--- title: "A Doll's House" year: 1992 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/a-dolls-house" fi1m_id: "a-dolls-house" imdb_id: "tt0101750" tmdb_id: 120533 wikidata_id: "Q4656549" fi1m_score: 78 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-07T11:50:25.039067+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T11:50:36.352401+00:00" region: "BR" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # A Doll's House (1992) Directed by David Thacker · 2h 16m · Drama ## Identity A Doll's House - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/a-dolls-house - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** a-dolls-house - **IMDb ID:** tt0101750 - **TMDB ID:** 120533 - **Wikidata ID:** Q4656549 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101750/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/120533, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4656549 **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Torvald calls her his little songbird for two hours and never once asks what she is singing about > David Thacker films Ibsen plainly, closely and at length, and trusts Juliet Stevenson to carry it. She does: her Nora keeps a smile going long after the rest of her has stopped. Trevor Eve’s Torvald is less interesting, which is partly the point and partly a flaw. ## Synopsis A Norwegian town, Christmas Eve, the 1870s. Nora Helmer (Juliet Stevenson) comes home with parcels, hides the macaroons and lies about them. Her husband Torvald (Trevor Eve) has just been made bank manager; from the new year there will be money. He calls her his skylark and his squirrel and tells her not to spend. Kristine Linde (Geraldine James), a widowed school friend, arrives wanting Nora to ask Torvald for a job. Dr. Rank (Patrick Malahide), a family friend, is ill and says so lightly. Then Nils Krogstad (David Calder), a clerk Torvald means to dismiss, calls while Torvald is out. Years ago Nora borrowed money from him to save her husband’s life, and signed something she should not have. He has kept the paper. ## Review Henrik Ibsen’s play has been shocking audiences since 1879, and David Thacker’s version does nothing to soften it and nothing much to open it out. At 136 minutes it keeps nearly the whole text, stays almost entirely inside the Helmers’ flat, and lets the actors get on with it. It is good; worth your evening if a filmed play does not put you off, and worth it chiefly for one performance. Juliet Stevenson plays Nora as a woman who has been performing happiness for eight years and has got so good at it she has half convinced herself. In the opening scenes she is all movement, tearing wrapping paper, crawling under the table with the children, popping a macaroon in her mouth and wiping the crumbs before Torvald comes in. It is a lot, and it is meant to be. The scene that told us the film would be all right is Krogstad’s first visit. Calder explains, patiently, what a forged signature means in law, and Stevenson’s Nora goes on smiling, and nodding, and offering him reasons, and the smile stays while everything behind it empties out. We found we were holding our breath and could not have said when we had started. Trevor Eve has the harder and less rewarding job. His Torvald is a man who believes he is kind, and most of the time the film agrees he is not cruel so much as fond of the arrangement. The pet names, the little lectures about debt, the hand on the back of the neck: Eve plays them as habits rather than threats, which is right. The flaw is that he plays the prig from the first scene. We can see where this marriage is going before Nora can, and the final confrontation has less distance to travel than it should. We will not describe that ending, though it has been famous for well over a century. We will say Stevenson earns it and Eve is slightly left behind by it. Around them the casting is strong and unshowy. Patrick Malahide’s Dr. Rank is dry, amused and dying, and his scene alone with Nora, in which he tells her something he had meant never to tell her, is the quietest thing in the film and one of the best. Geraldine James gives Kristine Linde a hardness the part often lacks; this is a woman who has buried a husband she did not love and is not going to pretend otherwise. David Calder’s Krogstad is the surprise. He plays the blackmailer as exhausted rather than villainous, a man who has done one bad thing and been paying for it ever since, and the film is more frightening for it. Marjorie Pratt’s flat is comfortable, warm and slightly too full: a stove, a piano, a Christmas tree that gets bigger as the three days pass, lamps everywhere. It looks like a place a woman has spent years making nice because she was not allowed to do anything else, and the camera sits inside it close enough that we start to feel the walls. Guy Woolfenden’s music is used