Selma's ghosts... The Phantom Carriage (1921), with Stephen Horne, Kennington Bioscope

 

O God, grant that my soul may ripen before it is gathered in.

For years now I’ve had in my head the plan to write a Christmas story of the kind that Dickens used to write…*

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 – trust me, I’m reading Gösta Berling yet again! Sjöström takes his time and makes her key points with precision and power: his two films based on her magnum opus, Jerusalem, use only the first 70-80 pages whereas Gustaf Molander gobbles up the remaining 400+ in his action-packed brace.

Perhaps Sjöström was more concerned with meaning and, as his stunning 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 Sjöström’s David Holm is. For most of the film, Holm seems irredeemable, not just continuing to fall back into his old brutal ways but actively enjoying his cruelty in ways that suggest extremes of self-hatred. It seems that nothing will make him change, even when his actions throw his family into poverty, even when he is given another chance by his long-suffering wife played with high-intensity and the last flickers in the saddest eyes by the wonderful Hilda Borgström – who had previously starred in Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm (1913).

Hilda Borgström and Victor Sjöström

Both Borgström and Sjöström can create so much atmosphere, soundlessly signifying the break-up of their marriage, hiding from each other and seeking oblivion in different ways and good as he is, nothing makes Sjöström’s Holm so frightening than Borgström’s reactions to him as he bashes down the door in their apartment she is exhausted and just drops to the floor. This is a film about domestic violence and the ties that suffocate.

The film is based on Lagerlöf’s 1912 book Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (Swedish: Körkarlen) after she had been commissioned to write it by the Swedish Tuberculosis Society* as a means of public education about tuberculosis ("consumption"). Holm has consumption and whilst he self-medicates with alcohol, he is also happy to cough in other’s faces to broaden his revenge on the world; sadly, this doesn’t sound so unlikely after our experiences with the Pandemic. As her recent translator Peter Graves has said, in The Phantom Carriage she manages to keep two balls in the air – the ghostly plane alongside the gritty slum story – without lessening the impact of either. Her director is able to maintain this ingenuity.

Holm is Swedish for Day, and appropriately enough, the action largely takes place over the course of a day – New Year’s Eve - with a potentially complex series of flash-backs deftly used to explain more of the background to Holm and the supernatural events that will be used to show him the reality of the world he has made.

Astrid Holm and Lisa Lundholm

Chris Bird rightly lauded the cinematography of Julius Jaenzon especially his ability to create the ghosts through in camera trickery and multiple exposures. Knowing that they were using wooden Pathé cameras – hand-cranked – makes the effects even more impressive. Chris read out a number of letters from Sjöström to his wife complaining about the slow progress on the required night-shooting and repeated takes but the results are ground-breaking in the cinematic world of 1921.

The story begins on New Year's Eve at the death bed of a salvation army worker, Edit (Astrid Holm), who calls out for a last visit of one David Holm (Sjöström). But Holm won't come, preferring to carry on getting sloshed in the graveyard with his drinking buddies. He tells them of a tale concerning a carriage driven by the last person to die in each year, which takes the spirits of the dead to their afterlife. A fight breaks out and Holm himself becomes the last fatality before the clock strikes midnight. He is greeted then by the phantom carriage and its ghostly driver, his friend and the man who first related the tale, Georges (Tore Svennberg). George it was who first led Holm into the life of drunken depravation and here he has come to collect Holm's mortal soul and take it to account for the life he has led.

It is now that the real horror begins as we learn about the un-making of the man through the intricate flash backs that gradually tie up the backstory. We see Holm’s estrangement from his wife and his pursuit of them across Sweden and how he ends up seeking refuge at the Salvation Army hostel run by Edit. She tries to help him by mending his jacket but he cruelly rips apart her handiwork and tells her he needs no saving… a defiant act of calculated cruelty but he’s picked on the wrong Christian, Edit won’t stop trying.

This is as uncompromising a film as you’ll find and it takes any lazy preconceptions by the throat and hands them back to you in pieces. The true horror is not ghostly carriages but in what people do to each other and themselves and the chances they let go. The film's prayer quoted at the top seems to me a very humanistic sentiment as much as religious: let me comes to terms with who I am before it is too late.

Victor Sjöström times two plus Tore Svennberg

Chris said that a 24-piece orchestra accompanied the film’s British premier in Leicester Square and tonight we had the closest it’s possible for one man to get with Stephen’s multi-dimensional accompaniment. There were the potent emotional lines you’d expect from his piano playing also, plucked strings, harmonium and flute with a spine-tingling reverb set up to stretch the latter’s pure notes to maximum uncanny affect. The man in front of me couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing and looked away briefly from the screen to check that there wasn’t a group of ghostly musicians playing along…

The Phantom Carriage is full of camera trickery and we also had a fabulous fantasy from Georges Méliès, the man who invented so many in-camera tricks, here with the 16-minute epic The Kingdom of the Fairies (Le Royaume des fées) from 1903. This is Méliès in excelsis with hand-coloured frames – courtesy of a Madame Elisabeth Thuillier according to Chris Bird – and which bring out so much delight in this relentlessly imaginative film. John Sweeney played along in complementary style, full of contemporary flourishes and rich detail to match the unparalleled invention on screen.

