Ten reasons not to miss Gösta Berlings saga (1924) UK restoration premier!

 

This Sunday, 19^th 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.

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.

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.

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.

 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!

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.

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.

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! 

Get your tickets here!

Preview. The remaking of Gösta Berlings saga (1924). BFI screening on 19th January!

 

The BFI are screening Gösta Berling's saga on 19^th January and if you haven’t already booked I suggest you click on this link right away to make sure of the best seats for what will be a spectacular Sunday with the best musical accompaniment!

 

The Swedish Film Institute have been working on restoring one of the major works of their golden silent era for years and first presented a restored version a few years back at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival but, this wasn’t enough and they were motivated to further enhance what had been done by the desire to present something as close as possible to Mauritz Stiller’s original vision and… here we are!

 

I’ve been speaking to the person responsible for the project, the SFI’s Jörgen Viman, Film Archivist and man on a mission. He says that the initial motivation to make a new print was that the existing ones were only in black and white. They discovered that there were tinted nitrate materials in French, German and Portuguese archives and borrowed from all three to create a digitized template for re-tinting the film.

 

I found images that we were missing completely, and these are euphoric moments. I also discovered images that were similar, but still not exactly the same. The camera angle was slightly different.

An example of one of the tinted source nitrates, many sprockets were fixed...

Source materials

 

Examining the images in detail he discovered that that there were differences in content and approach, these being all further highlighted by a black and white print from Moscow. The project was now not just about restoring the tints but also missing parts of the narrative and I can well understand the satisfactions of an archivist on this trail especially when he discovered after painstaking work sifting through the SFI’s filming reports, text lists, text signs and other documentation, that there were originally two slightly differing negatives.

 

Running to the same length these featured different angles with Stiller and his legendary lensman Julius Jaenzon using two cameras as was standard practice for at least parts of the filming. Trying to make sense of Stiller’s intended narrative was always going to be difficult as films often varied from the script which still survives in this instance. Luckily Swedish censorship was diligent and so there was a record of all of the intertitles – praise be to those who have the viewers’ delicate sensibilities at heart.

 

None of these records showed how the images were edited around the text and so a long and laborious process was begun reviewing the materials side-by-side to identify the best quality takes from scenes of varying length and angles from those two cameras.

 

One of only six surviving images of Ava Lundin's original intertitles

405 Intertitles…

 

In terms of the intertitles only three of Ava Lundin’s lovely painted inserts survive but Jörgen found three more reproduced in a magazine from 1924 that helped the team create a font that was a close as possible to the originals. Anyone who has worked with typography knows what a challenge this is but luckily all but the letter z were present in lower case on the six intertitles although the capitals were more elusive especially as they varied by context in the sentences.

 

Jörgen then used Photo Shop to recreate everyone of the 405 intertitles, originally painted by hand now by digital programming with no less attention to detail and layout. I remember a world of graphic design before digital artwork and it is such an underappreciated art with text placement needing to balance, avoid line breaks and to be readable as easily as possible. Jörgen centred the text and also aligned left and right creating a consistent read area throughout the film. I noticed in Bologna that some of the English text had changed as well, perhaps moving them closer to the original Swedish?

 

The reconstructed intertitle, only 404 to go...

Tinting and colour ways

 

Obviously it was not possible to recreate Alva Lundin’s painted images on the title cards but the magazine article revealed that they were all toned in dark brown which no other document mentioned. This may not always look the case though as the eye gets used to the colour that is in the image before the text. As Jörgen says: If the image is blue, the eye perceives the text as more strongly toned than if the image before is yellow, for example.

 

Now for the colour of the images the restoration team mostly used the Portuguese nitrate print, but there were variations with that print showing all the night images in light green, while the same sequence were tinted blue in the French material. Swedish convention was – as with Hollywood films – to use blue for night and this they did with exception of one scene only found in the Portuguese copy – which they left in dark green. You’ll see it when Gösta finds the little bird on the road.

 

Re-creation is an interpretation that is based on facts, but also experience and collaboration.

New footage…

 

This is what gets most of us excited about any restoration and watching the restoration in Bologna last June there were many occasions when I wanted to stop the film and compare with my old Kino DVD but this would have been rude of course!

 

There are a number of images from slightly different places throughout the film and it felt like the key sequences in which first the Major’s wife, Margaretha Samzelius (the Swedish theatre legend Gerda Lundequist) and then Marianne (my favourite prima ballerina/actress Jenny Hasseqlvist) are disgraced at Ekeby parties, were separated, giving both more impact for me.

 

There are new images in the latter scene where Gösta (Lars Hanson) and Marianne dance – I always love seeing Jenny dance! – which fills out the depth of feeling between the two as their attraction is revealed on stage leading to Marianne’s father refuses to have anything more to do with her.

 

Jörgen says that the section that perhaps took the longest to put together was the sequence that took place on the ice with many options from the footage and different camera angles. He says that the sequence where one of the wolves is attacked by his own pack was filmed from two completely different directions, leaving him with the task of re-editing one of the most exciting and important sections of the film.

 

Thank you for your time and for your diligence Jörgen, what I saw at Il Cinema Ritrovato you have done a splendid job and I can’t wait to see it all over again on Sunday 19^th January at the BFI and to introduce the results of your work as succinctly as possible!

 

Book your tickets now at the BFI website!

 

Ekeby at last! Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), with Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

 

"Finally, the vicar was in the pulpit..."

Sometimes at these festivals your day is done after you’ve just seen something that resonates with such force you don’t want to spoil the mood or otherwise break the spell that was so brilliantly cast by the film and musical accompaniment. So it was that I retired to just stay as long as possible in the moment of having just seen and been seen, by Mauritz Stiller’s magnificent adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s epic novel. Now, I’m not saying the film is perfect in fact there’s a reason he was no higher than her second or third favourite film director of the Nobel Prize winning author, but like Heaven’s Gate, Greed and several works by Monsieur Gance – one of which was frustratingly counter-programmed against this one… - the ambition wins you over along with incredible performances.

Lagerlöf’s name is on the film after, against her better judgement, she signed off on Stiller and Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius original script which changed during production; she called the result “cheap and sensational”. The film takes considerable liberties in its mash-up of the novel’s narrative with some events happening at different parts of the arc and to different characters and, indeed buildings… Characters are changed with Gösta himself much more charming – how can he fail, he’s played by Lars Handsome? - whilst Countess Elisabeth is not quite the strong character she becomes as she leads the fallen priest towards a better, humbler life. She’s played by Greta Garbo of course in her first film, yet to master her craft and here just 19 and about to learn very quickly in Hollywood.

Needless to say, the Majoress and Marianne are women of agency in both, with the latter pushing Gösta away, refusing his offer to stay with the woman who has lost her beauty after smallpox although Jenny Hasselqvist still looks wonderful to my eyes. More than ever though this screening showed the Swedish Sarah Bernhardt, the great Gerda Lundequist, in full force as Margaretha Samzelius, the Major’s wife and mistress of the estate of Ekeby in Varmland. She has the most expressive face and know exactly how to play for the camera with delicate hand movements and shifts in expression that bely the fact she only made four films. One of these, One Night/En Natt (1931) was shown as part of the Gustaf Molander strand and she is fabulous too in a smaller role; along with Bea Lilley in Exit Smiling, her display in Gösta is one of the greatest of those who only made a single silent film.

Gerda Lundequist

Selma’s women are so strong – as you’d expect from her own life story – and this is one of the most fascinating aspects of this epic, so many female characters are creating their own direction, making their own mistakes and standing up for what they believe in… which raises the question, was Selma Lagerlöf “woke”? She was certainly a force to be reckoned with and a pioneer with a big prize to prove it!!

The magic realism of the novel is dropped almost completely in favour of the pure drama and the poetic world created by Lagerlöf is given less room for melding myths and legends with the characters such as Sintram, the cavaliers… dozens of finely wrought episodes punctuate the main story with meanings only emerging from within the text as you search for the link. Lagerlöf was so adept at subtext but also so disciplined in building the “spirit” of the book; the place and the people of Varmland are vibrantly interconnected in ways that are frankly still inspiring. *

Now then, back to the digital wonders on screen, this latest version from the Swedish Film Institute is not just a restoration of Gösta but a remix and extended cut being not only some 20 minutes longer than the 1975 restoration which most of us have only seen up till now via the Kino release, but also in a different narrative order with the party sequences and their two exiles are re-sequenced and there are variations elsewhere, with a more dynamic mix for the burning of Ekeby and Gösta’s rescue of Marianne, a longer intro and new intertitles that carry more of the original author’s poetic wonder.

Lars/Gösta and Jenny/Marianne (after the ravages of smallpox)

Never has the camera work of the great Julius Jaenzon looked so fine from the gorgeous sweeps of the lakes and forests to the shots on set and the performer’s expressions. It’s the quality this film deserves and to be able to focus on individuals’ emoting is a delight with Jenny Hasselqvist and Lars Hanson being, in their own ways, two of the most talented of all silent actors, the former all force and subtlety and the latter bringing her world-class balletic movement and grace to the fore along with a remarkable ability to radiate changing emotions through very controlled raising of the angle of her face, a flash of the eyes or hands raised in grief.

As with the original release, the film was split into two parts with Matti Bye’s specially written score forming the basis for extemporisation with Eduardo Raon on harp for the first part and Silvia Mandolini, on violin, for the second. Eduardo has been a feature of this edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato and his use of effects peddles brings a whole range of tonality and atmospherics which served the statelier pace of the first half. Silvia’s violin could have been played by the demonic Sintram himself for the fiery climax and the iconic chase across the ice as wolves pursue Gösta and Elisabeth was breathless before the piano and strings played out an inspiration and elegiac conclusion.

For a film I’ve waited a decade or more to see online and a restoration I first heard mentioned in 2018 in Pordenone… there was a lot at stake; I set bad personal expectation when I had a Lars and Gerda t-shirt made for the occasion. The SFI delivered though as did Stiller, the film and all his cast with the aid of these three musicians. Selma might not have completely approved but this film is part of her living legacy and I hope it, along with other famous works from Stiller and Sjostrom especially, along with the two Molander films screening later in the festival, will see interest in her work increase.

As the authorial voice at the end of the book ponders… “the giant bees of Fancy have thronged about us… but how they are to enter the beehives of Reality is surely their own affair.”

Make of that what you will dear reader.

Hang on lads, I've got an idea...

 

*Translating in words and film

I am basing this on a reading of the most recent translation, the first in a century, from Paul Norlen – previously awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize in 2004 – who is closer to the spirit and intent of the original work than contemporary translators such as the well-intentioned but over fussy and interventionist, Velma Swanston Howard.

In terms of filmmakers “getting” her work, according to Paolo Cherchi Usai in The Oxford History of World Cinema, it was the author’s admiration for Sjöström’s films that led her to sign over the film rights for all her books to Svenska Bio and he adds that the director “found in her work the ideal expression of the active role played by nature in the destiny of characters torn between good and evil.”

Greta in glorious tints!!

Lars in even more clarity

Even more snow for Jenny

Sadly that inter-title has been changed... 

All you need is Lagerlöf… Bologna Preview – Swedish Restorations

Not one but three restored films based on Selma Lagerlöf’s novels to screen at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival.

Gösta Berling saga (1924)

It was probably in 2018 that I first heard of the restoration of Mauritz Stiller's Gösta Berling saga (1924), and a few years after I’d started my fascination with the story, its original writer and its stars after viewing the Kino DVD… Sure it was Greta Garbo’s breakthrough role, but it also featured vital performances from Lars “Handsome” Hanson, Gerda Lundequist - "The Swedish Sarah Bernhardt" – and Jenny Hasselqvist, Royal Swedish Ballet prima ballerina and an actor in so many European films: has anyone ever managed to combine both careers so well?

The initial restoration was screened in San Francisco pre-pandemic but now, at last, next month’s Il Cinema Ritrovato will screen the film as part of the 1924 selection. This new digitally restored Gosta will be unlike any other I’ve seen and is based on the analogue reconstruction from 2018, but with some changes in the editing work according to the Swedish Film Institute. The film now has a running time of 206 mins (simulating 18 fps) which is a good 22 minutes longer than the Kino version. It was originally measured by the Statens Biografbyrå in March 1924 at 4534 meters, which with a display speed of 18 frames per second would correspond to 221 minutes. The film has subsequently been shortened and re-cut several times over the years, and so this latest reconstruction moves it as close to the original release as it’s been.

