A thank you… Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney

“ONCE there was a story that wanted to be told and sent out in the world.... As yet it was only a confused jumble of stories – a big, formless cloud of adventures rushing hither and thither like a swarm of stray bees on a summer's day, not knowing where they will find someone who can gather them into a hive.”

Selma Lagerlöf, The Story of a Story 

Gerda Lundequist’s family were there, my family were there and the silent film community turned out in numbers too for the screening of the Swedish Film Institute’s exhaustive restoration of one of the most important films from the golden age of Swedish silent film. It’s a long film and I tried to keep my introduction as broad and brief as possible before we launched ourselves back to the 1820s and Mauritz Stiller’s interpretation of Selma Lagerlöf’s classic novel featuring some of the finest actors of the period all accompanied by John Sweeney’s tirelessly epic improvisations on piano.

Gerda Lundequist plays Margaretha Samzelius, the matriarch of Ekeby, a grand estate in rural Värmland, and it was a genuine privilege to be joined by her granddaughter, singer and actress Sonja Kristina as her children and their children watched this rare example of their forebear on screen. Sonja knew Gerda as a child, meeting her in Sweden and England and the reconnecting with her grandmother in this sparkling restoration must have been special indeed.  Seeing Sonja’s young grandchildren cheer and wave in their animal masks as their Great, Great Granny was announced was also reminder of the familial joy of belonging.

Gerda Lundequist

For the rest of us there were other connections to be made not least the warmth of being a part of an audience of like-minded people who share the same love of cinema and specifically silent film, gathered again in this secular temple of committed, collaborative – endlessly generous – cineastes. People who programme who preserve and promote this era of film, “classic” but also timelessly true regardless of age or form. The emotions displayed by Gerda Lundequist and her peers are still part of human language and we connect with them in old familiar ways: yes this is true even after so long the family that stays together plays together.

Stiller did not have Victor Sjöström’s way with picking out the deeper humanity and magical reality from Selma Lagerlöf’s works and she was initially dismissive of this film only to have changed her mind by the mid-1930s when she met with Greta Garbo and thanked her and Stiller for the film. Garbo was just 18 when she started filming and still Gustafson before Stiller renamed this hottest of properties “Garbo” and she too was grateful to the man she later deemed her favourite director (sorry Clarence Brown!). He may have told her to lose weight and to stop moving like a farmer’s gatepost but he brought out her star power enough for Louis B Mayer to snap her up as soon as he could after seeing Gösta Berling in Berlin. Stiller came to America with her but he was never able to find the freedom and control he needed.

This was Stiller’s last Swedish film and with his departure was gone one of the fathers of the Golden Age. Soon his lead actor, Lars Hanson, was also to follow to play another cleric, The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (1926) alongside Lillian Gish who had insisted that Louis B Mayer make the film. Gish and LB were impressed with the cut of Hanson’s cassock and whilst The Internet has her requesting him post Gösta, this film came first. His performance is as assured and dynamic as Gerda’s and the scene in which she confronts him over his failings by sharing her own is one of the most moving in the entire film.

Jenny Hasselqvist posing for Henry Goodwin (1921)

You have to admire Stiller’s choices for the film, the stakes were high in terms of the pressure to succeed and off the largest budget assigned to that point by AB Svensk Filmindustri, and, whilst he took a big chance on his youngest lead, he was able to persuade not only the country’s leading stage actress and film actor but also its leading prima ballerina. Jenny Hasselqvist had worked with the director before on the little seen but very worthwhile Johan (1921), Guarded Lips (1921) as well as her first film, The Prima Ballerina (1916) just after she had started in that role at the Royal Swedish Ballet. As Marianne Sinclaire she represents a more forceful and knowing partner for our de-0frocked priest after the two are caught kissing during a play. Her control and physicality is brought to good use by Stiller as she is left in the cold, literally, by her cruel father and later gets caught in the burning inferno of Ekeby.

Garbo’s Elizabeth Dohna has deep eyes and longing looks and needed a good deal of coaching, lighting and editing from Stiller to hold her place among these consummate professionals.

 

All this we could see on the restoration and I am convinced that this screening led many to re-evaluate the film. The previous restoration is black and white, not so well paced and looks murky in parts whilst here the SFI have been able to sharpen the story as well as the image. The re-editing of some parts and introduction of tints and new sequences gives a richer story, as close as possible to the one first seen a century ago over two parts in March 1924.

