The Girl Behind the Counter

A wealthy young man, Edgar, sees a shopgirl, Ellen, and is immediately attracted to her. He buys her flowers. They meet next Sunday and, presumably, often thereafter. Three months later Ellen is pregnant. The couple decide to marry, and Edgar tells his mother. His father convinces him not to marry Ellen and sends him away to visit friends in the country. The daughter of the family he visits, Lily, gets him to write to Ellen when she finds out about her. Edgar's fahter, however, has convinced Ellen's former employer, to whom the letters have been sent, to turn them over to him. When Edgar gets no reply from Ellen, he secretly returns to the city. The baby is born and Ellen dies shortly after. Lily visits from the country, and Edgar sees a notice of Ellen's death in the newspaper. Edgar and Lily go to the hospital to claim the baby, planning also to marry. (Plot summary from: Ron Mottram, The Danish Cinema before Dreyer (1988))
An excellent example of Nordisk's early feature production and of the "social drama" genre that pioneering film sociologist Emilie Altenloh in 1914 identified as the distinctive contribution of Danish cinema, showing "a woman's struggle between her natural, femine-sensual instincts and social conditions conflicting with them". Clara Wieth (née Rasmussen, later Pontoppidan) gives an absolutely delightful performance as the sweet, flirtatious shopgirl who comes to grief, and the way the film's sympathy is very clearly on her side is quite remarkable. August Blom's staging is unobtrusive but carefully done.