Another evening of pure quality all round at the Bioscope, epic in fact… thanks to all involved!

 

Great job Madame Elisabeth Thuillier!

*A letter from Selma Lagerlöf to her friend Sophie Elkanas per Peter Graves in the publication below…

**From Helena Forsås-Scott’s introduction to Selma Lagerlöf, The Phantom Carriage translated by Peter Graves, Norvik Press (2011)

The odd couple… Havsgamar (1915)/ Dödskyssen (1916), Victor Sjöström 1912-17, (Part Two)

Moving on a couple of years from Sjöström’s second film, to his 19th and 29th, the director's cinematic technique has evolved and both these relatively short films show elements that would feature in his later feature work. The Sea Vultures (1915) (Havsgamar and also known as Predators of the Sea) is filmed on the same rugged coastline as A Man There Was (1917) and has some of the same ruthless nature vs nurture of the later film.  The protagonists are victims of their circumstances and it takes something truly human to changes the course of their lives, something wicked or, especially love

The Sea Vultures are hunters turned scavengers - a fisherman, Hornung (Rasmus Rasmussen) who, along with his eldest son Birger (John Ekman) are drawn into smuggling by the promise of easy money in hard times. They head out to greet a ship called The Eagle which carries illicit silk on board and, whilst the transaction goes well, they have been spotted by the local customs man, Eijvind Arnold (Richard Lund) who arrests them at gunpoint. Unbeknownst to Hornung, his youngest son, Anton has stowed on board to see what all the excitement is about, he emerges from hiding only to see his father and brother shoot the customs officer and his deputy dead, throwing them overboard before burning their boat and making good their escape.

All at sea

Years later and the two men are unaware of the impact their crime had on Anton (now Nils Elffors) who is tortured by what he saw and known as Mad Anton. But that is only the first step in fate righting their wrongs… Arnold’s son Arvid (also Richard Lund) has grown up and taken his father’s role along with the heart of Hornung’s daughter Gabrielle (Sjöström regular, Greta Almroth).

It’s not a tale full of surprises but it is well told and not lacking in tension and some gruesome retribution. Hornung’s guilt and sense of self-preservation makes him try to keep Gabrielle away from Arvid but theirs is a true love and a love much thicker than blood or water. As Hornung and Birger head out for one last big payday, the new customs officer is there to finish what his father started as Anton, fearing for his sister’s love and safety, makes a timely intervention.

Richard Lund, Greta Almroth and Rasmus Rasmussen

There’s plenty to admire in Henrik Jaenzon’s location cinematography, from sequences at sea to stark silhouettes against the rolling waves and barren rocks. Another scene has the camera pan left from scheming smugglers in one room past a wall – side-on – to show Anton listening at the door. There’s also some committed stunt work from Greta Almroth as she jumps into a boat and proceeds to row it out of the harbour; no wonder the director liked her so much!

Breaking the third wall?

The following year’s Dödskyssen, (The Kiss of Death) couldn’t be more different in style and is a crime caper, quite unlike any of the director’s other films but with narrative variations that would soon be used more extensively in The Phantom Carriage. It is not complete but most of the story and sense survives with the aid of a reconstruction from 2002 and what remains shows the influence of Louis Feuillade’s science detective adventures.

There’s an interesting structure with the story told in flashback by various witnesses to the murder of a doctor right at the start of the film and it’s a complicated tale with Sjöström taking two roles and those missing sections explained with new title cards.

Doctor Monro (Albin Lavén) is found murdered by his maid Anna Harper (Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson) who is the first to be interviewed by the Police Commissioner (Thure Holm). She explains how she found him lying unconscious next to his daughter (Wanda Rothgardt) and how a man she’d never seen before took charge of the situation and called the police.

Witness number two is Chief Engineer Weyler (Victor Sjöström) who was a patient of the Doctor having recently been struggling to complete some top secret plans for his employers. The Doctor had been unable to relieve Weyler’s inexplicable tiredness and it was going to cost him his job as well as his marriage. He was visited by an Engineer called Lebel (also Victor Sjöström) and after realising that they shared a remarkable resemblance the two agreed to swap places so that Weyler could get a break and Lebel could make sure the plans were drawn up on time. Now it is rather fortunate that one shared the other’s skillset… even more so that he could also impersonate him but, details, details… sometimes these things do happen!

