Summary
A slate-gray dawn breaks over a Scandinavian port town where grief has already etched its name into every cobblestone: John Redmond, freshly discharged from a sentence he never deserved, steps into a world that died while he was caged. His mother and father—both hearts quit beating, legend says, the day the verdict was read—hover like translucent reproaches above his solitary shadow. What remains of family is only the echo of a pistol shot that was meant for him but pirouetted through the ribcage of his beloved, a cruel ballet choreographed by jealousy. The state, blind and brisk, locked him away; a prison chaplain, hawk-eyed and Scripture-soaked, later pried open the iron mistake. Emancipated yet orphaned, Redmond transmutes private anguish into public sermons, ascending soapboxes to preach a gospel stitched from penitentiary cloth. One fog-thick afternoon his homily is punctured by sneering revelation: “Jailbird!” The taunt ricochets through the throng, branding him anew. Coincidence—or providence—ushers him into a gin-soaked saloon where silhouettes huddle over blueprints for burglary. Scorn drives him back into the night, but a single hoodlum, conscience flickering like a faulty bulb, trails after the preacher begging for deliverance. Over guttering candle and battered Bible, Redmond narrates the trajectory of the fatal bullet, the courtroom travesty, the belated exoneration, the homecoming that ended at two fresh graves. Conversion ignites; Nellie, the penitent thug’s sweetheart, weeps luminous tears of relief while the reformed soul steps into the pale promise of honesty. Unshaken, the lay-evangelist strides forward, coat flapping like a torn banner, determined to ransom others from the same despair that once shackled him.
Synopsis
After losing his parents, who died from grief over their son's unjust sentence to jail, John Redmond obtains his release and devotes his life to the uplift and betterment of mankind. After preaching to a crowd one day he is accused of having served a term in jail himself. The leader of a gang and his followers are planning an act of burglary in a saloon. John Redmond happens into the same place, but he is mocked and leaves. One of the gangsters decides to lead an honest life and appeals to John for moral aid. The lay-preacher tells him his story: How in a quarrel one evening his sweetheart was killed by the bullet of a rival suitor, which was meant for him, and for which he was sentenced to jail. Through the intervention of this prison chaplain, however, the case was retried, his innocence was proven and he was set free. His first way was to his ill mother who, shortly after his return, died in his arms. Nellie, the reformed gangster's sweetheart, rejoices over his reformation, and the lay-preacher continues his life's vocation.
Review Excerpt
"
Holger-Madsen’s John Redmond, the Evangelist arrives like a frost-bitten tract smuggled out of early Danish cinema’s conscience: a 1914 one-reeler that distills public shaming, jurisprudential fallibility, and the fragile hinge between perdition and grace. Shot when Northern Europe still exhaled the lingering smoke of Victorian morality, the film brandishes its didacticism like a storm lantern against encroaching modernity. Yet for all its pulpit intentions, the picture vibrates with an emotion..."
