Annelie (1941)

Annelie seems to be pursued by bad luck, because she is always late. She is already late at her own birth, missing by 15 minutes the birth time her parents had carefully planned for her: exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1871. This 15-minute delay seems to follow Annelie throughout her life. At the age of 16, she narrowly misses taking part in a horse race, and when her appendix bursts, she arrives at the clinic a quarter of an hour too late—yet the doctors manage to save her life at the last moment. In the fever dreams that always accompany her, she has a vision one day and resolves from then on to be punctual, everywhere and at all times. From then on, her life changes: Annelie marries the doctor who saved her life, and they have three children. At the beginning of the First World War, her husband and two of their children have to go to the front, while she becomes a nurse with the Red Cross. When her husband is admitted to a military hospital with severe wounds, she arrives on time to see him once more, shortly before he dies. Amid the turmoil of the war, she receives a call from her son telling her that he has survived. Annelie is at the end of her strength. After the call ends, she sees that she has overcome the unpunctuality she was repeatedly reproached for, and that her life’s work is complete. She sits down in an armchair and dies there, happy and content.