This misanthropic social comedy was sandwiched between
the critical and commercial disappointment of Karin Ingmarsdotter (1920)
and Sjöström’s masterpiece, The Phantom Carriage (1921). Viewed from a
solid century away if feels like Victor taking a break from “serious” before a
return to the complexities of Selma Lagerlöf and it is indeed refreshingly
amusing with a lower budget and a lighter touch than the epics around it. It is,
however, not exactly light or frothy…
There’s a lovely sequence when Sjöström’s starchy
pawnbroker is visited by the mother of his intended and the two share the most
awkward of silences waiting for a tea to be made. All he can think of by way of
conversation if the weather which was “nice today” as, by chance it had been
yesterday and probably will be tomorrow… we’ve all been there and his
toe-curling awkwardness is almost Keatonesque – we don’t talk nearly enough
about Sjöström the comedian do we?
That said, he’s also playing an almost tragically bad
humoured pawn broker, Sammel Eneman – nicknamed Mästerman, who has almost the entire village in hock to
him as he hands out tickets in exchange for meagre amounts of cash to a hard up
fishing community. Everybody needs him but pretty much everybody hates him and
his approach to customer service hardly endears him especially as he is the
richest man in town with a house packed full of possessions he doesn’t need
(writer looks nervously around his loft…) every one weighing him down with the
burning resentment of their impoverished former owners.
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| Victor Sjöström and Concordia Selander |
Mean Mr Mästerman may well be but he is not alone and at various points every major character lets you
down and the film plays with your expectations of hero and villain but, in
typical Sjöström fashion, everyone’s a bit of both, flawed and human. You’re
left to hope that they’ll at least learn a lesson before he delivers a knockout
punch that satisfies and leaves you smiling.
Mutter Boman (Concordia Selander) a formidable local inn owner
has a pretty young daughter, Tora (Greta Almroth, who was so good in Dreyer's The Parson's Widow (1920)) who is engaged to a sailor
called Knut (Harald Schwenzen) who, I have to say, doesn’t look that ready to
settle down. He drinks and he gambles and he drinks and he loses money as he
gambles… as with many of the sailors, he gets by with the help of pawning
whatever he can to Mästerman. There's no love lost for the pawn broker and even when he rescues Tora from assault and carries her back to the inn they mock him and offer him money for his good deed; he pockets it for a rainy day, never intending to keep this insult.
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| Naughty Knut and Mutter Boman |
One night Knut goes just too far as he borrows money from
Mutter Boman’s draw and blows the lot. They say love is blind, (but I don’t
know, as I say love is kind...) and Tora offers to pawn herself to Mästerman in
exchange for refilling her mother’s draw and preventing Knut from being found
out. For his part, possibly in shame, Knut heads North vowing to earn enough to
buy back the precious item listed in this case with a deposit number 1313.
The old pawnbroker is at first reluctant to accept the
deal but he realises that Tora can do a lot of good for his warehouse home. He
is delighted by her initial efforts as his store is soon revealed to be a smart
sitting room and even the stuffed crocodiles are dusted back to life. Tora also
starts to upgrade his opinion presenting him with a smart set of clothes he’d
forgotten he had as she encourages him to be more lenient with his customers.
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| "You are a dangerous deposit, Tora..." |
Seeing what he has in the store, he realises how much he
doesn’t need and lets Tora do with it as she wants. She soon starts to hand out
items to the locals and persuades her boss/master that it will help make him popular
as indeed it does although he looks on with concern as his assets drain away.
It’s been said, and not just in my house, that, there’s
no fool like and old fool and Mästerman begins to look on his young helper with
more than contractual affection. She has brought laughter and light into his
home and, she has also brought love. So much so that in a conversation about
church she creates the impression that, at the right time, she would happily
walk with him to church and sit next to him.
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| Greta Almroth, Victor and Harald Schwenzen |
Now, with this unexpected re-emergence of his
long-dormant romantic prospects, he clumsily assumes that Tora has agreed to
marriage especially when her mother comes to tea. After absenting himself from
the horror of small talk, he leans against the parlour door, and listens to the
conversation within during which Tora laughingly reveals that she’s playing the
old fella for a fool and only wants to marry Knut. This is unexpected because we were liking Tora and her
decent attempts to both level up the local distribution of wealth as well as
make a better man out of Mästerman. Now, however, she’s about to find out how
sharper than a stuffed alligator’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful and
exceptionally angry pawn broker.
Whilst not unexpected, Tora’s true motives feel like a
shock and a betrayal of our narrative trust, with Mästerman threatening to
slyly revert to type with the most vicious revenge and, well, Knut being Knut,
we’re at a loss as to how this could possibly end well.
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| Bad faith trailing behind him, Mästerman heads to his finale |
But, in Sjostrom we trust and Victor is victorious just
as the final whistle approaches and the prospect of extra time looms. There's another special scene as Mästerman walks towards his wedding only to be followed by a mocking procession formed by Knut's mates... it's another example of the director's visual imagination and perfectly encapsulates the view of the local community for this man who, they are sure, can only do bad things. Wherever we walk, we all have a phantom procession of doubters trailing us... the trick is to ignore their pursuit and to carry on to your destination, not theirs.
Whilst not a straight-ahead comedy, Mästerman is
very enjoyable and with Julius Jaenzon on hand we get a great depth of feel for
the period, people and location. It’s a competent film and we should give
thanks that so many of the director’s features seem to have survived from this
time; he is so surefooted and always seems to seek out the dramatically
different as his next Lagerlöf adaptation was to show.
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