Anyway, it is a fun concept and there’s excellent double exposure from cameraman Julius Jaenzon, as Victor’s characters look each other up and down in front of a mirror. As McGuffins go, this is a biggie but it does allow the plot to really take off as Weyler and his Doctor, Dr Adell (Mathias Taube) establish that Doctor Monro has been slowly poisoning his doppelganger. Meanwhile, the vital drawings are disappearing in the night and Weyler and Adell set a trap to find out how and why… things will not be quite as simple as they seem…

               

Just who is the masked man!?

The Kiss of Death is a world away from the previous year’s smugglers’ tale but shows Sjöström’s commercial nous and developing confidence; he was clearly absorbing a lot from France and Hollywood and developing his own distinctive cinematic language. The film was premiered in Stockholm only two weeks before Terje Vigen (1917) and it’s understandably overshadowed by the latter - even had it all survived and been in circulation for as long! That said, at the time, this film represented his breakthrough in France – not surprisingly given the influence and the narrative innovation – and was a big hit overseas being sold to 38 countries.

The Svenska Dagbladet was not alone in being impressed, highlighting the dircetor's acting as much as his skill behind the camera; "Excellent staging... It is Victor Sjöström who simply shines his demanding roles as well as the director. , becomes extremely exciting and interesting."

Along with The Gardener (1912), Ingeborg Holm (1913) and Judaspengar / The Price of Betrayal (1915) the two films above represent the only extant remains from the director's first 30 films and from this point, the survival rate is far higher as the quality rises with some of the defining films of the era. These early survivors do, however, indicate how he began to develop the techniques and themes that were to dominate the golden age of Swedish silent film and beyond. As an actor and filmmaker he was pretty much peerless and I'm sure Selma Lagerlöf would agree even if Mauritz Stiller would not.

The woman always pays… The Gardener (1912), Victor Sjöström 1912-1917 (Part One)

We are lucky that almost all of the feature films Victor Sjöström made after A Man There Was (Terje Vigen) (1917) through to his last in Hollywood, A Lady to Love (1930) survive and that there are only two missing, one from the US and another, The House Surrounded (1922), from Sweden. Yet, of the thirty films he made from 1912 to 1917, only five survive… and even these are sometimes incomplete.

The main exception is, of course, Ingeborg Holm (1913) – reviewed elsewhere on this blog – along with the recently rediscovered and restored Judaspengar / The Price of Betrayal (1915), screened at last year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. Most of the others were lost in a fire in the vaults of Svensk Filmindustri in 1941 although the damage was far worse for Mauritz Stiller’s work.

Half these films were shorts and the remainder were features of up to an hour or so in length – as with Ingeborg Holm and Terje Vigen -  and, whilst we can only wonder at the possibilities of the quality matching those two films, it is well worth viewing what remains.

Lili and Gösta go boating

The earliest survivor and, indeed, the director’s second film, is The Gardener (Trädgårdsmästaren) from 1912 also known as The Broken Spring Rose the first Swedish film to be banned for reasons that will become clear. This was the year when Svenska Bio’s Charles Magnusson hired theatrical actor-directors Sjöström and Stiller and the latter provides the script for this film as well as popping up as brief romantic interest for the lead character. The triumvirate of leading lights is completed by cameraman Julius Jaenzon, who captures some stunning locations and moves his camera with some assurance for 1912.

Originally three reels and some thirty minutes, what remains is just over 23 admittedly running a little fast on the YouTube copy I saw transferred from a VHS too; in these times it’s so difficult to pop over to Sweden isn’t it?

Lili Bech plays our young Spring Rose who is seen frolicking at the film’s start with Gösta Ekman (later to star in Faust, Intermezzo and many more) who is the son of a well-to-do gardener played by Victor Sjöström. The two are in love and a perfect pair only the grumpy gardener does not agree pulling them apart even after his son returns from college. He has designs of his own though and in still harrowing scenes, pursues the young woman through his greenhouse…

The Gardener (Victor Sjöström) takes an interest...

Next, we see Rose she is distraught and has a tear in her skirt, she has clearly been molested – hence the film’s ban. The gardener then throws her and her father off his land and they have to travel to the city to live in poverty. Luckily, an old General (John Ekman) Rose previously befriended at the café where she worked, lends them a hand and offers her work at his home. After her father dies, she is adopted by him but can’t cement her place in society so, when he too passes on, his family unite to kick her out and she is once again alone.

This is going to be another in the timeless strand of films in which the woman pays… there’s no doubt where the filmmakers’ sympathy lies and, pre-figuring the social concern of the following year’s Ingeborg Holm (1913), Sjöström is asking questions about a woman’s rights to live unmolested and secure in tenancy as well as providing a critique of class prejudice: she’s not good enough for the Gardener or his son and she’s not good enough for the General’s family or money.

Unable to fit in with polite society...

There’s a lot packed into the story and already Sjöström’s control of narrative is firm even allowing for the tableaux form and title cards that give away the action to come rather than reflect dialogue; it’s like an early “demo” with some rough edges but clearly leading up to the expertise of his first album, or at least the earliest left extant, Ingeborg Holm.

