Victor and Selma go filmmaking... The Lass from the Stormy Croft (1917)

Apparently, it was after seeing Victor Sjöström's Terje Vigen that Swedish Nobel literature winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf decided to sign a deal allowing A-B Svenska Biografteatern the rights to adapt her films, with the studio committing to one a year. She had previously resisted any cinematic adaptations but saw in Sjöström a man with a similar vision of life and landscape as well as someone who would respect the authorial intent of his source literature. She wanted him to do for her what he had done for Henrik Ibsen and to not sensationalise the moral issues at the heart of her work.

As Aleksander Kwiatkowski wrote in Swedish Film Classics (1983), “… Sjöström's adaptations remained completely faithful to the original works as well as the environments he was constructing,” aiming, as Danish director Benjamin Christensen observed, to imitate “the very rhythm of life.” This was unlike Mauritz Stiller and, later, Gustaf Molander, who both had lighter agendas and more overtly populist entertainments to make. For them, sometimes, the Swedish landscape could be a background, whereas for Sjöström it was a character with its own contribution to human stories, so too with tradition and the nature of rural economies.

Lars Hanson and Hjalmar Selander face a reckoning

This film, more properly translated as The Girl from the Great Marsh (Tenant) Farm, shows that he and Selma Lagerlöf were on the same page right from the start even though the filmmaker did not follow the flashback format of the author’s story; which he also doesn’t do with Jerusalem. It was the first of A-B Svenska’s adaptations and stays as close to her tone as Sons of Ingmar (1919) and Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) do to the novel Jerusalem. It also pays due respect to the setting and the culture with a stunning set up for a wedding showing all the trappings of a village celebration along with less formal trips to church and even the magistrate’s courtroom.

I also like the subtleties the theatrically-trained Sjöström is introducing to his cinematic language, a coffee cup falls to the floor when a character suspects himself of murder and as he struggles to pick up the pieces, the hot coffee stains his hands as he tries to think through the drunken night before. A groom’s father nervously wrings his hands as the family of his intended realise their serving girl has a past and, after a wedding is halted prematurely the camera focuses on disappointed hands silencing the strings on an otherwise jaunty violin.

The Sjostrom Touch?

There is so much to enjoy in this film and, as is usual, Sjöström directs the best out of his players especially an youthful Lars Hanson, actually just turned 31 and still five years away from marrying another of the film’s stars, Karin Molander who was then still with director Gutsaf Molander. She is good too but the plum role goes to Greta Almroth as Helga Nilsdotter, the titular lass from a humble homestead on the marshier end of the town’s agricultural land.

Helga has had a baby with a married man, Per Mårtensson (Gösta Cederlund) who refuses to accept that the child is his. In most cinematic cultures of the time, this is breath-taking set up – you can imagine Griffith moralising already – and yet we immediately feel sympathy for Helga and that only grows after she and her father (William Larsson) try and get Mårtensson to accept his responsibility. There is no option but to take him to court and face the opprobrium of the entire community.

Greta Almroth is also in A Lover in Pawn (1920), The Parsons Widow (1920) and with Lars in The Flame of Life aka Song of the Scarlet Flower (1919) as screened at last year's Il Cinema Ritrovato

Helga encounters Gudmund Erlandsson (Lars Hanson) on route to the hearing and, by this time expecting negative attention jumps out of his horse and court before he can question her. He shakes his head; he is not dishonourable but young enough to take everything at face value.

In the court there is a bravura Lagerlöf twist as Helga, out-gunned and out-flanked by lawyers and hypocrites, refuses to let Mårtensson swear an oath on the bible as she does not want him to perjure himself. This wins her the admiration of the judge and many in the room, a selfless act in the most demeaning of situations. Gudmund is impressed and asks the young woman to become his housekeeper. Helga soon proves her worth and greatly impresses Gudmund’s parents, Erland (Hjalmar Selander) and Ingeborg (Concordia Selander) with her cooking and cleaning.

