the human being, which is why his fictions are always very attractive to filmmakers. Letter from a stranger, for example, has been adapted several times. The most famous version is the one from 1948 by Max Ophüls, with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan as protagonists, which is considered one of the essential films in the history of cinema.
More than 80 years have passed since Zweig's death, but his books continue to be republished and film directors still find in his writings material for films that aspire to be etched on the viewer's retina. Bille August has turned into films such well-known novels as La casa dels esprits, by Isabel Allende, Els miserables, by Víctor Hugo or the disturbing La señorita Smila y su especial percepción de la nieve, by Peter Høeg.
Now the talents of Zweig and August have been joined by The Impatience of the Heart, which competes in the official section of the BCN Film Fest. "It is the story of a man who has too much compassion, who feels sorry for a woman and this makes him promise things that he cannot fulfill. This attracted me in a special way and made me fall in love with the novel", explains August in an interview given yesterday by Zoom to La Vanguardia.
The story begins a few months before the outbreak of the First World War in a barracks on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Anton, a cavalry officer, comes into contact with a baron who lives in a castle located in the vicinity of the camp and befriends his daughter, Edith, a very beautiful girl who was paralyzed in an accident horse riding
Little by little the friendship becomes more intense, because Anton feels sorry for the girl and, although he would rather be doing other things, he continues to visit her: "Anton is a brave and honorable soldier, but he experiences an internal conflict when he meets this disabled woman, because he doesn't know how to face the situation neither with her nor with his fellow barracks, who consider it unworthy to marry a girl who can't walk", August explains. The compassion that Anton feels for Edith leads him to deceive and even leads him to dishonor: "It is the most curious thing of all, that compassion, which is considered a value, can end up becoming a problem, an obstacle ", add.
For the director, who also signed the script with Greg Latter, “the most difficult thing was to concentrate the adaptation on the element of compassion, which is what I was passionate about, and leave out all the other things. In addition, it was necessary to condense the story to turn it into a film, because if you take a novel and transfer it as it is, you'd end up with illustrated literature and that's enough."
The project began to develop as an international production, but "there were legal problems and it was stopped". "At that time I was already so in love with the story that I decided to film it in Denmark", explains the director, who chose the protagonist, Clara Rosager, in a casting process. The actress is not known in Spain and "the truth is that she is not famous in Denmark either", but she has already attracted the attention of critics for her interpretation of Edith and for "her ability to embody the ambiguity of the character and what it causes to Anton, who struggles between the pain and the love he feels for her".
Working in Denmark is "a pleasure" for August because "in Danish cinema there is a very good atmosphere, we share things and are colleagues, we help each other and watch each other's films". Perhaps because of this, and also because of August's work, which has an Oscar and two Palmes d'Or in its history, the Danish audiovisual industry has made a place on the international scene.
Films and, above all, series from the country, are projected all over the world. August, who had already shot a few television series, will release his first work for Netflix in September: "The platforms are here and there is no other choice but to accept them, I am sorry that they hurt the theaters, but we tell stories and we must continue to explain", he concludes.
