EHRENGARD: Karen Blixen’s Quirky Dynastic Romance in Post-Production

Karen Blixen’s Quirky Dynastic Romance in Post-Production

Ehrengard, another novella authored by Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Fenicke, better known as Isak Dinesen, joins the canon of films based on her work.

There is plenty of precedent to expect good things from this latest transformation from Blixen’s pen onto the screen.

The best known film adaptation of Karen Blixen’s writing is Out of Africa, taking the title of her 1937 memoir, but not much else from it. Though technically creative nonfiction, the movie focused more on speculation than the events described in the book. It’s a slick, epic sort of production that makes Hollywood proud, and packed a wallop, earning 11 nominations at the Academy Awards in 1986 and taking seven, including Best Picture and Best Director for Sydney Pollack. This film is different from later ones, in that there is very little glamor in the grueling management of a coffee plantation in backwoods Kenya.

Orson Welles made the earliest attempt to film Blixen’s fiction. He took from her collection of short fiction entitled ‘Anecdotes of Destiny,’ the last one published in her lifetime in 1958, which he greatly admired. Welles planned a series based on these stories, but only one, The Immortal Story, came to fruition in 1968. The others, The Dreamers and The Heroine, were unfinished, and the footage of the latter has been lost.

Better known from ‘Anecdotes’ is Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, first ever Danish film submitted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 60th Academy Awards — which took the prize against some pretty impressive competitors, among them Louis Malle and Ettore Scola.

Ehrengard shares something in particular with Babette’s Feast. Two things, actually: first, the importance of the upper crust and its cultural impact in the story; and, second, the roles of both benefactor and confidante to gifted artists. So it is with Ehrengard, but even more so. The hero of the story is Geheimrat Wolfgang Cazotte, a poor boy made good by his extraordinary portraits of aristocrats, and — as is often the case in these dramas — employed as the trusted keeper of a secret much too murky for the likes of a Peerage. (Though an historical romance in basic structure, it’s more than that; it’s a dynastic tale in the traditional sense, with all the usual intrigue.)

Much of the novella is epistolary, and it’s through Cazotte’s letters we find the real meat. Through the artist’s blunt, almost absurdly florid prose reporting to his employer, the Grand Duchess of Babenhausen, Blixen conveys the astute parallel between the artist’s brazen, quite often crude seductiveness while painting his subjects, a necessary step in bestowing upon each finished portrait its singular distinction. However, his ‘professional’ passion takes an unexpected turn for Ehrengard, stalwart daughter of an über respectable military family selected by the Duchess for her betrothed son’s household.

But especially intriguing is the dedication to this project from the royal quarter. The production designer is none other than Her Majesty Queen Margarethe II of Denmark. Not surprising; aside from her duties as Head of State, she is an accomplished artist herself, and a big fan of Tolkien as well as Dinesen. Her illustrations can be found in the Danish version of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ with the author’s blessing. For this film Her Highness teams up with director Bille August (Pelle the Conquerer) and his son Anders August (A Fortunate Man), who adapted the novella.

The all Danish cast includes Sidse Babbet Knudsen (Westworld), Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (A Royal Affair), Jacob Lohmann (Enforcement), Christopher Læsso (The Square), and Emilie Kroyer Koppel as Ehrengard.

Netflix is set to distribute the film, although no release date has yet been given.

Leave your thoughts on the forthcoming release of Karen Blixen’s Ehrengard below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more movie news can visit our Movie News Page, our Movie News Twitter Page, and our Movie News Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard.