“ONCE there was a story that wanted to be told and sent out in the world.... As yet it was only a confused jumble of stories – a big, formless cloud of adventures rushing hither and thither like a swarm of stray bees on a summer's day, not knowing where they will find someone who can gather them into a hive.”
Gerda Lundequist’s family were there, my family were there
and the silent film community turned out in numbers too for the screening of
the Swedish Film Institute’s exhaustive restoration of one of the most
important films from the golden age of Swedish silent film. It’s a long film
and I tried to keep my introduction as broad and brief as possible before we
launched ourselves back to the 1820s and Mauritz Stiller’s interpretation of
Selma Lagerlöf’s classic novel featuring some of the finest actors of the
period all accompanied by John Sweeney’s tirelessly epic improvisations on piano.
Gerda Lundequist plays Margaretha Samzelius, the matriarch
of Ekeby, a grand estate in rural Värmland, and it was a genuine privilege to be
joined by her granddaughter, singer and actress Sonja Kristina as her children
and their children watched this rare example of their forebear on screen. Sonja
knew Gerda as a child, meeting her in Sweden and England and the reconnecting
with her grandmother in this sparkling restoration must have been special
indeed. Seeing Sonja’s young grandchildren
cheer and wave in their animal masks as their Great, Great Granny was announced
was also reminder of the familial joy of belonging.
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| Gerda Lundequist |
For the rest of us there were other connections to be made
not least the warmth of being a part of an audience of like-minded people who
share the same love of cinema and specifically silent film, gathered again in
this secular temple of committed, collaborative – endlessly generous – cineastes.
People who programme who preserve and promote this era of film, “classic” but
also timelessly true regardless of age or form. The emotions displayed by Gerda
Lundequist and her peers are still part of human language and we connect with
them in old familiar ways: yes this is true even after so long the family that
stays together plays together.
Stiller did not have Victor Sjöström’s way with picking out
the deeper humanity and magical reality from Selma Lagerlöf’s works and she was
initially dismissive of this film only to have changed her mind by the
mid-1930s when she met with Greta Garbo and thanked her and Stiller for the
film. Garbo was just 18 when she started filming and still Gustafson before
Stiller renamed this hottest of properties “Garbo” and she too was grateful to
the man she later deemed her favourite director (sorry Clarence Brown!). He may
have told her to lose weight and to stop moving like a farmer’s gatepost but he
brought out her star power enough for Louis B Mayer to snap her up as soon as
he could after seeing Gösta Berling in Berlin. Stiller came to America
with her but he was never able to find the freedom and control he needed.
This was Stiller’s last Swedish film and with his departure
was gone one of the fathers of the Golden Age. Soon his lead actor, Lars
Hanson, was also to follow to play another cleric, The Reverend Arthur
Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (1926) alongside Lillian Gish who had
insisted that Louis B Mayer make the film. Gish and LB were impressed with the
cut of Hanson’s cassock and whilst The Internet has her requesting him post Gösta,
this film came first. His performance is as assured and dynamic as Gerda’s and
the scene in which she confronts him over his failings by sharing her own is
one of the most moving in the entire film.
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| Jenny Hasselqvist posing for Henry Goodwin (1921) |
You have to admire Stiller’s choices for the film, the
stakes were high in terms of the pressure to succeed and off the largest budget
assigned to that point by AB Svensk Filmindustri, and, whilst he took a big
chance on his youngest lead, he was able to persuade not only the country’s
leading stage actress and film actor but also its leading prima ballerina.
Jenny Hasselqvist had worked with the director before on the little seen but
very worthwhile Johan (1921), Guarded Lips (1921) as well as her
first film, The Prima Ballerina (1916) just after she had started in
that role at the Royal Swedish Ballet. As Marianne Sinclaire she represents a
more forceful and knowing partner for our de-0frocked priest after the two are
caught kissing during a play. Her control and physicality is brought to good
use by Stiller as she is left in the cold, literally, by her cruel father and
later gets caught in the burning inferno of Ekeby.
Garbo’s Elizabeth Dohna has deep eyes and longing looks
and needed a good deal of coaching, lighting and editing from Stiller to hold
her place among these consummate professionals.
All this we could see on the restoration and I am
convinced that this screening led many to re-evaluate the film. The previous
restoration is black and white, not so well paced and looks murky in parts
whilst here the SFI have been able to sharpen the story as well as the image.
The re-editing of some parts and introduction of tints and new sequences gives
a richer story, as close as possible to the one first seen a century ago over
two parts in March 1924.
I’d previously seen the restored film in Il Cinema
Ritrovato 2023 in Bologna with a small ensemble accompanying but John Sweeney
was a one-man orchestra, exploring his way expertly across the new running time
and evoking the deeper humanity and grandeur of the film, connecting with the
deeper meanings smuggled in from the original book which in many ways is so
different from the film. It’s 400 pages long in the recent translation from Paul
Norlen and whilst Sjöström would have turned that into three or four films,
Stiller’s edit is remarkable for capturing the essence of these characters even
if some of them changed…
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| Selma Lagerlöf calls the tune |
At the end of the screening, I was thanked by complete
strangers in the aisles as well as those I know but in truth I am the one who
is grateful for the SFI, especially Jörgen Viman, Film Archivist, for restoring
the film, the BFI for screening it, Bryony Dixon in particular and who kindly invited
me to introduce it. I also must thank John Sweeney for playing so wonderfully and
Sonja Kristina and her amazing family old and new, and all of you who attended
and communed in the dark with these century-old ghosts. Thank you for reading
too!
Thank you too to Selma Lagerlöf, who at the end of her Gösta Berlings saga leaves us with the cryptic clue to life:
Dear Reader… Here the giant bees of imagination have
swarmed around us during years and days, but to get into the beehive of reality,
they will truly have to keep their eyes open.
* The Saga of Gösta Berling (Penguin Classics), by
Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Paul Norlen (2009) is available from all good
bookshops and Amazon.
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| Cover of my 1924 Danish programme |
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