The scenes of rural life – the café, the boating and the marker gardening are also well captured and the director’s concern with these details prefigure cinema verité and neo-realism even with the technology and technique of 1912. Far more was to come of course but the including of these details allied to Jaenzon’s glorious sweeps of land and lake, add so much satisfying depth to the tale.

Mauritz is onboard!

Landscaped intimacies

Victor and Selma go filmmaking... The Lass from the Stormy Croft (1917)

Apparently, it was after seeing Victor Sjöström's Terje Vigen that Swedish Nobel literature winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf decided to sign a deal allowing A-B Svenska Biografteatern the rights to adapt her films, with the studio committing to one a year. She had previously resisted any cinematic adaptations but saw in Sjöström a man with a similar vision of life and landscape as well as someone who would respect the authorial intent of his source literature. She wanted him to do for her what he had done for Henrik Ibsen and to not sensationalise the moral issues at the heart of her work.

As Aleksander Kwiatkowski wrote in Swedish Film Classics (1983), “… Sjöström's adaptations remained completely faithful to the original works as well as the environments he was constructing,” aiming, as Danish director Benjamin Christensen observed, to imitate “the very rhythm of life.” This was unlike Mauritz Stiller and, later, Gustaf Molander, who both had lighter agendas and more overtly populist entertainments to make. For them, sometimes, the Swedish landscape could be a background, whereas for Sjöström it was a character with its own contribution to human stories, so too with tradition and the nature of rural economies.

Lars Hanson and Hjalmar Selander face a reckoning

This film, more properly translated as The Girl from the Great Marsh (Tenant) Farm, shows that he and Selma Lagerlöf were on the same page right from the start even though the filmmaker did not follow the flashback format of the author’s story; which he also doesn’t do with Jerusalem. It was the first of A-B Svenska’s adaptations and stays as close to her tone as Sons of Ingmar (1919) and Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) do to the novel Jerusalem. It also pays due respect to the setting and the culture with a stunning set up for a wedding showing all the trappings of a village celebration along with less formal trips to church and even the magistrate’s courtroom.

I also like the subtleties the theatrically-trained Sjöström is introducing to his cinematic language, a coffee cup falls to the floor when a character suspects himself of murder and as he struggles to pick up the pieces, the hot coffee stains his hands as he tries to think through the drunken night before. A groom’s father nervously wrings his hands as the family of his intended realise their serving girl has a past and, after a wedding is halted prematurely the camera focuses on disappointed hands silencing the strings on an otherwise jaunty violin.

The Sjostrom Touch?

There is so much to enjoy in this film and, as is usual, Sjöström directs the best out of his players especially an youthful Lars Hanson, actually just turned 31 and still five years away from marrying another of the film’s stars, Karin Molander who was then still with director Gutsaf Molander. She is good too but the plum role goes to Greta Almroth as Helga Nilsdotter, the titular lass from a humble homestead on the marshier end of the town’s agricultural land.

Helga has had a baby with a married man, Per Mårtensson (Gösta Cederlund) who refuses to accept that the child is his. In most cinematic cultures of the time, this is breath-taking set up – you can imagine Griffith moralising already – and yet we immediately feel sympathy for Helga and that only grows after she and her father (William Larsson) try and get Mårtensson to accept his responsibility. There is no option but to take him to court and face the opprobrium of the entire community.

Greta Almroth is also in A Lover in Pawn (1920), The Parsons Widow (1920) and with Lars in The Flame of Life aka Song of the Scarlet Flower (1919) as screened at last year's Il Cinema Ritrovato

Helga encounters Gudmund Erlandsson (Lars Hanson) on route to the hearing and, by this time expecting negative attention jumps out of his horse and court before he can question her. He shakes his head; he is not dishonourable but young enough to take everything at face value.

In the court there is a bravura Lagerlöf twist as Helga, out-gunned and out-flanked by lawyers and hypocrites, refuses to let Mårtensson swear an oath on the bible as she does not want him to perjure himself. This wins her the admiration of the judge and many in the room, a selfless act in the most demeaning of situations. Gudmund is impressed and asks the young woman to become his housekeeper. Helga soon proves her worth and greatly impresses Gudmund’s parents, Erland (Hjalmar Selander) and Ingeborg (Concordia Selander) with her cooking and cleaning.

Nice use of mirror by Sjöström and cameraman Henrik Jaenzon

But Helga cannot escape her shame as Gudmund is due to marry Hildur Persson (Karin Molander), daughter of a well-to-do family who seeing the Erlandsson’s new domestic immediately issue a no-Hildur-with-Helga ultimatum. The family have little option although Ingeborg offers any help the outcast Helga may need saying that Hildur who is one of those people who see their own needs first…

Things progress and with days to go to the big wedding, Gudmund has a night out with the lads he is going to regret. A drunken brawl results in a man being killed and it is only in the light of day with his hangover clearing does he hear of the killing and of a broken pen knife found embedded in the victim’s skull. Reaching down for his own knife he finds the blade has been broken off… is he the killer? Can he be forgiven and can he be saved? No spoiling today!!