 

I’d previously seen the restored film in Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 in Bologna with a small ensemble accompanying but John Sweeney was a one-man orchestra, exploring his way expertly across the new running time and evoking the deeper humanity and grandeur of the film, connecting with the deeper meanings smuggled in from the original book which in many ways is so different from the film. It’s 400 pages long in the recent translation from Paul Norlen and whilst Sjöström would have turned that into three or four films, Stiller’s edit is remarkable for capturing the essence of these characters even if some of them changed…

Selma Lagerlöf calls the tune

At the end of the screening, I was thanked by complete strangers in the aisles as well as those I know but in truth I am the one who is grateful for the SFI, especially Jörgen Viman, Film Archivist, for restoring the film, the BFI for screening it, Bryony Dixon in particular and who kindly invited me to introduce it. I also must thank John Sweeney for playing so wonderfully and Sonja Kristina and her amazing family old and new, and all of you who attended and communed in the dark with these century-old ghosts. Thank you for reading too!

 

Thank you too to Selma Lagerlöf, who at the end of her Gösta Berlings saga leaves us with the cryptic clue to life:

 

Dear Reader… Here the giant bees of imagination have swarmed around us during years and days, but to get into the beehive of reality, they will truly have to keep their eyes open.

 

 

* The Saga of Gösta Berling (Penguin Classics), by Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Paul Norlen (2009) is available from all good bookshops and Amazon.

 

Cover of my 1924 Danish programme 

 

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!

 

Day by Day in Bologna… Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVIII

Catherine Deneuve is the cover girl from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

 

OK, after catching up on work and sleep, what was my pick from eight days of relentless cinema, meeting some of the finest cinephiles in the world and an unquantifiable amount of coffee, brioche, ragu and, dear reader I must be honest, Aperol Spritz. In no particular order, these are my personal highlights, from a festival you start off with the best of intentions, 6-7 sessions a day for eight days, what could go wrong? Answer: nothing, the Ritrovato experience you get is the one that you deserve and the one that suits you best!

 10.   Kohlhiesel’s Töchter/Kohlhiesel’s Daughters (1920), with John Sweeney, Il Cinema Modernissimo

 

The funniest thing of the week and a major Lubitsch I had yet to see featuring Emil Jannings acting his age and being charming as part of a couple of chaps trying to woo sisters played by Henny Porter who proves what a superb talent she was, not only with her highly persuasive physicality but also timing. She plays the kind-natured Gretel who wants to marry but, following her father’s instructions, can’t until her elder sister, Liesel (also Henny), weds first. The problem is that Liesel is as bitter as her sibling is sweet and more of a match for either Jannings’ Peter or Gustav von Wangenheim’s Paul by any measure.

It's fast-paced and utterly charming and very much cut from the same cloth as the Ossi Oswalda comedies and those with Pola Negri which the director made before and after. Shot against an alpine background by Theodor Sparkuhl, it was the feel-good hit of the week which I thought I’d missed only to find it re-played on the last day.

John Sweeney’s playing was on another level, i.e., the same at the film’s, and his emphatic flourishes continued to fill the gorgeously restored Modernissimo right till the end of the credits. I trust it won’t be long before we see Lubitsch’s 34^th film (including shorts) screening in London with John playing as a pre-requisite!

Emil Jannings und Henny Porten

9. It’s a family affair… Judex (1915-16), accompanied by many hands, Cinema Mastroianni

On the final Saturday as all the mystery and loose ends were tied up I emerged triumphant from the Mastroianni 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 - certainly an outlier for The Shadow, Doc Savage and even The Batman. 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.

Judex has worked a long game, disguised as Favraux’s secretary, to infiltrate his business dealings. His plan is soon complicated when he falls in love with the banker’s daughter, Jacqueline (Yvette Andréyor) who is soon targeted by the evil Monti! There’s great support from Vampires’ alumni Édouard Mathé as brother Roger and Marcel Lévesque as the comedic Cocantin whose swimming-costume clad fiancée Miss Daisy Torp (Lily Deligny) helps save the day. The kids are alright too and Le petit Jean (Olinda Mano) and The Liquorice Kid (Rene Poyen) deserved their own series!

 

Musidora, aka Jeanne Roques

8. Quo Vadis? (1924) with Neil Brand, Eduardo Raon and Frank Bockius, Cinema Mastroianni

This was an attempt to repeat the pre-war success of the Italian epic’s including Enrico Guazzoni’s massive 1912 adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s 1895 novel, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. It was an Italian German co-production followed on with a cast of thousands, gigantic sets (real and constructed) and the combined star power of Lillian Hall-Davis’ nuanced emoting and Emil Jannings’ protean excess. Larger than life and twice as tiring, his Nero offers Lillian’s frail Licia the world and we cower behind her in the darkness as her faith rises up as the only defence against the monstrous ego of the man who is Empire.

