Look sharp! My year in silents, 2024.

As Millicent Martin – Daphne’s mum in Frasier – almost sang, That Was the Year, That Was and I realise that’s a cultural reference to a satirical TV show popular in the UK 60 years ago but the films I’m about to list are from half a century earlier so… keep up! We’re increasingly in a world in which everything is happening at the same time, an all-at-once cultural smorgasbord from which every generation picks what they want and new controversies rise from old in cinemas, Talking Pictures TV, $treaming sites and our beloved retailers. This is the best I can do in the post festive drop down especially as I don’t really do New Year. It’s always best to look beyond and push straight on through to the other side, even if that’s 2025 and all that goes with it but we can take it, we’ve not only been there and seen it all before, we’ve experienced it ever-present in films, books and what used to be called “social” media. So, I remember the passing year and rage into the next, thinking of the very best in my opinion and in no particular order!

 

1.       Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley, BFI

She will make a fine wife, son. Imagine an innocent young girl… in an age when there aren’t any!

The BFI kicked off the year with a couple of fine seasons, one focused on the iconoclastic programming of the old Scala cinema and another on the almost unique filmography of director Dorothy Arzner who was able to smash the Hollywood glass ceiling with a mixture of brilliance and independence. She worked with Bow on her first talkie, The Wild Party (1929), also screened, and this rarely-screened gem which was shown on a precious 35mm recovery/restoration and even though it’s still missing a couple of reels, still impressed as Clara’s supernatural energies were allowed full expression

It was indeed, as the BFI blurb put it, “a triumphant celebration of female sexuality…” a modern day fairy-tale set in France and where Bow’s character wins over the heart of rich boy Charles “Buddy” Rogers in a lovely sequence set in a wax museum choreographed by Arzner’s partner Marion Morgan. Clara’s pluck blows away every obstacle and dusty preconception as l’ancien régime has to surrender to classless, young love.

 

2.       The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933), with Inge Thomson, Catriona Macdonald, HippFest at Home

This film sits amongst better-known works of the thirties showing island life on the extremes but actually predates Robert J. Flaherty’s docudrama Man of Aran (1934) – the Irish island, not Arran. Director Jenny Gilbertson (née Brown) had made a number of short documentaries and was encouraged to make this film by the great Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson, director of Drifters (1929) and the man who coined the term "documentary" in a review of Flaherty's Moana (1926).

The result is every inch as powerfully evocative as these other films with Jenny’s previous experience of the island, the documentary A Crofter’s Life in Shetland (1931), showing a year in the life of the rugged folk of Hjaltland… more Norse than Gallic and only 30 miles closer to Scotland than Norway. She was self-trained and this is even more remarkable when you consider that she not only wrote but filmed and edited her work. The Rugged Island is a drama and yet it still feels like a genuine intrusion on the lives being portrayed, the irony here being that Gilbertson’s was sometimes described as an “amateur” and yet clearly she was consummate in terms of technique and direction with only one professional actor - Enga Stout – with the rest being her friends and others she’d cast locally.

This is exactly why I shall be returning in person for the next Hippfest in March ’25!

3.       East Lynne (1913) Restoration Premiere with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

Oh, Willie, my child dead, dead, dead! and he never knew me, never called me mother!

As Christopher Bird said in his introduction, East Lynne is not a lost film as such but when quality is, as Kevin Brownlow says, the main thing archive cinema has to sell itself to modern audiences, this film has certainly been missing in terms of the vibrancy, contrast and tasty tints we glimpsed today. Chris obtained an almost complete nitrate copy from a private collector which, compared with the black and white copy held by the BFI is missing the first reel but comes with an extra three minutes and those higher quality tints. Together with fellow Bioscoper Bob Geoghegan and the BFI the restoration work is ongoing and the hope is to present the finished item at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.

Even Rachel Lowe admired this British film and it’s a visual feast as it is with good use of depth-of-field, form and texture by director Bert Haldane and his photographer Oscar Bovill. That said, there are some impressive performances from a very modern-looking cast led by Blanche Forsythe as Lady Isobel, handsome Fred Paul and the steadfast Archibald Carlyle and who-ever it was playing Barbara Hare, the sister of the man falsely accused of a murder committed by Isobel’s would be paramour, Captain Levison, as played with pantomime menace by Fred Morgan.

This screening was part of the Bioscope’s 7^th Silent Film Weekender and it’s hard to compete with the range and passion of this gathering of like minds in Charlie’s old workhouse.

 

4.       The Phantom Carriage (1921), with Stephen Horne, Kennington Bioscope

 

After a few years of this silent film business, you have seen most of the cannon and have your own list of The Greats but all such classifications are blown out of the window when you see a screening like tonight’s with the right venue, the right audience and a supernatural accompaniment from Mr Stephen Horne that not only sent chills but brought out the full flavour of Victor Sjöström’s film and, indeed his own performance.

Not only was Sjöström probably Sweden’s finest silent film maker, he ranks as one of the finest of any era. Here with his fourth adaptation of one of Selma Lagerlöf’s works, he shows again why he is such a good interpreter of her work. Selma’s work is passionate and poetic and deceptively complex in expression and narrative form but I think Sjöström got her depth of meaning more than his contemporaries Stiller and Molander. As his thoroughly-disturbing performance shows, he may well have had a personal connection with this story as Chris Bird suggested in his introduction, for the Swede’s father was abusive and alcoholic just as his character David Holm. A film that never ceases to smash through the door and grab you.

Gerda Lundquist

5.       Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), with Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

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

It’s fair to say that my Christmas came early with this presentation of this latest version from the Swedish Film Institute which is not just a restoration of the Saga 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. It’s also in a slightly different narrative order with the party sequences and their two dramatic exiles re-sequenced as well as 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.

Now, I’m not saying that Mauritz Stiller’s magnificent adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s epic novel is perfect in fact there’s a reason he was no higher than her second favourite film director of the Nobel Prize winning author*, but the ambition wins you over along with incredible lead performances. Lars Hanson oozes confusion guilt and self-loathing, Gerda Lundequist – Sweden’s Sarah Bernhardt, a legendary stage actor – brings her power and poise to the screen whilst Jenny Hasselqvist, who had a parallel career as prima ballerina with the Royal Swedish Ballet, is magnetic, micro-managing physicality with emotional expression. There’s also young Greta Gustafson who radiates an unknowing allure that would see her soon off to Hollywood with a name change, some dental work and flattering lighting.

The restoration is crisp and revelatory, never has the camera work of the great Julius Jaenzon here looked so fine from the gorgeous sweeps of the lakes and forests to the shots on set and the performer’s expressions. It’s an epic restored in an epic way and I can’t wait to see it again at the BFI on Sunday 19^th January where I promise to keep my introduction short and to the point!

Ticket details here!

 

6.       Judex (1915-16), accompanied by many hands, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

 

I can’t deny that there was a sense of triumph having watched the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed Louis Feuillade’s sense of drama, his eye for dynamic framing, his direction and team building and his ability to keep the narrative ball rolling even when you think he’s backed himself into a dramatic dead end. That’s 12 episodes and one big Prologue with not a second missed for lack of sleep, breakfast or headache… probably!

 

It's not quite up there with Les Vampires but it does have the essentiality of Musidora playing Diana Monti aka Marie Verdier, a scheming opportunist who becomes more and more dominant the longer the story unwinds. Judex himself as played by René Cresté, is a goodie version of Fantômas, part Sherlock Holmes, maybe part Eugène-François Vidocq – an actual French criminal turned criminalist. Feuillade had been criticised for glorifying his evil masterminds and so here was one of good intent even if he does kidnap and fake the death of the businessman responsible for his father’s death and many others, Favraux (Louis Leubas) before imprisoning him for life in a remote castle. And that’s just the start…

7.       Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (1926), BFI with Meg Morley

 

This blog has been driven by obsession and a subjective emotional “canon” from its earliest days (no, please don’t look!) and Louise Brooks has, of course been the main one, with a copy of Pandora’s Box on DVD bought from a second-hand shop in Park Street, Bristol in 2005 starting off the whole interest – yes, Bristol, it’s really your fault! This film is one of the few remaining unseen on-screen and viewing the BFI’s worn, warm and wonderful 16mm flickering on the NFT2 screen, with Meg Morley’s wonderful syncopations and sparkling improvisations following an introduction from Bryony Dixon has, to paraphrase the poet, helped make not only my day, my week, my month and even my year.

They may have been chalk and cheese but Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks make for a good team in this light-hearted drama in which the former plays the sensible big sister who has to rescue her less sensible sibling from all kinds of trouble. It’s a gas and we do get to see Brooksie dance which is always a bonus!

 

Conchita Montenegro

8.       The Woman and the Puppet (1929), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2024 streaming

Every so often a silent film not only surprises you but pulls you to the edge of your armchair and has you blinking at the screen in delight. So, it is with the story and the actress in La femme et le pantin (1929) in which Conchita Montenegro’s dancer not only beguiles and bewilders her puppet, Don Mateo, she completely un-mans him in the most feminist of ways reaching right out from 1929 with dazzling power and beauty. If anyone has a thousand ships that need launching… here’s your woman!

 

Based on Pierre Louÿs’ 1898 novel of the same name, the story was adapted as an opera in 1911 by composer Riccardo Zandonai, and it was also filmed as That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Buñuel. The first film version was an American film made in 1920 and directed by Reginald Barker, starring Geraldine Farrar, which is a little surprising given Louÿs’ background of erotic prose and poetry. Indeed, he was the man to whom Oscar Wilde dedicated the original French publication of Salome. Director de Baroncelli’s film is presumably far bolder than any Hollywood film could have been as, indeed, is his star performer and, it’s difficult to see anything like a literal adaptation being made anywhere else but France at this time. It is an eye-popping and an expectation-confounding work!

 

9.       The Blue Bird (1918) with Neil Brand and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

Maurice Tourneur's film featured regular collaborators such as art director Ben Carré, cinematographer John van den Broke and editor Clarence Brown. This was silent psychedelia in full bloom at a time when the World needed to believe in eternal truths and the truth of eternity. When in the heart of their fantastic journey to find the Blue Bird, the two youngsters meet not only their dead grandparents but their dead brothers and sisters, there are at least ten of them... this was a time when infant mortality was high and life came with the flimsiest of "guarantees".

The film is a sumptuous collection of such moments and visual set pieces, a hyper-creative comfort blanket that smuggles through the simple message that there's not only no place like home but that kindness must spread out from there into the heart-broken World beyond. Tourneur draws pure and naturalistic performances from his cast of children, 12-year old Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl who react and act with genuine thrill to every new wonder. It's a child's film with many adult concerns.

The accompaniment from Neil Brand on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic out across the auditorium and melted our stubborn hearts.

 

10.   Saxaphon-Susi (1928) with Neil Brand, Frank Bockius and Francesco Bearzatti, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

Miss Saxophone was the most legal of highs, a mood-altering event with fabulous cast and sincerely joyous accompaniment from a powerhouse ensemble that left the Teatro Verdi at severe risk of an outbreak of dancing! Up on screen we had Anny Ondra showing us how fine she could look and how well she could dance and also make comedy – not for nothing should she have been called the Czech Republic’s Queen of Happiness or maybe most of Europe’s. She plays Anni von Aspen, a poor little rich girl daughter of the lecherous Baron von Aspen (the marvellous Gaston Jacquet) who wants to trade places with her working gal pal Susi Hille (Mary Parker), a cabaret dancer who gets the chance to become a Tiller Girl in London. They swap assignments with Susi heading off to posh school and Anni having to learn her dancing ropes fast.

On the boat over they meet some fine English gentlemen including Lord Herbert Southcliffe (Malcolm Tod) who takes a bet that he can get in to meet the Tiller Girls backstage and then another bet that he will marry this special one called Susi (Anni)… It’s not much of a plot but it’s enough to make this amongst the most enjoyable and warmest of comedies with this fabulously charming cast.

Any programmers reading… I think I’d like to see this one again please! 

 

Ra Messerer

11.   The Second Wife (1927) with Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

To Uzbekistan and this extraordinary film from Mikhail Devonov based on a story by Lolakhon Saifullina, a polish woman who married an Uzbek man and converted to Islam. It’s a reflection of the enormity of the old USSR and the challenges Moscow faced in co-ordinating so many diverse cultures into one modernising state. Saifullina worked for the Sharq Yulduzi studio writing scripts sensitive to the issues of Uzbeki women her along with former legal consultant Valentina Sobberey. The result is a tale in which women and children are exploited by old male custom and dominance even as the modern day watcher is aware of the wider context of Stalin’s impending first Five Year Plan and the eventual costs of converting an agrarian economy into an industrialised one.

Director Devonov does not lapse into bucolic orientalism and focuses on the story and the depiction of prevalent practices of early marriage and polygamy. Here a merchant’s first wife Khadycha cannot have children and so he has a second wife, Adoliat (Ra Messerer) who can.  A child duly arrives and Khadycha tries to destroy her competitor. She is far from alone in malevolence as his brother Sadiqbai (Mikhail Doronin), steals money whilst his older brother is away and also preys on young boys, as things escalate elsewhere. It’s propagandist but still shows the harshness of unresolved “tradition” and male power.

 

Eille looks down at Alexandra Palace, photo credit Yves Salmon 

12.   Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace Theatre with Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor with Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured the first fruits of the BFI’s restoration of Stoll Films Sherlock Holmes films. The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. The three films featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano.

 

The programme is ongoing and I can’t wait for the further adventures of both the BFI Restoration Team as well as The Great Detective in 2025.

 

My 1924 Danish promotional booklet... Book Now for 19th!!

 

*Lagerlöf berated Mauritz Stiller for his adaptation of The Gösta Berling Saga calling it “cheap and sensational”.

Re-building Jerusalem… Ingmarsarvet (1925)/ Till Österland (1926), Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

These films were screening as part of the Gustaf Molander strand featuring seven of his works from the silent era to the fifties a period of huge change in the Swedish film industry. Indeed, in his introduction, Jon Wengström of the SFI, talked about Molander’s two films adapting the bulk of Selma Lageröf’s Jerusalem as representing perhaps the last echoes of the golden age of Swedish cinema before so many major talents left for Hollywood. Fitting then that these should be about an attempt to find the promised land by a group of swedes not all of whom thrived once they arrived...

 

Till Österland (1926) with Neil Brand

Starting at the ending, Till Österland (To the East) the fourth film adapted from Selma Lagerlöf’s two-part epic Jerusalem which was published in 1901 not long after she had visited the Holy Land. A Swedish-Soviet-German co-production it featured extensive location filming in Jaffa and Jerusalem as well as Borane, Dalarna in Sweden in order to replicate the sweep of the author’s themes of love, land, faith and fortune.

It’s quite astonishing that what remains of Till Österland include some of the film’s major dramatic turns and takes us to the emotional finale. The first reel is entirely missing but all of the title cards survive along with about a quarter of the moving images for which we should be very thankful were spared by the Gods of Silent Cinematic Destruction… As a consequence, the relationship between the leads is very well covered with pleasing amounts of Mårtenson, Hanson and Hasselqvist performance time there to bring something I thought I’d never see to a very satisfying close.

Lars Hanson and Ivan Hedqvist

The film quality is also very fine indeed for this restoration/reconstruction which was completed only a few weeks ago, and matches that of the first film – in fact it’s colourways were used as a guide to re-tinting the almost-complete Ingmarsarvet (1925). You never know what to expect from this kind of recreation and it was a series of surprises as the parts of the film you most hoped still survived, kept on appearing; the main human story felt emotionally intact!

We also get to see some of the excellent cinematography of Julius Jaenzon - as well as Carl-Axel Söderström – given a totally different landscape to capture. For the man who shot so well against the Sun in Victor Sjostrom’s first adaptation of the work, The Sons of Ingmar (1919), it was indeed fascinating to see.

What’s missing would appear to be more coverage of the events in Jerusalem where the colonists struggle to survive in the unfamiliar conditions although it is very pleasing to see Lars Hanson actually in the Holy Land and the recently-added “Whirling Dervish” scene adds so much weight to the realisation of who the man who looks like Jesus really is. That said, Lagerlöf had described an altogether more brutal story:

“This is the Jerusalem of soul-hunting, this is the Jerusalem of evil-speaking, this is the Jerusalem of lies, of slander, of jeers. Here one persecutes untiringly; here one murders without weapons. It is this Jerusalem which kills men.”

 

Lagerlöf had made the same arduous journey to the Holy Land in 1899, inspired by the migration of 37 Swedes from the village of Nås in 1896. According to Swedish writer, Ingrid Carlberg, their photographs can still be found in the American Colony Hotel along with Selma’s. Reviewing the book in The Independent, Carlberg tells of the impact Lagerlöf’s “effortless storytelling” and prose had on her and, of course, being a Brit, I’ve previously had to rely on Velma Swanston Howard’s contemporary translation which has had mixed reviews in terms of its maintenance of authorial respect. That said, the story is still compelling and at times you’re wrong-footed by the shifts in tone, the magical reality and the visions that may or may not be real.

Mona Mårtenson

From this reconstruction we don’t see the broader struggles of the Dalecarlians community who left for Jerusalem at the end of the previous film. The first part of the book is merciless with characters being bought to life only to be extinguished by the heat, the light, shame and starvation. One man dies in disappointment after the golden vision of Jerusalem he saw on first arrival is not matched by the reality of dirty streets, beggars and lepers. Gunhild, one of Hellgum’s early converts, suffers after the group are demonised by other missionaries, who view them as immoral for their refusal to sanction marriage. The shame reaches back home where her mother dies in grief leading to the young woman’s decent into misery, she is soon gone herself, faith ill-rewarded. Hellgum himself is barely mentioned now that they are where he asked them to go and Conrad Veidt was also absent from the film which was made back-to-back with the first.

The leader of the mission is an American woman, Mrs Gordon, who, in the book, was inspired to form the new faith by the sinking of L’Univers, not Hellgum as in the film. She is based on Anna Spafford, the wife of a well-to-do lawyer and Presbyterian church elder, who was travelling to Europe on the SS Ville du Havre with her daughters when it collided with another ship and sank, with Anna being one of the few survivors. The Spafford’s established a Christian utopian movement eventually travelling to establish a commune in Jerusalem where they hoped good works would hasten the Second Coming of Jesus. They were treated with suspicion and they did indeed encourage the exodus from Nås. Truth is stranger than fiction, even Selma’s.

Gertrude is nursed back to health by Ingmar’s cousin  Hök Gabriel Mattsson, (Harald Schwenzen), who has held a candle for the schoolmaster’s daughter even since he attended her father’s school. He doesn’t think he has a chance, assuming Gertrude still loves Ingmar, and yet she has moved on from her old passion ever since her vision of Christ and their arrival in the Holy Land. The two form a close bond but Gertrude doesn’t want to be unfaithful to her Lord and Hök doesn’t want to get in his cousin’s way.

Mona Mårtenson, Jenny Hasselqvist and Ivan Hedqvist

Back home and Ingmar has grown to love his wife Barbro (Jenny Hasselqvist who relishes the chance to play this complex character) whilst at the same time being bound to Gertrude by his promise. Barbro has revealed herself to be a forgiving and principled individual who not only is beloved by the peasants of Ingmar’s Farm but also provides financial support for the family of the man who jilted her. She too feels a responsibility to Gertrude and wants to divorce Ingmar so that he can be with her.

That unbearable moral conundrum at the end of the first volume and Ingmar’s Inheritance has twisted itself even further out of joint and there’s a tremendous tension in the final furlongs of the narrative as each character slowly understands the reality of their feelings for each other. Selma is not going to let any of this go though and there’s an excess of human complication which she and now we can see, Molander, makes light work, which in comparison with Sjostrom is really his stock in trade!

 

Neil Brand gave the film full cinematic themes and dynamics, it must be so hard to accompany a reconstruction like this with the moving picture sections suddenly shifting to extended intertitle or stills but Neil held and enhanced the remains and played a significant role in making it feel like a whole film again. He’s had some considerable practice at this sort of work and it showed in emphatically stirring ways!

 

Mona Mårtenson and Conrad Veidt

Ingmarsarvet (1925) with Andre Desponds and Frank Bockius 

 

I’ve written about Ingmar’s Inheritance/ Ingmarsarvet (1925) before but this is much longer than the film I saw at 114 minutes as well as being tinted and looking, post digital restoration, as good as it’s done since the initial release. It really does support Jon Wengström’ s suggestion that this was the last of the “golden age” with a clarity and depth of detail that allows the audience to appreciate the landscapes – so important to the story after all – as well as the players. In terms of the source material, Sjöström followed his author’s text more closely and made two feature films out of less than 105 pages of Jerusalem whereas Molander crafted one from the remaining 240 of Volume One and another from the 400 of Volume Two (see above) including adding some of his own inventions.

Ingmar’s Inheritance (Ingmarsarvet) steps back a few chapters and starts with Strong Ingmar (Ivan Hedqvist) taking young Ingmar (Arne Lundh) to the death bed of his father and telling him of the family’s ranking and importance. Elias (John Ekman) is married to Karin Ingmarsdotter (Märta Halldén) and his decent into an abusive alcoholic wastrel is shown again but, unlike book and Sjostrom film, he causes his own demise by riding his trap too hard, hiding what remains of his wife’s wealth – little Ingmar’s inheritance - in the pillow on his death bed.

The years pass and Ingmar (now Lars Hanson) is fully grown and a teacher at the school run by Schoolmaster Storm (Nils Aréhn), looking longingly across at the old homestead, which is managed by Karin and the man she was always destined to marry, Halvor (Mathias Taube). Ingmar himself has his eyes set on Storm’s daughter Gertrude (Mona Mårtenson) who is almost despairing of his romantic instincts until he agrees to accompany her to the village dance. At the dance, Ingmar impresses not only Gertrude but Strong Ingmar who challenges him to honour the family traditions of farming and hard work. He takes him to the fast-flowing river at Langforsen’s Gap and persuades him to build a sawmill there which he can use to make a fortune and thereby buy back the family farm.

Conrad Veidt, for my daughter the film's standout performer. Yes, ahead of Lars!

Across the village, the faithful have gathered to pray, not dance and Pastor (Albion Örtengren) leads his fragile flock in hymns and routine religious rhymes at the missionary house. A storm is brewing and will bring unexpected fantasy and glamour in the form of Conrad Veidt’s wandering preacher, Hellgum, who takes refuge from the wind and rain and immediately takes command of the pulpit. In the book Hellgum is married to one of the women in the village but here he is more sensationalised with a not entirely trustworthy magnetism and religious passion – I’m not sure that Selma would have approved; her Hellgum is far subtler. Still, this is Conrad Veidt, and he’s absolutely the man for this gig and plays the febrile duality for all it’s worth every second on the screen as the “lone wanderer who brought a message from the Holy City of God…”

Meanwhile, the storm begins to terrify the revellers at the dance as Strong Ingmar talks about the myth of the wild hunt of Odin come to reap the souls of the unwary and Molander indulges in some very folkloric fantasies as ghouls, gods and wild animals sweep unnaturally through the woodlands. Ingmar returns and looking from the window appears to see the ghost of his father looming large in the darkened sky telling him to honour the family traditions.

Conrad Veidt, Märta Halldén and Mathias Taube

It is a very effective change in pace and signals Ingmar’s pursuit of both his family farm and Gertrude’s love as well as the beginning of Hellgum’s religious conversion of many in the village. The storm stops as Hellgum speaks – is he/isn’t he a prophet? - and he tells them of the faith that will bring safety during the storm… a new belief he acquired during the sinking of the liner Universe. This is another well-directed segment and harrowing still as men try desperately to pull women and even children off the lifeboats after the ship goes down, there’s little nobility on show and the fight to survive is grim.

 

Hellgum volunteers to jump off the lifeboat to save the women and children and survives after a vision from God showing that unity, brotherhood and sacrifice will save the world. He is moved to gather brethren and follow a path to a life in Jerusalem in a new Christian community. Undoubtedly, the notion of powerful new faith was something much closer to the contemporary audience, indeed, Lagerlöf partially based the story on an emigration that took place in 1896 from Nås in the Dalarna County.

Mona Mårtenson and Lars Hanson

Ingmar and Gertrude are much more convincing to modern eyes in their love and in his desire to restore his birth-right. But the path to true love must never run smooth and, as Ingmar is off building his water mill, Gertrude attracts the not entirely holy interest of Hellgum…  Once again Strong Ingmar is on hand to set things in motion and after he warns Ingmar, the young man races back home to confront his sweetheart. He duly gains the wrong impression and appears to have assaulted Hellgum only for the preacher to explain that Ingmar fought off two attackers. Ingmar forgives Gertrude’s momentary doubt and their balance is restored but for how long?

The story turns as Karin, so practical and therefore previously resistant, is cured of her unexplained inability to walk during one of Hellgum’s gatherings at Ingmarsfarm… she agrees to sell the farm to fund the Hellgumists’ exodus to the Holy Land thereby leaving an opportunity for Ingmar to buy back the family farm. Sadly, the farm is slightly out of his price bracket and it is here that we find Sweden’s multi-talented superstar Jenny Hasselqvist as Barbro the daughter of rich Berger Sven Person (Knut Lindroth) who was once a farm boy for the Ingmars. Barbro has been disappointed in love and looked on with considerable interest in the direction of Ingmar, so Dad does what all fathers might and offers to loan Ingmar the money as dowry for Barbro’s hand in marriage.

So now we have a classic Lagerlöf moral conundrum and Ingmar is not just driven by familial pride, he feels a responsibility to all those workers on the farm, especially the elderly who look on him with pleading eyes as he wrestles with his conscience. If you don’t want to know the result, please look away now.

Lars Hanson. Ingmar imagines...

Spoilers!!!

Ingmar follows his head and not his heart and, although neither solution would give him peace, he feels he has betrayed Gertrude who is devastated. His ensuing wedding with Barbro is not a happy occasion and he can barely look at his new bride, but his misery is about to be compounded as his former love, flees to the woods in desperation, has visions of putting his eyes out in revenge before seeing a vision of Christ and undergoing a conversion.

 

The real kick in the tale is when, seeking rest at a peasant’s cottage, Gertrude sleeps on a pillow bought at auction from the Ingmar’s Farm… she finds the money hidden by Evil Elias and a note explaining that it’s Ingmar’s inheritance. In a heart-breaking final meeting, Gertrude calls Ingmar away from his wedding to tell him that she has transferred her love to Jesus and that she has found his money. Realising that this find could have enabled him to have his love and his farm, he collapses in a sad rage… but the worst is that Gertrude is in a rapture beyond his earthly love.

Lars Hanson and Jenny Hasselqvist

So, we see various conflicts, Ingmar’s love for Gertrude and for the land, his true inheritance is farming and not necessarily the farm or money. He makes most sense as a many working the land as he will prove in the final part. His inheritance is also steadfast loyalty and a willingness to do the right thing. He faces tough choices but I couldn’t help but think of the more complex world that would arrive in the future. In capturing the way of life in old Varmland Lagerlof and her directors were unaware of the biggest challenges of the new century; you wonder what happened to the Ingmars in the time of mechanisation and the post-industrial world?

 

Taken together these two films come in a 114 plus 42 minutes so just over two and a half hour combination; it would make for an interesting screening with a break in the middle perhaps. Here excellent accompaniment was provided by Andre Desponds on piano and Frank Bockius on  percussion; the two under-pinned the lyricism and romance whilst also driving beats into the more dramatic passages. Frank demonstrated elsewhere his command of tone and tempo and here he was a gift for yet another piano player!

 

Congratulations to the SFI Jon Wengström and to Magnus Rosborn who worked on the Molander as well as Jörgen Viman who did the same for the Stiller!

 

For more information on Selma's trip to Jerusalem there's an interesting post on the National Library of Israel's The Librarians' website from Hadar Ben-Yehuda.

Jenny Hasselqvist

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...