 

As Jon Wengström, Senior Curator of the SFI’s Filmarkivet / Archival Film Collections explained:“The main sources for the restoration was an existing duplicate positive from our collections, and tinted nitrate print from the collections of Cinemateca Portuguesa (Lisbon). A brief scene was also added from a safety print in the collections of Gosfilmofond (Moscow).”

Gerda Lundequist, whose grand-daughter is rock singer Sonja Kristina... 

Jörgen Viman was the SFI’s Film Archivist on the restoration or “recreation” as he puts it, of the film explains further that tinted nitrate prints were also borrowed from the Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, as a reference for the film's continuity. Having just re-read Paul Norlen’s 2009 translation of Selma Lagerlöf’s extraordinary debut from 1891 it will be fascinating to compare Stiller’s focus. Lagerlöf creates such a powerful, magical-reality and seems to write from inside her subjects… I wonder what Powell and Pressburger would have made of her work and the interpretation of Stiller, Sjöström and Molander are all so tonally different.

The film's subtitles have also been recreated based on the wording in text lists submitted to the Statens Biografbyrå. These intertexts have now been based on Alva Lundin’s original designs - only three of the 405 text boxes have survived and another three were found reproduced in a trade journal from the time. Sadly, Lundin’s original painted illustrations of the text have not survived but you can read more about her work on the Women Film Pioneers Project website!

The film’s colour ways have been recreated though using the tinting scheme of the Portuguese nitrate print. The colour shading of the intertexts is also based on a description in another trade magazine article – bless these secondary sources!

 

Jenny Hasselqvist and Lars Hanson in Till Österland 

Till Österland (1926)

 

At the start of the pandemic, I read Selma’s epic Jerusalem Parts I and II (1901-2) as translated by the American Velma Swanston Howard in 1915. The story was set in the traditional rural heartlands of Dalarna and involves a group of villagers who gain a new faith and emigrate to Jerusalem as happened in the parish of Nås in 1896. It gave rise to four cinematic adaptations with Victor Sjöström making the first two films, The Sons of Ingmar (Ingmarssönerna) (1919) followed by Karin Daughter of Ingmar (Karin Ingmarsdotter) (1920) which failed to repeat the success of the first film leading the director to turn his attention elsewhere. Gustaf Molander picked up the project and completed the story with his brace, Ingmar's Inheritance (Ingmarsarvet) (1925) and Till österland (1926).

The two directors had many differences in approach with Sjöström’s narrative much closer to Lagerlöf’s text and more focused on the interior life of her conflicted characters whilst Molander broadened the palate, taking more liberties and setting up more action. Sjöström made two feature films out of less than 105 pages whereas Molander crafted one from the remaining 240 and another from the 350 pages of Volume II, including adding some of his own inventions. The feeling is much the same but the pace has changed and the cinematic vision of the narrative is one aimed at creating a hit film with hot actors, most of whom feature in both films.

Mona Mårtenson and Conrad Veidt

Ingmar's Inheritance has Lars Hanson, Mona Mårtenson and Jenny Hasselqvist as well as a powerful turn from the non-recurring Conrad Veidt. It’s still extant but the follow-up has long been incomplete and unscreened. Not any more as Till Österland has been restored, as far as possible, to create a 42 minutes long mix of the surviving film and other elements; it’s narrative structure now intact.

One additional scene, showing the dance of the dervishes, was found in a compilation film but the main thing is that the existing footage is now properly put in context, with the film’s original intertitles accompanying the surviving footage, and some stills and explanatory titles where footage is missing. All in all, the fragment now has a running time of 42 mins (simulating 20 fps), and the surviving footage is now shown with recreated tinting.

Filming in Jerusalem

Magnus Rosborn was the archivist working on the film and his summary is… “The surviving scenes have mainly been taken from a duplicate negative made from a duplicate positive which in turn was produced in 1977 from the film's then fragmentarily preserved – but now lost – original negative. In addition, another scene has been taken from a duplicate negative for the film Selma Lagerlöf 80 år (1938), which has been preserved in Sveriges Television's archives.”

The intertitles have been taken from the film's preserved original text boxes and the colours of the film have been reconstructed using handwritten tinting and toning notes copied into the duplicate positive. The missing scenes have been reconstructed with the help of those text boxes, production stills and newly made explanatory texts.

Before the premiere in 1926, the film was measured at the censorship review at 2587 meters which corresponds to a playing time of 113 minutes, so whilst approximately three quarters of the film's moving image material is still missing, we are now able to finally see what becomes of the characters in what was Volume II of Jerusalem. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Victor yes, Mauritz maybe and Gustaf.. well!?

What did the author think of these films? According to Paolo Cherchi Usai in The Oxford History of World Cinema, it was the Selma’s admiration for Sjöström’s films that led her to sign over the film rights for all her books to Svenska Bio and he adds that the director “found in her work the ideal expression of the active role played by nature in the destiny of characters torn between good and evil.” The author was certainly not low on opinion and was initially unsure about The Phantom Carriage (although pleased with the result) and berated Mauritz Stiller for his adaptation of The Gosta Berling Saga calling it “cheap and sensational”.

Well… we can see more clearly for ourselves in just one month’s time! Bring it on!

Details of Il Cinema Ritrovato can be found on their website.

The Swedish Film Institute website is here.

Misery loves objectivity... The Joyless Street (1925) with John Sweeney, BFI Weimar Cinema Season

This was the first time I’d seen Die freudlose Gasse on the big screen and, after my last viewing of the EditionFilmMuseum DVD, I’d connected it very strongly with the austerity programmes of the former Tory-led coalition under the joyless headline “plus ca change”. Well, French was never my strong suit but over the last five years, things have just got so much better haven’t they?

Anyway, back to 1925 and post-war depression in greater “Germany”, specifically Austria and a film that having once been ten reels long is now in an ongoing state of restoration. Even now it feels like a Diagon Alley version of the Melchior Street it’s supposed to be with understandable narrative disruption caused by using five different sources and retrospective sequencing. That said, it’s never made more sense to me than tonight, sat in the front row after a week in Bologna and yet with John Sweeney holding the story with the thematic continuity of his 151 minutes of improvisation. There’s such variety in Mr Sweeney’s playing and none of tonight sounded like what he played for Sir Arne’s Treasure or Les Vampires just a few days ago in Bologna.

Where the sun never shines... the locals queue in Melchior Street

Pabst’s film is based on Hugo Bettauer's novel and takes what is essentially a crime story and develops its socio-political aspects. Screenwriter Willy Haas described the source book as "a miserable crime novel" and said that what appealed to his director was "... the harsh social portrayal of inflation, the bankruptcy of the old-established patrician circles...the corruption, the moral decay..." The Joyless Street therefore focused on the "social" and a realistic portrayal of poverty and the consequences of mean-spirited capitalism and the greed that drove western-European economies.

Pabst cast a combination of one of the creators of cinematic acting and a relative newcomer who’d only made one feature film. Asta Nielsen was cast as Maria Lechner the daughter of a disabled father who lives in near poverty and then becomes entangled in the lives of the financiers running and ruining the economy for profit. Then into her forties, even Asta was a stretch for the part of an innocent younger woman but her skill carries her through some memorable and powerful scenes even when the lighting and unforgiving close-ups can't.

Asta Neilsen, Hertha von Walther and Greta Gustafsson soon to be Garbo

Standing next to her in the forlorn queue for the butchers is Grete Rumfort, played, of course, by one Greta Gustafsson, fresh from Gosta Berling and not quite 20 years of age. This was the film that clinched her ticket to Hollywood and it's not hard to see why Mr Goldwyn was so impressed. She's superbly photographed by Pabst and you can see the beginnings of the force of nature that would captivate millions, she’s sublimely eye-catching if markedly less centred than she will become, jumpy even.

Legend has it that Pabst used slow motion to help counteract the impression created by the young actress's nerves and this combination served to create an impression of graceful edginess. Even if Stiller was on hand to help manage his protege, can it be a coincidence that Herr Pabst managed to enable defining performances of such power and beauty from both Garbo and Louise Brooks?

Greta.

The film features many strands and an ensemble of rich characters. Werner Krauss is monstrously greasy as Geiringer the Butcher who rules Melchior Street by restricting the supply of meat to only those he favours: the wealthy or those women prepared to pay in kind. He meets his match in the local brothel when offered Grete; he can’t cope with her at all and it’s a telling moment when the bully is flawed by beauty. 

  

Running that house of ill-repute is the other ruler of the Street, Mrs. Greifer who is played by the extraordinary Valeska Gert, a dancer and cabaret artist who brings a great knowing energy to the screen – even breaking the fourth wall on occasion, yelping in silence at the audience: more Poly Styrene or Ari Up than Gloria Swanson! Mrs. Greifer runs a fashion boutique which acts as the front for a relatively high-class brothel. Women of the street are drawn into Mrs. Greifer's, seemingly labyrinthine premises driven by hunger and desperate poverty to subvert dignity in the service of selfish and, as it turns out, hypocritical males.

Valeska Gert meant it!

Amidst so much economic disruption, greedy speculators act to make things worse by manipulating the stock market and the people of the street suffer whilst the bankers waltz around in opulent hotels and drink champagne in Greifer's salon.

Further up the social scale, the Rosenow family are untouchable, with Max (Karl Etlinger) leading the stock market scams. His daughter Regina (Agnes Esterhazy) loves his assistant Egon Stirner (Henry Stuart) and this is where it gets complicated. Whilst Egon’s love appears to be true… this doesn’t stop him from having designs on the Rosenow’s lawyer’s rather striking daughter Lia Leid (Tamara Geva) AND… he’s also in a somewhat serious relationship with Maria who writes him love letters and is convinced that they have a future together.

All of this makes Egon The Eager, pivotal to the entire story and makes him a disappointing man for a happy ending with Regina or anyone else. Regina tells him that he’s too poor for her – presumably Maria is too poor for him? – and that the only way he can have her is to "... become as rich as I am, or I as poor as you."

Maria's boyfriend Egon with other lovers, Lia and Regina... what's a boy to do?

This leads Egon into willing complicity with her father’s idea to make half a million by spreading the rumour of a strike at the Petrowitzer mine which will push the value of the stocks down and then, at their lowest, reassurances will be made that send the value skyrocketing; guaranteeing a killing for those in the know. This will include Don Alfonso Canez (Robert Garrison) who is in town to make just such a profit but not, of course, Grete’s father, Councillor Rumfort (Jaro Fürth). He decides to take voluntary redundancy and to bet it all on the stock market.

When the fix comes in, Rumfort loses everything having bet on Coal stocks remaining low and the family is forced into taking a lodger as Grete struggles to keep the money worries away from her broken father. A lodger is soon found in Lt. Davy (Einar Hanson) an American serviceman in Vienna to help with reconstruction, he hands Grete $60 and she has to use it to pay her father’s stock market loses…

Asta

The plot has all the hallmarks of a novel as source but the main thing for Pabst is to foreground the social injustice with the complexities of personal and social betrayal rather less important than the fact they happen. The direction of the women’s’ lives is driven by the need to provide and both Maria and Grete move nearer and nearer to the club Frau Greifer runs with the former becoming Don Carlos’ “girl” for rent which is how she ends up in the cheap hotel next door the night Lia Leid has gone there for an illicit rendezvous with Ergon…

There are some excellent sequences in the club as Grete comes closer to following the same path; she can’t quite bring herself especially after one of the club’s waiters, Kellner (Gregori Chmara) has a rush of blood and tries to force himself on her. This is when you can see Pabst’s use of slow-motion; whether it was used to make Garbo look “smoother” or to heighten the moment of fear, it is certainly effective.

Gregori Chmara chases Greta slowly...

Even this reconstructed version is missing some content but it makes sense overall and the emotional force of the story is clear as day. As the men go wild for Grete the people in the street outside decide that enough is enough and the film ends with a call to action and for solidarity in the crisis. Nearly a century later we are still grappling with the gap between rich and poor and struggling to recover from a banking crash that has led directly to Trump and to Brexit. Who knows what will happen next?

Stylistically Joyless Street is post-expressionist and part of the “New Objectivity” movement with its resigned cynicism balanced by a desire to seize the moment. Pabst was, according to biographer Lee Aywell, the first to take up this stance with his expressive style focused on the everyday and not fantasy. Melchior Street is accentuated reality of a very stylized kind; entirely studio-based and yet gritty as any exterior; the gutters may have been papier-mâché, but the grief was all too real.