It's saucy in a Cecil B DeMille way with snatches of nudity and a-typical sexuality along with elaborate displays of Roman cruelty which peaks in the Colosseum and in a genuinely gripping chariot race that hasn’t been seen in the length or detail for many years until this superb restoration. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable effort that was surprisingly not a success at the time, perhaps too opulent for German audiences and too close to the bone for the newly fascist Italians… I’d love to know more about how it was received in those early days of Il Duce…

 

Neil  Brand accompanied across the two parts on piano assisted by Eduardo Raon on harp for part one and Frank Bockius on drums for the epic finale on drums… the players were perfectly aligned with the momentum of the film with Rome’s dangerous beauty giving way to death and destruction and ultimate martial revenge by the end of a story that had already been told many times.

 

Emil harasses our Lil'!

7. He Who Gets Slapped (1924), with Laura Agnusdei, Simone Cavina, Stefano Pilia and Antonio Raia, Il Cinema Modernissimo

Of films I had already seen multiple times, this, The Wind, The Last Laugh et al, I was most interested in seeing this one having missed it recently at the Kennington Bioscope. In the plush Modernissimo it was accompanied by an ensemble featuring Laura Agnusdei (tenor sax and electronica), Simone Cavina (percussion and electronica), Stefano Pilia (guitar and electronica), Antonio Raia (sax, chalumeau/clarinet and “oggetti” … objects?), whose modern stylings overlayed and enhanced the action on screen in new ways.

That said, this is one of the hardest-hitting Hollywood films of the twenties as you’d expect from the mighty Victor Sjöström, certainly the most successful Swedish director in the US who was able to maintain his approach across this and work with Garbo and Gish. Here he brings out the full flavour of Lon Chaney in a film that breaks your heart which as Ehsan Khoshbakht describes in the catalogue as about the act of “de-clowning… only the vile and ignorant laugh at the clown”. As my friend, the poet Ged Griffith, used to say after a few Jamesons, “Life’s a walking shadow, nah-nah, na-nah-nah…”

Lon Chaney: if you don't have a fear of clowns, perhaps you should re-consider?

 

6. The Searchers (1956), Piazza Maggiore

I only managed two screenings at the big Piazza this year as a result of rain and other distractions but Coppola’s Conversation was not as engaging on the grand screen as John Ford’s masterwork. Rarely has John Wayne been this monumentally frightening, dark eyes staring out across the vastness of the west in search of revenge and the restoration of his culture. There’s some jokey sequences but nothing really dents the full force of this film which continues to evolve in its meaning as the West in general seeks answers to the same issues of invasion, cohabitation and peaceful evolution. This is a film made at a time closer to the tail-end of the Wild West in the 1880s than to now, struggles still just about in living memory for a United States still ill at ease with its diversity.

Screened from 70mm on the biggest screen the film was introduced by Wim Wenders who has made the pilgrimage to Monument Valley, Arizona and wondered at the audacity of filming entirely at this location. It was something to view in a fresh light, immersive and impactful making us feel the filmmakers’ anew with even the plastic seats not distracting from the two hours on mental horseback.

 

The big country

 5. Chemi bebia/My Grandmother (1929), with Cleaning Women, Il Cinema Modernissimo

Due to unseasonal rain, this screening of Chemi bebia (My Grandmother) was moved from the Piazza Maggiore to the Cinema Modernissimo which only served to amplify the intensity of Kote Mikaberidze‘s film and the extraordinary accompaniment of Finland’s Cleaning Women. Now then modern scores for silent films can be controversial but this film is so out of time with its Dadaist energy that an avant-alt-post-rock-post-jazz-experimental-industrial set played by a group consisting of three cleaning robots (CW01, CW03 and CW04) ended up being perfect.

Chemi bebia defies easy summation and that’s from one of the only two people in the stalls who had seen it before but, essentially, it’s a film highlighting the damaging impact of bureaucracy on the revolutionary project with so many self-serving idiots only responding to the appearance of the Universal Worker (or similar). It’s one of the oddest and funniest propaganda films ever made and even more so with the “cleaners” quirky propulsion. Mop and Bowl on home-made instruments!