sparingly and is at its best when it is not there; the long stretches of two people talking in a room play against silence, and St. John O’Rorke holds his shots on faces for longer than most editors of the period would have dared. When Nora rehearses her tarantella and Torvald corrects her steps, the cutting stays on her and lets us watch her dance herself towards something. The length tells. The middle act, which is where Ibsen tightens the screws, is also where the film stops moving; two long visits, a letter in a box, a great deal of waiting. We looked at the clock once and were not proud of it. A braver adaptation might have trimmed. This one would rather be complete than quick, and we understand the choice without entirely sharing it. The only review we have read calls Stevenson’s Nora a transformation from dutiful wife to liberated woman. We would put it differently. What Stevenson shows is a woman who was always capable of this and had nowhere to put it. That is a harder thing to act and she does it with her hands as much as her voice; watch where they go, and when they finally stop. Watch it at home with the lights down and the phone in another room. It was always a chamber piece, and this is a chamber. *Fi1m score 78, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is A Doll's House worth watching?** *A Doll's House* (1992) is worth watching if a filmed play does not put you off, and we scored it 78. David Thacker keeps nearly all of Ibsen's text and stays inside the Helmers' flat for 136 minutes, so the middle act drags, but Juliet Stevenson's Nora, smiling long after the rest of her has stopped, is reason enough on its own. **How long is A Doll's House, and what is it rated?** *A Doll's House* runs 2h 16m. It is a drama film. **Where can I watch A Doll's House in Brazil?** *A Doll's House* is not on any streaming or rental service in Brazil at the moment. It is available in 2 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does A Doll's House compare to Gaslight?** *A Doll's House* and [*Gaslight*](https://film.one/film/gaslight) both show a husband managing his wife's mind, but Thacker's is a filmed play and Cukor's is a thriller. *Gaslight* is the more frightening and the more polished, and its house scenes are as good as the form gets; *A Doll's House* is slower and more complete, and Juliet Stevenson's performance is the more demanding of the two. Choose Cukor for suspense, Thacker for Ibsen. **What should I watch after A Doll's House?** After *A Doll's House*, try [*Gaslight*](https://film.one/film/gaslight) (1944, Fi1m 81): A Victorian husband manages his wife’s mind; the thriller version of this. Then [*Truly Madly Deeply*](https://film.one/film/truly-madly-deeply) (1990, Fi1m 80): Stevenson again, grieving rather than trapped, and just as unguarded; and [*The Piano*](https://film.one/film/the-piano) (1993, Fi1m 88): A wife bought and shipped, and what she does with her one possession. ### Reviews we read (1) - **Los Angeles Times**, RAY LOYND (85/100, inferred): The critic warmly recommends the production, praising its cumulative dramatic force and the way it presents the clash between Nora and Thorvald. Juliet Stevenson’s performance is singled out for capturing Nora’s transformation from dutiful wife to liberated woman. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-28-ca-4120-story.html) ## Details - **Director:** David Thacker - **Director:** David Thacker - **Writer:** Henrik Ibsen - **Editor:** St. John O'Rorke - **Music:** Guy Woolfenden - **Production design:** Marjorie Pratt - **Producer:** Simon Curtis - **Cast:** Juliet Stevenson as Nora Helmer; Trevor Eve as Torvald Helmer; Patrick Malahide as Dr. Rank; Geraldine James as Kristine Linde; David Calder as Nils Krogstad; Joe Anderson as Ivar; Sonia Ritter as Helene; Dennis Clinton as Porter - **Runtime:** 2h 16m - **First release (the UK):** 21 November 1992 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in Brazil Not streaming, renting or buying in Brazil at the last check. Also available in: CA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Hedda* (1975): Glenda Jackson’s other Ibsen wife, bored to the point of danger - *Scenes from a Marriage* (1973): Bergman takes the same conversation and stretches it over years - *Gaslight* (1944), Fi1m 81: A Victorian husband manages his wife’s mind; the thriller version of this — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/gaslight.md) - *Truly Madly Deeply* (1990), Fi1m 80: Stevenson again, grieving rather than trapped, and just as unguarded — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/truly-madly-deeply.md) - *The Piano* (1993), Fi1m 88: A wife bought and shipped, and what she does with her one possession — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-piano.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/a-dolls-house