Karin Molander and Greta Almroth

At every turn, Helga does the right thing and what she feels she must do for everyone else, she is the most morally consistent character and whilst other’s learn from their mistakes as they go they, eventually learn from her too. The woman at the heart of this story is a single parent, with a child born out of wedlock and she is the hero!

The Lass from the Stormy Croft seems to have been a success and, influential too with author Peter Cowie, writing in Scandinavian Cinema, that Sjöström’s film influenced Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Parson's Widow (1920). The author herself was impressed as related by John Fullerton, in his article Notes on the Cultural Context of Reception: The Girl from Marsh Croft 1917, quotes her as having said that despite the length of some title cards “…she was in tears like everyone else who had seen the ending of the scene”. Lagerlof reportedly said that 'film is much better and stronger that drama...Never before have the different roles in a dialogue scene been so thoroughly or excellently realized." She was not so much in accord with Stiller but that is for another day…

Arriving for the big wedding...

The film is only available digitally on YouTube but the Swedish Film Institute have copies including 35mm positives and a duplicate negative.

You can read the source material too with the novella available of the oddly-named The Selma Lagerlof Megapack: 31 Classic Novels and Stories Kindle Edition. Fill your boots but the translations are mostly from American Velma Swanston Howard who was not always as faithful to her author as Victor Sjostrom.

A dangerous deposit… A Lover in Pawn (1920)

This misanthropic social comedy was sandwiched between the critical and commercial disappointment of Karin Ingmarsdotter (1920) and Sjöström’s masterpiece, The Phantom Carriage (1921). Viewed from a solid century away if feels like Victor taking a break from “serious” before a return to the complexities of Selma Lagerlöf and it is indeed refreshingly amusing with a lower budget and a lighter touch than the epics around it. It is, however, not exactly light or frothy…

There’s a lovely sequence when Sjöström’s starchy pawnbroker is visited by the mother of his intended and the two share the most awkward of silences waiting for a tea to be made. All he can think of by way of conversation if the weather which was “nice today” as, by chance it had been yesterday and probably will be tomorrow… we’ve all been there and his toe-curling awkwardness is almost Keatonesque – we don’t talk nearly enough about Sjöström the comedian do we?

That said, he’s also playing an almost tragically bad humoured pawn broker, Sammel Eneman – nicknamed Mästerman,  who has almost the entire village in hock to him as he hands out tickets in exchange for meagre amounts of cash to a hard up fishing community. Everybody needs him but pretty much everybody hates him and his approach to customer service hardly endears him especially as he is the richest man in town with a house packed full of possessions he doesn’t need (writer looks nervously around his loft…) every one weighing him down with the burning resentment of their impoverished former owners.

Victor Sjöström and Concordia Selander

Mean Mr Mästerman may well be but he is not alone and at  various points every major character lets you down and the film plays with your expectations of hero and villain but, in typical Sjöström fashion, everyone’s a bit of both, flawed and human. You’re left to hope that they’ll at least learn a lesson before he delivers a knockout punch that satisfies and leaves you smiling.

Mutter Boman (Concordia Selander) a formidable local inn owner has a pretty young daughter, Tora (Greta Almroth, who was so good in Dreyer's The Parson's Widow (1920)) who is engaged to a sailor called Knut (Harald Schwenzen) who, I have to say, doesn’t look that ready to settle down. He drinks and he gambles and he drinks and he loses money as he gambles… as with many of the sailors, he gets by with the help of pawning whatever he can to Mästerman. There's no love lost for the pawn broker and even when he rescues Tora from assault and carries her back to the inn they mock him and offer him money for his good deed; he pockets it for a rainy day, never intending to keep this insult.

Naughty Knut and Mutter Boman

One night Knut goes just too far as he borrows money from Mutter Boman’s draw and blows the lot. They say love is blind, (but I don’t know, as I say love is kind...) and Tora offers to pawn herself to Mästerman in exchange for refilling her mother’s draw and preventing Knut from being found out. For his part, possibly in shame, Knut heads North vowing to earn enough to buy back the precious item listed in this case with a deposit number 1313.

The old pawnbroker is at first reluctant to accept the deal but he realises that Tora can do a lot of good for his warehouse home. He is delighted by her initial efforts as his store is soon revealed to be a smart sitting room and even the stuffed crocodiles are dusted back to life. Tora also starts to upgrade his opinion presenting him with a smart set of clothes he’d forgotten he had as she encourages him to be more lenient with his customers.

"You are a dangerous deposit, Tora..."

Seeing what he has in the store, he realises how much he doesn’t need and lets Tora do with it as she wants. She soon starts to hand out items to the locals and persuades her boss/master that it will help make him popular as indeed it does although he looks on with concern as his assets drain away.

