“From an artistic viewpoint, the impact of cinema dramas is heightened, above all, by gesture, movement, dance, the tools of pantomime. All these may well have contributed to the sensational success of the film drama The Abyss, which is currently showing to full houses twice every evening at the Palasttheater in Dusseldorf. Most people are convinced that these showings represent the theatre event of the year, so public opinion is forced to at least make a note of this viewpoint. But now to the matter on hand! And here it must be stated first and foremost that the sensational aspect of this drama also resides in another area. So far, I have always believed that a border was a line, and a line was something abstract, something to do with geometry. Having seen the gaucho dance in The Abyss, however, I am now of another opinion. There is a borderline, a concrete, tangible borderline. And it is at this borderline, a thousand times finer than a hair, that Asta Nielsen, in the role of Magda, dances out her ill-fated and ruinous passion for the artist Rudolph”.

Anonymous, “Der Kinematograph”, Dusseldorf, 14 December 1910

Afgrunden is here presented in a digitally restored version. The inclusion of Swedish element, has dramatically improved quality of the central erotic dance sequence. The restoration is based itself on a Danish Film Institute 35mm preservation element from an original print and a second element discovered in the 1980s with the Swedish Television Archive, which appears to be a censorship cut. The two elements were scanned at 2K resolution and combined, leading to the insertion of 746 frames in which the Swedish element was superior, including 48 frames, which only existed in the Swedish element. The film was digitally repaired using image stabilization, light de-spotting and manual repair. Though the film is still in pretty bad shape, the current level of cleaning was chosen so as not to have to introduce new digital artifacts or the recolour of major sections of the film.

Thomas C. Christensen – Danske Filmmuseum