4. Scuola D'Eroi (1914) Daniele Furlati and Silvia Mandolini, Cinema Mastroianni

Meanwhile, back in the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, we watched an early film from one of the three great Dive, without which no CR is complete for some. This was not yet the imperious Pina Menichelli of her most successful period but she draws the eye in one of her first major roles dominates the screen whenever her character, Rina Larive is in shot even alongside Amleto Novelli and certainly the more established Gianna Terribili Gonzales.

Directed by Enrico Guazzoni – who made the 1912 Quo Vadis as well as other classical classics … Scuola d’eroi is an Napoleonic epic and I mean epic, straggling decades, family lost and found and with the fortunes of war and love all tangled together. Pina plays Rina, sister of Carlo, Amleto, who during a Napoleonic campaign, having been separated from their father as children and raised by a kindly farmer, get caught up years later in another with the emperor playing his part in recognising the courage of the family and saving them from the machinations of bad-faith nobility.

Daniele Furlati provided suitably spirited accompaniment on piano with Silvia Mandolini on violin, flavouring and enhancing during battles scenes and the moments of highest tension. Italian silent film of this era carried its heart on its sleeve and this was a very affecting screening of a fresh restoration from a nitrate positive held by the Cineteca Milano. It is the only tinted copy currently in existence and close to the original running time.

 

Pina Menichelli

3. 1904: Un Anno Magnifico, Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius, Piazetta Pier Paolo Pasolini

There are moments in every festival when you settle down and suddenly feel at the heart of the event, watching the perfect film and listening to just the right accompaniment and this happened on this rain-delayed outdoor event on the Thursday with a selection of shorts from 1904, A Magnificent Year indeed! I decided on the Pasolini’s carbon arc projector rather than watching the restoration of The Wind in the Piazza Maggiore – with orchestra! – and was rewarded with such rare delights!

We started with the breakneck gymnastics of Les Cambrioleurs modernes – often wrongly attributed as from a later year – which featured a stunningly synchronised troupe playing cops and robbers by throwing themselves in and out of a set full of trap doors. Clearly a stage act rehearsed tot the finest degree this was still a marvel to observe in real-time with no trickery. There was plenty of time for that with Georges Méliès' Détresse et Charité - The Christmas Angel and Match de prestidigitation but most of these films just used the new media to show actuality, whether it was the British Fleet being inspected at Spithead or A Miner’s Daily Life from RW Paul.

There was plenty of magic though with Gaston Velle’s silhouetted Burglars at Work showing what the camera can do as well as his deliciously hand coloured Métamorphoses du papillon with unknown dancer changing in front of our very eyes. And then, then we had a song as Frank Bockius performed the missing vocals from Henry Bender in a hand-coloured take of over-fed babies he would have performed at Berlin’s Metropol-Theatre. It was a job well done as indeed was the entire accompaniment from both payers with the memory of Stephen’s flute reverberating high into the clear skies as likely to linger as his partner’s percussion and vocalisation!

2. Re-building Jerusalem… Ingmarsarvet (1925), Andre Desponds and Frank Bockius / Till Österland (1926), Neil Brand, Cinema Mastroianni

 

This list isn’t really in order but the top two are such has been my pre-occupation with Selma Lagerlof and the tsars of these three films, notably the extraordinary ballerina Jenny Hasselqvist. I’ve gone on at length elsewhere but it was such a joy to see Gustaf Molander’s two films based on the author’s Jerusalem and I am so grateful to the Swedish Film Institute for the work they have done in restoring and reconstructing them.

More raving here...

1. Ekeby at last! Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Cinema Mastroianni

Having waited years to see this film on the big screen, I was also more than eager to see the results of the last five years’ worth of restoration and was in no way disappointed by the clarity and the majesty of this re-ordered and extended version of Mauritz Stiller’s work; perhaps not his best but my favourite anyway. Jenny, Greta Garbo, Lars and, especially Gerda Lundequist all shine as never before and the restoration and broader appreciation of filmmakers and the author Selma Lagerlöf will rightfully benefit.

More detailed appreciation here...

I saw much more though easily missing my 50-film target and apart from the silents enjoyed talkies as diverse as Morocco (1930), En Natt (1931) – Gerda again! - The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Coeur de Lilas (1932) and Tirez sur le pianiste (1960). There was also a beautiful film of Anna Pavlova (USA-GB/1924-1954) which brought me close to tears with John Sweeney’s accompaniment.

 

As with life it’s best to celebrate what you saw rather than mourn what you missed and so, with hope in my heart, I look forward to revisiting many of the above and catching up, if the programmers so will it, with the rest.

Grazie mille Bologna and Il Cineteca Ritrovato! Ci vediamo nel 2025!

My copy of a 1924 Danish Gosta booklet

 

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