THE SWAMP TREADER

It’s no surprise that the Latvians knew how to make historic melodramas (with a national-mythological core) before the war, films that corresponded to the desire for freedom of the Latvian people. Alas, in 1966 too a classic representative and stylist of the cinema of the Latvian SSR would succeed in doing the same, this time following the socialistic class order: namely one Leonīds Leimanis. This story of swamp water, based on texts by Rūdolfs Blaumanis, is set on a Latvian country estate towards the end of the 19 century. The coachman Edgars is in love with the servant girl Kristina, whose mother however wants nothing whatsoever to do with the free spirit (who’s been known to shower under a waterfall when it suits him).