Before Gosta... Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) with Guenter A. Buchwald and Neil Brand, Bonn Silent Film Festival

As many may know I’m always up for a Saga directed by Mauritz Stiller and based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf and, even though this one is still missing about half an hour, it is a thoroughly entertaining romp through snow, love and madness which features the humanity you’d expect from Selma along with the mastery of locations and character you can rely on from Mauritz. It’s a story about reindeers and redemption (the latter, always a Selma theme) and, how fitting that a film featuring two violin players and the healing power of music, should be accompanied by the Silent Film Supergroup of Guenter A. Buchwald on violin and Neil Brand on piano… I really wish I’d been there to witness this gig in the flesh but the streaming screening will have to do for now and how.

 

Whereas Gosta Berling has its grand set piece of Lars Hanson and Greta Gustafson (Garbo) escaping across the frozen lake, this film has an extraordinary sequence in which Gunnar Hede (Einar Hansson) is dragged across snow and ice by an escaping reindeer, his grip and footing lost as, off-balanced, the rope he tied to deer and his waist is threatening to see him dragged to a painful doom. Hansson was originally down to play this role but he does very well in his first film role, bright eyed and passionate, his Gunnar inspired by his grandfather’s love of the violin as well as his epic journey bringing a herd of reindeers from the wilderness of the north for lucrative sale in the south.

 

Your grandfather was a simple peasant, Miss Stava should know better than to put fantasies in your head!

 

The matriarch, Mrs Hede (Pauline Brunius)

This action makes the family’s fortune and the gran house and estate of Munkhyttarian Gunnar sees the portrait of his Grandfather comes alive in his imagination, the same passion for music driving his daring imagination. But not all of the family celebrates this stunning success story with Gunnar’s mother Mrs. Hede (an excellent and very fearsome Pauline Brunius) being especially unimpressed. Her boy will have the best grounding in finance and mining management, so he may run the estate properly.

 

Best laid plans of domineering mothers are sometimes over-turned by happenstance and learning that his Father is extremely ill, Einer returns home as quickly as he can… This narrative runs on luck and chance encounters, as much as any Paul Auster novel and, like the American, and Lagerlöf is always more interested in the reaction than the action. In the period of mourning after his father’s death, it comes to pass that a small group of travelling acrobats comes to Munkhyttarian.

Stina Berg on tightrope, Adolf Olschansky spinning plates and Mary Johnson on violin 

This signals a comedic change of pace as we meet a horse that will only pull its cart when serenaded with the mouthorgan played by a scruffy tight-rope walker (Stina Berg) whilst her husband Blomgren (Adolf Olschansky) a man who has taken dishevelled into an artform – a Jasper Johns instillation dragged through a hedge backwards – holds the reins. With them is a poor waif, Ingrid (Mary Johnson) who they have adopted chiefly for her ability to play the violin as they perform. This couple are classic light-relief but they are quite extraordinary.

Their arrival at Munkhyttarian uplifts the mood and Gunnar watches from his window entranced by the music before moving down to find the player just as fascinating. Spirits are lifted and Irene stays as Gunnar starts to play again before a chance encounter on a train with two fellows who have the same plan as his grandfather’s to move enough Reindeer from North to South to make a new fortune.

 

Einar Hansson and Mary Johnson

Gunnar heads up north to Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), to enlist the aid of Sámi (formerly known as Laplanders; exteriors were largely shot in the surrounding area, Nacka, and Kallsjön in Jämtland) to wrangle a giant herd of deer and drive South. There are some spectacular shots of scenery and the movement of the reindeer especially as they try to cross a wide river. Stiller’s cameraman was Swedish legend, Julius Jaenzon who worked so memorably with Victor Sjostrom as well, who is so audacious with his shots into the sun, managing stunning contrasts between the low light and the players: dramatically infusing the film’s tone with so many exterior shots.

 

The cattle drive is dynamic and with constant threat as the men must make sure that the lead deer is kept under their control so the rest will follow. The going gets tough though and in checking the safety of a frozen lake one of the men falls through the ice leaving Gunnar desperately trying to hold onto the beast which breaks away dragging him with it for hundreds of metres over the snow and ice. The other man is saved but by the time they find Gunnar half the heard as been lost along with his grip on reality. Face bloodied, he sees every animal as a threat and has lost his reason.

 

No deer were harmed in the making of this film, perhaps.

The night of Gunnar’s Reindeer ride, Ingrid experiences the strangest of dreams in which an old woman on a sledge appears in her bedroom: “I am Lady Sorrow on my way to Munkhyttarian…” she says, revealing a bewildered Gunnar in her carriage… what can it all mean? Dreams represent passions and fears but also reveal our deepest thoughts... and Ingrid's connection to Gunnar runs very deep indeed.

 

Gunnar returns home but is traumatised, childlike, and even though Ingrid does what she can, he busies himself with waking dreams collecting stones from across the estate pretending they are the coins required to save his childhood home. Meanwhile, facing ruin, his mother puts Munkhyttarian up for sale… what and who can save them now?

In the US the film was titled The Blizzard!

 

Lagerlöf was not happy with the liberties Stiller had taken with her story, The Tale of a Manor, she seemed to just about prefer Sjostrom’s approaches but was demanding all the same. That said, what remains of Stiller’s film is an engaging story of individual intensities and the grandeur of the rugged reindeer drive… Thousands of reindeer in a mad stampede – the greatest thrill ever screened! announced William Fox’ US publicity, and they weren’t far off.

 

All is thrillingly accompanied by Neil and Guenter who’s collective experience encompasses not just decades worth of silent film accompaniment but also regular collaborations with other players. What those in Bonn saw and we online heard was a deceptively effortless improvised score, sharing leading lines across instruments with a mutual understanding of the drama on screen. In fantasy Football you can select players from each side to form the best team independent of allegiance, here we had Ronaldo and Messi in fine form and it was a massive win for Fußball-Club Stummfilmtage Bonn!

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

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

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

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

The Scandi-Gish

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

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

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

Three bad men

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

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

Julius Jaenzon is the man with the movie camera

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

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

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

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

Mary Johnson and Wanda Rothgardt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guilty visions

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

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

Mary Johnson