It’s been said, and not just in my house, that, there’s no fool like and old fool and Mästerman begins to look on his young helper with more than contractual affection. She has brought laughter and light into his home and, she has also brought love. So much so that in a conversation about church she creates the impression that, at the right time, she would happily walk with him to church and sit next to him.

Greta Almroth, Victor and Harald Schwenzen

Now, with this unexpected re-emergence of his long-dormant romantic prospects, he clumsily assumes that Tora has agreed to marriage especially when her mother comes to tea. After absenting himself from the horror of small talk, he leans against the parlour door, and listens to the conversation within during which Tora laughingly reveals that she’s playing the old fella for a fool and only wants to marry Knut. This is unexpected because we were liking Tora and her decent attempts to both level up the local distribution of wealth as well as make a better man out of Mästerman. Now, however, she’s about to find out how sharper than a stuffed alligator’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful and exceptionally angry pawn broker.

Whilst not unexpected, Tora’s true motives feel like a shock and a betrayal of our narrative trust, with Mästerman threatening to slyly revert to type with the most vicious revenge and, well, Knut being Knut, we’re at a loss as to how this could possibly end well.

Bad faith trailing behind him, Mästerman heads to his finale

But, in Sjostrom we trust and Victor is victorious just as the final whistle approaches and the prospect of extra time looms. There's another special scene as Mästerman walks towards his wedding only to be followed by a mocking procession formed by Knut's mates... it's another example of the director's visual imagination and perfectly encapsulates the view of the local community for this man who, they are sure, can only do bad things. Wherever we walk, we all have a phantom procession of doubters trailing us... the trick is to ignore their pursuit and to carry on to your destination, not theirs.

Whilst not a straight-ahead comedy, Mästerman is very enjoyable and with Julius Jaenzon on hand we get a great depth of feel for the period, people and location. It’s a competent film and we should give thanks that so many of the director’s features seem to have survived from this time; he is so surefooted and always seems to seek out the dramatically different as his next Lagerlöf adaptation was to show.

All images purloined from the Swedish Film Institute database where the film survives as a 35mm acetate print and duplicate negative. 

Selma’s way… Karin Daughter of Ingmar (1920) Selma Lagerlöf Part I

“We Ingmar don’t have to beg from others, we only have to walk in the ways of God.”

Selma Lagerlöf's novels formed the basis for numerous Swedish films during the silent period with their mix of historical precision, sense of place, religion and humanism. Her books are complex and not only full of rich characters but also moral conundrums for which there are no easy answers. Her characters are often flawed; loving yet sometimes cruel, making the mistakes we all make before finding their solution and all against a backdrop of an imagined golden age of rural peace. As Sweden faced the new century, Selma looked back to show the ways forward and gripped the nation’s readers in ways that influenced views of social justice.

Not for nothing was she the first woman to be awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for Literature, "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings". Her work provided the basis for Stiller’s Sir Arne’s Treasure (1919) from Herr Arnes penningar (1903), Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage (1920) from Körkarlen (1912) and, of course, her debut, The Story of Gösta Berling (1898), was the basis of Mauritz Stiller’s recently restored 1924 epic starring Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundqvist and Jenny Hasselqvist.

Victor Sjöström in Karin Daughter of Ingmar

One story, published in two books, Jerusalem I (1901) and The Holy City: Jerusalem II (1902) provided the basis for no less than four films with three drawn from the first volume alone, of which the full title was Jerusalem : två berättelser. 1, I Dalarne (Jerusalem: two stories. 1, In Dalarne). Set in the traditional rural heartlands of Dalarna it develops into and story of religious mania as a group gains a new faith and emigrates to Jerusalem as happened in the parish of Nås in 1896. Taken overall it’s an examination of the impact of social/economic change on farming culture and, perhaps, the need to escape all that with a return to the very roots of a faith that is no longer enough to hold the communities together in the face of industrialisation and changing working practice.

Victor Sjöström made the first two films, The Sons of Ingmar (Ingmarssönerna) (1919) and followed that up with Karin Daughter of Ingmar (Karin Ingmarsdotter) (1920) which failed to repeat the success of the first film leaving the director to turn his attention elsewhere. Gustaf Molander picked up the project and completed the story with his brace, Ingmar's Inheritance (Ingmarsarvet) (1925) and Till österland (1926). The two directors had many differences in approach with Sjöström’s narrative much closer to Lagerlöf’s text and more focused on the interior life of her conflicted characters whilst Molander broadened the palate, taking more liberties and setting up more action.

Harriet Bosse and Victor Sjöström in The Sons of Ingmar

I saw a very rare screening of The Sons of Ingmar (1919) in Cambridge back in 2014 – written up here – and was surprised to see how little of the book is devoted to the story of Big Ingmar and his choice over whether or not to forgive the woman who kills their first child. It’s a bleak premise, but a rewarding film enlivened by the camerawork of Julius Jaenzon especially the famous scene, lauded by Ingmar Bergman, when Ingmar (Victor Sjöström) greets Brita (Harriet Bosse), on her release from prison, with both characters almost set alight by the glaring sun above them.

