I've watched this excellent 1921 Swedish Silent film multiple times during recent years (I have the Criterion DVD), but never have been able to entirely decide whether Sister Edit's love for David Holm is strictly Christian love for her fellow man or if there’s anything also romantically emotional about it. My feeling is that her love for David is probably strictly Christian. But - at the same time - it seems rather beyond just that.

I think that perhaps (and probably) even Edit doesn't quite realize her Christian love for David slipped into dysfunctional obsessive emotional territory. David having been her first mission case, I think Edit, being young and inexperienced, eagerly, from the get go, gave him so completely her all, from a compassion and Christian love standpoint, that it, before long, evolved into a first love sort of situation, she not being able to get him out of her head and heart, and ultimately winding up living and breathing David Holm.

To Edit's thinking, I rather suspect she probably doesn't personally quite "get" that she has essentially (although hasn't exactly) fallen in love with David.

Terrific Victor Sjöström film, well worth watching.

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