Nice use of mirror by Sjöström and cameraman Henrik Jaenzon

But Helga cannot escape her shame as Gudmund is due to marry Hildur Persson (Karin Molander), daughter of a well-to-do family who seeing the Erlandsson’s new domestic immediately issue a no-Hildur-with-Helga ultimatum. The family have little option although Ingeborg offers any help the outcast Helga may need saying that Hildur who is one of those people who see their own needs first…

Things progress and with days to go to the big wedding, Gudmund has a night out with the lads he is going to regret. A drunken brawl results in a man being killed and it is only in the light of day with his hangover clearing does he hear of the killing and of a broken pen knife found embedded in the victim’s skull. Reaching down for his own knife he finds the blade has been broken off… is he the killer? Can he be forgiven and can he be saved? No spoiling today!!

Karin Molander and Greta Almroth

At every turn, Helga does the right thing and what she feels she must do for everyone else, she is the most morally consistent character and whilst other’s learn from their mistakes as they go they, eventually learn from her too. The woman at the heart of this story is a single parent, with a child born out of wedlock and she is the hero!

The Lass from the Stormy Croft seems to have been a success and, influential too with author Peter Cowie, writing in Scandinavian Cinema, that Sjöström’s film influenced Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Parson's Widow (1920). The author herself was impressed as related by John Fullerton, in his article Notes on the Cultural Context of Reception: The Girl from Marsh Croft 1917, quotes her as having said that despite the length of some title cards “…she was in tears like everyone else who had seen the ending of the scene”. Lagerlof reportedly said that 'film is much better and stronger that drama...Never before have the different roles in a dialogue scene been so thoroughly or excellently realized." She was not so much in accord with Stiller but that is for another day…

Arriving for the big wedding...

The film is only available digitally on YouTube but the Swedish Film Institute have copies including 35mm positives and a duplicate negative.

You can read the source material too with the novella available of the oddly-named The Selma Lagerlof Megapack: 31 Classic Novels and Stories Kindle Edition. Fill your boots but the translations are mostly from American Velma Swanston Howard who was not always as faithful to her author as Victor Sjostrom.

Ice cold in Archie… Sir Arne's Treasure (1919)

Every so often a film comes along and just rocks your little watching-on-laptop commuter world. On the Gatwick Express last week I’ve been bowled over by a combination of Julius Jaenzon’s cinematography, Mary Johnson’s acting and Mauritz Stiller’s inspiration.

Johnson’s a Scandi-Gish, delicate and pretty with emotions sourced deep within her tiny core, working their way out in great volcanic bursts that shake her very being: like Lillian she acts with her whole being and her frailty is all too real.

She is driven through this film by the promptings of Stiller in what some see as his greatest. I can’t comment having not seen them all, but he comes close to the heights of his more reputable Swedish (Stiller was Finnish) friend and frequent collaborator, Victor Sjostrom in this powerful, claustrophobic meditation on guilt, love and destiny.

The Scandi-Gish

Then there is the magnificence of Julius Jaenzon’s camerawork as he captures the intimacies of the wide-open spaces as easily as he does the depths of the shadowy interiors. There’s startling use of moving cameras as he tracks characters at key moments: the guard ascending the prison steps to a conflagration with his three prisoners and the heroine’s pursuit of the truth carried in her lover’s blackened heart. Events swirl around and the hopeless humans drift aimlessly among the frozen stone as they try to outlive their destiny.

It’s a contrast to Thomas Graal’s Best Film you have to admit.

Based on The Treasure by Selma Lagerlöf, the story is smaller than Stiller’s epic adaptation of the same author’s Gosta Berling but there’s the same moral range: Man must make his peace with the ultimate arbiter and there is a price to pay for every bad deed.