Ingmar’s sense of duty and fairness enables him to make the most difficult of decisions and to forgive then learn to love this woman who made such a mistake and committed such a crime after feeling she had no alternative. This is only the first of many impossible decisions Lagerlöf’s characters must make. Ingmar is guided by his ancestors in his decision, a literal of figurative device that is for the reader/viewer to decide as he climbs a ladder to discuss matters with his dead relatives. It’s a mark of how much his life is set by tradition and the collective common sense passed down by the family and now embodied in him as Big Ingmar.

Tora Teje - Karin Ingmarsdotter

In Karin Daughter of Ingmar (1920) the story has moved on decades, Ingmar is sixty, “the best man in the parish”, and Brita has recently passed leaving him with two children; twenty-something, Karin Ingmarsdotter (Tora Teje) and her much younger brother Lill-Ingmar (Bertil Malmstedt). The Ingmar farm is one of the finest in the region and the family are one of the most admired and naturally, the hand of Ingmar’s daughter is much in demand. She is courted by Halvor (Tor Weijden) who is a man of means, running the family store and is of seeming good character despite his father’s reputation as a drunkard.

Halfvor and Karin travel into town to make arrangements for their wedding and Halvor is slipped a few “Mickey Finns” by two friends leaving him drunk and passed out in a ditch. Karin is appalled and decides with her father’s blessing, to call off the wedding ignoring Halvor’s protestations. Instead, Karin marries Eljas Elof Ersson (Nils Lundell) who’s father is well-to-do and well respected all of which leaves Halvor crushed along with his reputation.

There follows one of those moments on which Lagerlöf's stories often turn as a flood sweeps through and Ingmar goes in search of children swept away by the torrent. Spotting a group of three hanging on to a raft he bravely wades into the river with a boat hook and manages to guide them to the river bank and safety but, just as they’re safe, a huge log slams into his side striking a mortal blow.

Karin hands her ring back to Halvor (Tor Weijden)

Ingmar dies surrounded by friends – including Strong Ingmar (Emil Fjellström) of whom we’ll hear a lot more – along with his five daughters and young son with the fate of the farm now resting with Karin and her new husband. Sadly, Eljas proves to be more than a disappointment and without the moral fibre or will to carry the responsibilities he now has, he has turned into the drunken waster Karin always feared.

"She soon perceived that he was like a blasted tree, doomed to wither and decay, and that she could not hope for either help or protection…”

Eljas turns Karin’s life into a misery and bullies her brother at one point getting him so drunk he passes out forcing Karin to send the boy to live with the school master, Storm (Paul Hallström), his wife and daughter Gertrude. Having avoided Karin to the best of his abilities, Halfvor meets her and young Ingmar when he visits Storm and it is here when we have another grand moment when the boy gives him the remains of his father’s watch following instructions after his fatal accident. Just when we thought Big Ingmar was out of the picture, he delivers a moment that not only signals his acceptance that he was wrong about Halfvor but lifts the man’s spirits.

From now on the shop keeper will play a major part in proceedings and without spoiling it, the story turns on that one gesture.

Karin protects young ingmar from the wastrel, Eljas

It’s difficult to compare Karin Daughter of Ingmar with it’s predecessor as I wasn’t able to watch a decent copy unlike the 35mm Sons of Ingmar, but it holds up in dramatic terms even if it lacks the set piece magic reality of the first film. In terms of its source material, we’re two films in and have covered only 105 pages with 600 to go; a lot of work for Gustaf Molander to cover five years later.

A word on translations: Selma Lagerlöf's books were translated by Velma Swanston Howard an American writer who ended up working closely with the author but whose approach – as with many translators – was governed by her own instincts. There’s a fascinating paper from Björn Sundmark arguing that Lagerlöf is well overdue re-translation in order to eradicate Howard’s authorial interventions and allow re-appraisal for the works from the English-reading public. His opinion is that: “… sadly, Howard’s ability as a translator was not as great as her commitment and sincerity to

the Lagerlöf cause in general.”

In one letter form the author to the translator, Selma gently tries to urge a lighter touch: “And so dear friend I have started to think that you really work too hard on your translations. One can correct and change things forever, and in the end, one returns to the first formulation. You understand, I am so grateful for your beautiful, artistic work, but I don’t want you to wear yourself out.”

So, whilst I enjoyed Howard’s translations of both books, they are as much an interpretation as the works of Sjöström and Molander… the search for intent and meaning continues.

You can find Sundmark's paper here at YorkSpace, York University's Institutional Repository.

A 1912 German translation... check out Abe Books!

Last clown, laugh… He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Barbican with Taz Modi and Fraser Bowles

To see this film projected from a 35mm print is a special treat and all praise to the Barbican team for sourcing this copy from a private collection in France. He Who Gets Slapped has not been digitally restored, which is a crime given its qualities, and probably has not been screened like this for many a year in the UK.

