En Fare for Samfundet (1917)

The respected physician Professor William Sheldon (Hildal) has been widowed after only six months of marriage. As he holds a memorial service at home beside his wife’s flower-decorated coffin, a stranger approaches him. Calling himself John Payne (Robert Hamson), he asks the famous doctor to help his daughter Alice (Edda), who is suffering from serious problems with her windpipe. Sheldon accompanies Payne to his house and, at the last moment, saves Alice from suffocating by performing surgery. When Sheldon returns home, his estate is ablaze: one of the candles beside the coffin had fallen over and set it alight, until eventually the whole house caught fire. Sheldon then suffers a severe nervous breakdown and descends into madness. A year has passed since these events, and Sheldon has undergone psychiatric treatment. He is now staying at a sanatorium for further treatment. There he meets Alice, whom he saved, and who is on the verge of a full recovery. They grow closer, and tender feelings develop between Alice and her savior, Sheldon. Alice realizes that her professor is nowhere near as far along in his recovery as she is, and is suffering from serious disturbances. The memory of the burning coffin with his deceased wife lying inside has triggered in him a compulsion to become a pyromaniac himself and to keep setting fires. Sheldon manages to escape his attendants once and starts setting fires again. When he is recaptured, the institution’s management promptly locks away the doctor, branded a hopeless case. But their deep affection now leads Alice to devote herself completely to the man who once saved her, and thanks to her selfless devotion and sacrificial love, William Sheldon is freed from his torment and makes a full recovery. At the side of his future wife and her father, he sets off on a long sea voyage to finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest.