Word: engstrand
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...Regina Engstrand (Donna Manley) holds the same position--housekeeper for Mrs. Alving--that her own mother did before her death. The education and refinement she has culled from living in this cosmopolitan home conflicts with the behavior of her offensive step-father, Jacob (Harry Cooper). He frequently reminds his daughter about the duty a child owes a father, although this is some what muffled beneath his deliberately garbled gruffness...
Despite his unclear speech, Cooper brilliantly portrays Mr. Engstrand as a crotchety, aged carpenter with every-moving eyebrows, a lame leg, and discomfited facial expressions. Although by he is her father, Engstrand's ill-mannered ways and frequent machinations lead Regina to despise...
Just as Mr. Engstrand plagues his daughter, Mrs. Alving seems incapable of ridding herself of the ghosts that haunt her. Like entropy, their lives, despite conscientious planning, degenerate into turmoil...
Helene then moves home and husband to a life of rural seclusion. She protects her infant son Oswald from his brutish father by packing him off to boarding school at an early age. When the Captain impregnates the maid, Helene quickly marries her off to a carpenter named Engstrand and raises the child Regina in her own home. If she can't save the man's conscience, she can at least salvage his reputation; Helene busies herself with philanthropy while her husband garners the glory...
...Ross is a good Mrs. Alving, adding a layer of sophisticated and casual confidence to Ibsen's troubled widow. Stephen Kolzak as the tortured painter Oswald gives an excellent performance; his harrowing breakdown is the one scene where emotion transcends Ibsen's carefully orchestrated social commentaries. Sidney Atwood as Engstrand and Helena Snow as the ambitious Regina handle modernization less effectively by dipping into stereotype. Atwood's carpenter is too much the fast-talking hustler and Snow's best lines are weakened by smirking golddigger mannerisms...