A Doll's House

"A Doll's House" is a film based on the play by Henrik Ibsen. The story focuses on the lives of Nora and Torvald Helmer and those around them and challenges the norms of marriage in the Victorian era.

This adaptation features a notable cast. Jane Fonda effectively captured the fluttery yet ultimately strong character of Nora. David Warner was appropriate to play the villain role as he often does. Trevor Howard is excellent as Dr. Rank and likewise Edward Fox and Delphine Seyrig were solid as Krogstad and Kristine.

As an adaptation of a great play, though, this film leaves something to be desired. Many unnecessary scenes were added that were not in the play, which led to problems. In added scenes, information is revealed at the start of the film which is not normally learned until later in the play. Ibsen wrote the play in such a way that the history of the characters is ambiguous and slowly revealed. Providing background information on the characters before the main events of the play dampened the element of surprise that adds a lot of interest to the play.

Another problem was that adding scenes or drawing out sequences lowered the tension compared to Ibsen's play, particularly toward the end. Also unfortunate was the fact that they unnecessarily added a handful of extra locations not seen in the play and modified a lot of the dialogue. The original structure and dialogue of the play is already perfect, so any changes only made this film worse. It would have been nice to see the cast of this film with a script that closely followed Ibsen's original work. Despite these flaws the main ideas of the story were intact and this is a watchable adaptation, but disappointing given its deviations from the original play.