Anna-Liisa

Anna-Liisa is a 1922 Finnish silent film directed by Tuevo Puro and Jussi Snellman. Wikipedia says this was the "First Finnish film to get "restricted" (unsuitable for children) rating". The IMDB listing has this one at 88 minutes, so I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the film. The one at the Internet Archive is only 48 minutes long.

The film below does not have English intertitles, but here's a summary from Internet Archive:

Anna-Liisa is a farmer's daughter, about to marry Johannes, who comes to visit her at the farm. The god-fearing family is happy for her, but Anna-Liisa has a dark secret, which is revealed in flashbacks. We are moved to a lake where Mikko, the former farm-hand, is working as a log-floater. He remembers when he met Anna-Liisa at a dance. They row home in the moonshine, the girl is seduced beneath a birch tree by the shore - while the rowing-boat drifts away. She gets pregnant, Mikko runs away and she kills the child. Mikko's mother helps her to clear the traces. Now the farm-hand's mother has a hold on the farmer's daughter, and when she hears about the marriage with Johannes three years later, she threatens the girl. Mikko comes home and wants to marry Anna-Liisa. She tells her relatives everything. When she tries to drown herself, Johannes saves her. She finds salvation. When the wedding is announced, Anna-Liisa declares that she has deciced to serve her penalty. End.

Internet Archive has this online:


There are certainly some sad tales from the early days of film.