If you’re a fan of Henrik Ibsen’s stark, unforgiving play, you’ll love this film version of A Doll’s House (1973, rated G, 95 minutes).
Both have the same undercurrent of desperation. Torvald Helmer (Anthony Hopkins) faultlessly offers bland, devastating condescension to Nora (Claire Bloom), whose despair grows ever more public as she realizes that she has drowned herself in the domestic dead end of being Torvald’s “doll-wife.”
You may ache, like me, to bash Torvald and comfort Nora as you watch the pervasive and thinly veiled abuse in the Helmer household.
Nora gets involved in troubling debt, and she hopes that her husband will take the blame for her transgression. A disdainful Torvald rebukes her: “…one doesn’t sacrifice one’s honor for love’s sake.”
Nora replies with quiet thunder: “Millions of women have done so.”
It’s easy to understand how Nora could be too hurt to cry.
Based on Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House.
Request the DVD of the 1973 version through the Minuteman Library Network
Watch the version of A Doll’s House starring Jane Fonda and David Warner through Kanopy
