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THE EARLY DANISH CINEMA
OF the Scandinavian countries, Denmark was the first to adopt and develop the film. A contemporary of Friese-Greene, Edison and the Lumiere Brothers was P. Elfelt, a court photographer who, in the summer of 1898, made a film record of the Danish Royal Family. For the next few years filmmaking followed the pattern common to most countries, where the invention was introduced about the turn of the century and short news and interest films were made. The Danes claim to have made the first dramatic film, in 1903.
In 1 906 the first Danish film producing company, and to-day one of the oldest film companies in the world, Nordisk Films, was founded by the remarkable Ole Olsen. This man, who began life as a shepherd, became a showman, and as he toured the market towns his instinct quickly made him add films to his travelling attractions. It is recorded that, for one of his early films, The Lion Hunters, he bought an aged horse and a rheumatic lion which the Zoo authorities were about to have destroyed, and with these and resourceful camera work made an exciting adventure story. Later he looked for less sensational material and found it in adaptations of novels and of such plays as A Marriage Under the Revolution.
In a few years Nordisk Films became one of the most important production and distribution agencies in the world, with branch offices in New York and in many other cities. Through these offices the company was able to sell, for example, two hundred and fifty copies of At the Prison Gates. We are told that Nordisk flooded the French market and that the Danish films were first in popularity in Germany. During the peak production year over a hundred films were made, and, although they were for the most part one-reelers, they included latterly films of three and four reels.
It is difficult at this date to analyse the reasons for this world-wide popularity. The subject-matter of some of the earliest films suggests a sensationalist appeal. In 1910 Nordisk distributed for Fotorama, another Danish production company, a film with the title The White Slave Traffic, and followed it with two other films
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