This Sunday, 19th January at 2.30pm the BFI will be screening the UK premier of the restored Gösta Berling's saga and, as there are still a few tickets remaining and I want you to get the best possible vantage point!
This will be an event to rival the finest gala screenings of many a film festival with the film as close to its original length and condition as it has been in a century! If you are in any doubt, here’s ten good reasons not to miss this unique event!
1. It's the culmination of the Golden Period of Swedish film?
This film is one of the last of the major films from the
golden period of Swedish Silent film and features some of the major talents.
This is not just from within film but also without: bringing together the very
best of contemporary theatrical and cinematic talent along with literature and
ballet.
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| Selma in the office |
2. Selma Lagerlöf was a phenomenon
The film is based on the book from Selma Lagerlöf for which
she had won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1909, the first woman to do so. Lagerlöf’s
works were also the source material for a number of films across this period in
much the same way as Dickens for the British.
The Lass from the Stormy
Croft (1917) Directed by Victor Sjoström
Sir Arne’s Treasure
(1919) Directed by Mauritz Stiller
The Sons of Ingmar
(1919)/ Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) Directed by Victor Sjoström
The Phantom Carriage
(1922) Directed by Victor Sjoström
Ingmar’s Inheritance (1925)/ To the Orient (1926) Directed by Gustaf Molander
Lagerlöf led a fascinating life a distinctive voice who made her own choices even if that led her to buying back the family farm and manor house Mårbacka, managing it to profitability with a range of healthy oatmeal “Mårbacka Oats-Power”. Any resemblance to the estate of Ekeby is intentional.
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| An example of the dynamic new tints |
3. Mauritz Stiller was no slouch…
For Gösta Berling, Stiller made merry with the
sequence of the story, cutting away all but the main half dozen characters and
dispensing with the author’s magical realism and forensic humanity. How could
such a book be filmed though, 400 pages long and written in Lagerlöf’s intensely
lyrical style. Luckily Stiller’s instincts were correct in terms of his film
and he was blessed with key performers who, familiar with the book could bring
some of these elements back.
Selma was not impressed, calling the result “cheap and sensational”, but there’s no reason we can’t be just as the audiences of the time were with the film enjoying success across Europe and even America. Stiller got offers to make films in Germany and then Hollywood and within a year set sail with one of his young co-stars for the USA.
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| Greta Gustafsson before Stiller suggested Garbo... |
4. Yes, Greta Garbo started right here!
She was only 19 and rather outgunned by those around her but Greta Gustafsson does very well in her first major film. Legend has it that a certain Louis B Mayer saw her in this film and after Pabst’s Joyless Street, she was on her way to becoming a legend.
In 1935 Garbo tried to visit Selma in Mårbacka but the writer was ill, they did meet the following year in Stockholm where Lagerlöf’s stage adaptation of her great novel was playing. Oh, to be a fly on the wall, next to a fly that could translate Swedish, for their discussions.
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| Gerda Lundequist |
5. Gerda Lundequist… the great tragedian in her only silent film!
Gerda Lundequist was “the Swedish Sarah Bernhardt” and an
enormously powerful performer who enjoyed a career lasting well over half a century
starting aged 18 in 1889 and carrying on to the late 1940s. She played pretty
much every major role in Scandinavian as well as European classic theatre but
sadly only made a handful of screen appearances with Gösta Berling her
debut aged 53!
She is quite incredible in the film and clearly knows how to
act on film without blowing the camera away as, naming no names, some theatre
specialists had been known to do. This is her only silent film and so this is
the equivalent of seeing Anna Pavlova dance in Lois Weber’s The Dumb Girl of
Portici (1916) and a performance to match Bea Lillie’s in Exit Smiling
(1928), her only silent feature.
On Sunday, Gerda Lundequist’s granddaughter and family shall join us to celebrate this screening and that makes me particularly happy!
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| Jenny at the day job |
6. Jenny Hasselqvist: the Acting and Dancing Queen!
Dancing?? Happiness?!? Yes, this film features one of
the most talented people to have ever reflected the glare from a Klieg Lights onto
celluloid or to have bounced with perfect precision on point from the stage of
the Royal Swedish Ballet and elsewhere!
Jenny Matilda Elisabet Hasselqvist was one of the finest
prima ballerinas of her age and, whilst she made 20-odd films in Sweden and
Germany, she remained a dancer first and foremost. In an alternate universe
Mauritz Stiller could have been her Boris Lermontov, coaxing her to star in his
1916 film Balettprimadonnan when she had just begun as the Royal Swedish
Ballet’s prima ballerina. But this “Vicky Page” returned to the stage and didn’t
make another film until Lubitsch’s Sumurun (1920) and whilst she worked
with Stiller again on Johan (1921), The Exiles (1921 and mostly
lost) as well as this film, she maintained her dancing career reverting
completely after her final, talking, picture Den farliga liken (1931).
She is fabulous in Gösta Berling and brings a more physical aspect to expression than even Gerda Lundequist, her emotional extremes always expressed viscerally by her body in ways that only the most controlled of beings can muster – ways that silent film magnifies in the absence of other signals.
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| Lars and the lads. |
7. Lars Hanson is here!
Now then, it’s possible that Mr Hanson is too charming to
play Gösta Berling, but there’s a mean streak to Lars that we rarely see and
his ability to mask self-pity with leading qualities is unrivalled. He also
breaks hearts as the defrocked and perpetually failing priest who can’t help
breaking heart including his own.
Hanson was the pre-eminent film star of the Swedish Golden Period and he went on – with Lillian Gish’s insistence - to repeat the trick in Hollywood in The Wind and The Scarlet Letter (1926) and, of course twice with Garbo in The Divine Woman (1928) and Flesh and the Devil (1926). My favourite of his American films is Captain Salvation (1926) with Marceline Day. His star power is undimmed to this day!
8. The Restoration will be colourised!
The Swedish Film Institute have been working on restoring the film for many years and they upgraded the previous black and white restoration using tinted nitrate materials in French, German and Portuguese archives to create a digitized template for re-tinting the film.
In our lifetimes the film has not looked this good and the vision of Stiller and his legendary lensman Julius Jaenzon is as close to perfect as possible.
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| Lars and Jenny |
9. New footage… even more wolves!
The restoration team was able to add new footage throughout
the film and key sequences in which first the Major’s wife, and then Marianne are
disgraced at Ekeby parties are given more impact. The thrilling section on the
ice with Gösta and Elizabeth try to flee from a wolf pack has been re-edited
and you will be on the edge of your seat!
10.a John Sweeney is accompanying!!
Having seen and heard John accompany the three-hour Michel Strogoff (1926) in one sitting late one British Silent Film Festival, I can think of no one
better to accompany such an epic! he blends dynamic imprivistations so well with lines that switch so seemlessly with emotional tione I'm really looking forward to hearing him play.
10.b. There will be an interval during which refreshments can be purchased for both the audience and the pianist!
You may have seen the film before, but never like this! We are going to party like it’s 1924!!
And, remember, as Gösta Berling knows all too well, it's better to regret something you have done than something you missed!
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