Three bad men

Here the darkness is not immediately apparent as the three Scottish mercenaries at the heart of the story are seemingly brave and carefree men even when held captive in one of King Johan III’s gaols in seventeenth century Sweden. The men, Sir Archie (Richard Lund), Sir Filip (Erik Stocklassa) and Sir Donald (Bror Berger) lark about in their confinement in high spirits even removed from freedom and their national drink: we’re clearly meant to like them… a sucker punch for what comes next, although there’s further play on our sympathy as the narrative unfolds.

The men escape after bamboozling a dopey guard and make their way across the frozen wastes. They very nearly succumb to sub-zero starvation but manage to find the home of a fishmonger, Torarin (Axel Nilsson) where they rip into their food and drink with animalistic relish as his wife looks on in horror.

Julius Jaenzon is the man with the movie camera

The picture shifts to the hall of Sir Arne (Hjalmar Selander) where dinner is in progress. Opposite Sir Arne sits the curate and at the far end of the table sit Sir Arne’s niece Berghild (Wanda Rothgardt) and Elsahill (Mary Johnson), an orphan taken in by the vicar’s household.

Torarin is present and sits without envy at the table of a man whose fortune is alleged to have been looted from the monasteries during the Swedish reformation. The monks had prophesised that the money would only bring ill-fortune and you know they might have been onto something.

Suddenly the meal is disturbed as Sir Arne’s Wife (Concordia Selander) has a vision of men sharpening long knives at Branehog… the table turns in shock at the ill forebodings.

Stiller works his way carefully around the narrative even when proceedings are telegraphed so clearly. 

Mary Johnson and Wanda Rothgardt

Sir Arne’s house is attacked and set aflame by “three men” and rather than show the incident the director focuses on the devastation of the aftermath after the villagers arrive – too late – to find Berghild mortally wounded on the floor and the entire household slaughtered. All except one… Elsahill emerges from hiding and we see her grief at finding her friends all dead – Johnson radiates pure sorrow and we’re none of us going to recover for the rest of the film.

The men escape across the frozen wastes and there’s a shocking moment when their horse trips into a gap in the ice (no disclaimer about animals being injured during silent filming…) taking their carriage with it. They make off with Sir Arne’s treasure box across the ice and cover their tracks in the hope their pursuers will believe all lost…

But this is no mere crime caper, there re deeper issues at stake and, as Elsahill is taken in by Torarin and his wife, she eventually catches the eye of three foreigners passing away the days as they wait for a ship back to Scotland. They are most anxious to hear her sad tale.

The winter is hard and the boats are all ice bound – the producers actually left a sailing ship to be frozen into the sea over winter – that’s planning! But will the weather clear when the men intend to ship their evil cargo? Meteorology moves in mysterious ways and there’s a cosmic balance in play.

Archie meets his match: Erik Stocklassa, Richard Lund  and Bror Berger

But, even within the confines of this Christian morality, nothing is clear cut as murderer-in-chief, Sir Archie and Elsahill fall in love. As one realises who the other actually is the two are tortured by conscience – how can she love the man who killed her loved ones and how can he forgive himself for the harm he has caused?

It doesn’t go the way you expect it to go… and raises compelling questions of love and forgiveness.

This is among the most emotional and immersive Swedish silents and is uncompromised by commercial consideration. The cast is strong and the style naturalistic even with Berghild’s ghost illustrating their guilt perhaps more than the supernatural – no doubt Stiller departs from his source in this respect.

Guilty visions

Mary Johnson’s tortures dominate the film and her intensity easily clears the bar marked melodramatic as she wrestles with the most conflicting of emotions. Richard Lund’s Sir Archie is not her match even though he meets her halfway in a bizarre love triangle of death, greed and guilt.

I watched the Kino DVD which comes with an emphatic new score from Matti Bye and Frederik Emilson which sweeps along at pace sometimes ahead of the film’s emotional force but always in sympathy. All in all, Sir Arne is a must have digital delight for fans of scandi-silents, you can order your copy here.

Mary Johnson