The event was sold out and I was second in the queue behind a woman who wondered why they were screening it without the "original score"… I put her right on the whole silent film thing but also on the importance of live music to the experience (she was no doubt pleased we didn’t end up sat together). Today we had a mesmeric and wistful score from Taz Modi who plays a kind of hybrid-jazz, accompanied by expressive cello from Fraser Bowles. Taz’s piano figures are influenced by electronica and in the manner of Nils Frahm, Hauschka and even Dawn of Midi, he weaves patterns over the narrative rather than matching specific events; a tonal rather than a harmonised duet and which, in the context of such a powerfully visual and humane film, worked very well.

I’d previously seen Taz accompanying the Polish silent The Call of the Sea (1927) at the same venue and his style is naturally cinematic and very supportive, with humble lines sublimated to the source material. Bowles’ cello contributed to what emotional specificity there was and the two produced a pleasingly-organic sound that contributed enormously to the connections being made between the audience and emotion on screen.

It’s hard to think of a Hollywood silent film as hard-hitting as He Who Gets Slapped nor a performance as raw and convincing as that of Lon Chaney. Based on a Russian play and directed by Swedish silent master Victor Sjöström, it is a tale of unflinching honesty which doesn’t shy away from the need to show full consequence. Chaney’s range of facial expression is, as I’ve previously noted, “supernatural” and the various extremes of clown make-up enable him to reach new heights of happiness and deeper troughs of despair.

But, it’s the Chaney face without makeup that is the most impactful as dedicated scientist Paul Beaumont is doubly betrayed by his benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) and his wife, Maria (Ruth King). Just as his research into the origins of man bear fruit the Baron takes all the credit at the science Academy, before his wife reveals she is leaving him for the “better” man… it’s an agonising moment and one that Chaney handles with measured alacrity: he could so easily go over the top but he nails the moment so convincingly, his mind snapping as laughter becomes the only response to unbearable humiliation.

After every “act”, Sjöström inserts the image of a clown laughing hysterically at a spinning world. At the start the clown morphs into Paul spinning the globe in his office and after his bitter failure, the spinning globe is joined by clowns who sit around its circumference and watch as it turns into a circus ring. So many images in the film are used to match with others and move the focused visual narrative along in a very economical way.

Lifes a walking shadow, nah-nah-na-na-nah

The action shifts to Paris six years later where Paul, now a sensational clown called HE – who gets slapped, has taken the city by storm. In a World in which nothing is funnier than a man getting hit in the face, repeatedly HE’s act is elaborate, featuring massed ranks of clowns of all sizes, ushered into the arena by an enthusiastic orchestra, syncopating wildly. HE is at the back of the parade on stilts alongside the senior clown Tricaud played by Mack Sennett veteran Ford Sterling who is very effective here acting and not fooling.

HE enters to grand applause and a wave of hilarity and proceeds with a painful pantomime based entirely on the humiliation of his previous existence, the clowns carry large books in mockery of the years he spent in fruitless study and as Paul/HE looks to the audience he sees the faces of the Academy’s mocking scientists laughing down at him.

In mockery of his failed scientific career he is slapped for every statement and the entire troop takes turns in beating him to the ground. Eventually he is beaten down to the ground and his heart, held against his chest by a cloth pocket, is ripped out by Tricaud, and he is trampled into the sand…

Silent Shearer and pre-Greta Gilbert chain daisies

Elsewhere in the circus is the handsome horse-rider Bezano (John Gilbert wearing fairly indecent tights…) who notices the arrival of a pretty girl, Consuelo, (shiny new, silent Norma Shearer so different from her sophisticated pre-code persona) who is to join his act. Consuelo’s career is being masterminded by her father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall, having a ball…) a hard-up nobleman who aims to use her exposure to marry her off to the highest bidder.

The two young equestrians bond immediately whilst HE is also smitten with the young woman; a reminder of the love he has lost. Inevitably, all balance is soon lost as the Baron comes to watch the show. He doesn’t recognise the man whose life he stole but Paul certainly spots him just as the old cheat eye up Conseula. Sjöström cleverly mingles scenes of Conseula and Bezano falling in love on a bucolic picnic with the negotiations between the Count and the Baron... clearly the World is troubled and love, faith, honesty and greed all must be reconciled.

This is Chaney’s greatest clown, one who mixes extreme pathos with a laugh that is so engulfing you truly believe the switch from bliss to bedlam that has brought it forth. HE is contorted by the misfortunes of existence into someone who can only take solace in further violence from an unfair world but, in the end, he has to find a way to rise above treachery and defeat... this is no easy melodrama; we're all getting slapped, every day.

The globes spin, the crowds laugh and the clowns all fall down in the end, cast off into eternity…

Lon, Norma, Victor and John Gilbert's tights...