The Saga Of Gösta Berling (1924) - Mauritz Stiller

This feature film brings together some of the most conspicuous names of the nordic cultural scene, and awedish being more specific, Mauritz Stiller, of finnish origins but of Swedish production, and Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, who by the way debuted in the world of letters with this, her first novel, in which the film is based; a third name, and not minor, joins to form the triple, the legendary Swedish Sphinx, Greta Garbo. Certainly illustrious names conforming the strain of this unforgettable film, referential in the classic cinematography of that country, in addition to one of the last works by the way of the master filmmaker, one of the biggest influences of the titan Ingmar Bergman. Director, writer and actress, this prodigious triad of personalities delights us with enormous work, the story of Gösta Berling, unfortunate individual, former priest, expelled from his parish due to his alcoholism, who arrives at the house of a mayor, a place where other little-time gentlemen meet; there, numerous forays will happen, bourgeois who are stripping their most shameful secrets, careerist actions, betrayals while a couple arrives, counts from Italy, and with her, the former cleric will fall madly in love. Powerful film, solid work, with a great direction and very prominent actors, fundamental piece in swedish cinema.

                  

We see Ekeby's hut, abandoned, but a hundred years ago it sheltered 12 "gentlemen", not very distinguished men, who celebrated with laughter. Among them, stood Gösta Berling (Lars Hanson), to whom Sintram (Sven Scholander) remembers was once a priest, and because of his addiction to drinking, he was excommunicated. Time goes by, Gösta gets work at the home of the Countess Märtha Dohna (Ellen Hartman-Cederström), as tutor of her daughter, Ebba (Mona Mårtenson); the countess really, for class interests, wants a wedding between them. On the other side, from Italy Henrik Dohna (Torsten Hammarén) returns with his wife Elizabeth (Garbo), received by the mayor, Margaretha Samzelius (Gerda Lundequist), the most powerful of Ekeby. In one of her parties, the origin of Gösta is known, Ebba breaks their commitment, and dies shortly after; Gösta and Elizabeth meet each other, there is attraction, then a drunken discloses a shameful secret from the mayor, and in Ekeby he kisses with Marianne Sinclaire (Jenny Hasselqvist). Marianne and Margaretha, one for the kiss and the other for an adulteress, are expelled from their homes; the gentlemen command Ekeby, there is great chaos. Berling welcomes Marianne, until she is admitted again by her father; Margaretha, after generating a fire, recovers Ekeby, and Elizabeth, unmarried after a legal irregularity in her marriage, stays with Gösta.

Is finished in that way a feature film that not in vain is considered a referential, a classic of swedish cinema, silent nordic cinema, a patrimony of cinematographic art, and although Stiller, giant of nordic cinema, was born in Finland, and began his first works as a playwrighter in that country, he migrated to Sweden when his nation, under russian domination, requested him to serve the empire in a warlike conflict. In this way Stiller arrives in Sweden and soon develops his imperishable work, and being after all homogeneous countries culturally speaking, nordic countries, the filmmaker knew how to insuflate the essence of swedish cinema to his work, an essence that is contained here, based on sequences of strong naturalistic content, a sober formalism in the staging, the presence of religion and morals, etc. Starting from the first mentioned element, there is an eloquent beginning of the film, from the very start, the naturalistic power of the swedish film is manifested, trees are shown, leafy, tall and vital, large rivers, a great natural visual frame, that frame of bucolic dyes flow serene but determinedly before any human action takes place. And repeatedly, in obviously significant moments, images of nature will continue to flow repeatedly, whether they are green fields (with the forgiveness of the black and white of the film), whether it is snow, everything with an intentionality, a defined north. This because, as many other filmmakers would do later, these naturalized images, while being positive aesthetic elements, have a much more important functionality, are elements that externalize the psychology of the characters, their tribulations. Thus, first there are forests, rivers and streams flowing at the beginning, when we are presented with the location where the story will happen; then, with the betrayals and secrets that will be happening, the drama or narrative knot has already broken out, the tribulations of Gösta, Elizabeth and others, the snow falls, like the decay of the aristocrats, with dry trees and no foliage appearing, reinforcing the difficult situation, or announcing the tragedy and almost passing away of Marianne. All this to finally flow the expiater spring, bringing life, the leafy trees back, the snow was fear, uncertainty, fall, spring brings warmth and life back; certainly a positive resource, which more than one master filmmaker has employed, an always effective and positive narrative and expressive resource.

When the actions of the characters begin, a certain playful atmosphere is generated, in that initial sequence in which the drunken and malicious Sintram dresses like a demon, and in which for a moment, the Ekeby gentlemen -and perhaps the audience itself- thought that the infernal, fantastic was fused to reality. With that sinister face, almost monstrous, we are presented Sintram, glad to generate quarrels, sordid mixture of humor and darkness, Sintram is the bizarre symbol of malice, vice and evil. But that infernal companion is a prolegomena, bizarre proem to see the real protagonists, the bourgeois, those bourgeois fearful of the shame of having their miseries disclosed, and even more to lose that status, a sacred condition and that must be presumably untouched before all, and they will do whatever it takes to maintain it, resorting to whatever martingale is necessary, religious or social, so as not to lose that artificial position, that false respect towards society. Embarrassing is the scenario in many cases, being the most sensitive precisely the most influential female of the town, the most powerful woman in the town, the mayor, who got all her fortune thanks to her love qualities, was the mistress of a powerful individual, inheriting him to his death his properties to the woman. Severe situation is formed in her, loved a man before poor, then millionaire, generating unsustainable animosity with his mother, who forced her to marry the mayor; secrets and betrayals, lies and curses, that overflow normal limits, a mother cursing her own daughter, and living to see that her anathema is fulfilled. Darkness, vices, gossip, revenge, humiliation, death, that is behind the movements of these machiavellian aristocrats, who maintain the appearance above all, Margaretha, the mayor, was forced by her mother to join someone she did not love, for money and power, such as the Countess, Märtha, tried to get Ebba to marry Gösta, knowing his execrable past, but all in order to maintain her possessions. Pomp and pageantry, the gourmets, the swedish society, its bourgeoisie and its intimacies, some shameful, gossips, secrets, blabs, lies, frivolities, Lagerlöf draws us with precision and sharpness a picture of her society, openly portrays us the considered respectable citizens, showing us their real face, and Stiller naturally portrays the image that the writer transmits, imbued with his particular vision.

The film is a formidable example of the cinematographic formation of probably the most egregious of the heirs of the master Stiller, the prodigious pupil, the smartest of the class, Ingmar Bergman -just turned the first centenary of his birth by the way-, we have the religion, morality, both present in the Bergmanian work. That morality fused with religion is here embodied, that judgment, that stir up a priest, plague him with expletives, prey of derogations for his alcoholism, conflicts between the humanity of the characters, and the Christian faith, one of the master themes of the Uppsala-born master; but here love will redeem sinners, an outcome that Ingmar did not always share, and of course, one learns from mentors, from teachers, but in turn develops a personal and own style. We are facing a film where morality has a lot to say, where human passions will reach extreme situations, scoffs, intolerable ignominies, vendettas against a husband, or against your own blood, your daughter, the portrait painted by the writer and the filmmaker of the land that houses them. We will observe in this way a triple excommunication in history, that of Gösta, protagonist, that of Marianne, for his public kiss with him, and that of the mayor, which is also a significant moment. Ekeby is the symbol of perdition, lust, vice, sin and excess, in the highest expression that are gentlemen, twelve by the way, like the apostles of Jesus Christ, a Babylon full of debauchery where Gösta lands to walk their misfortunes. The symbolic residence is incinerated to put an end to the crapulence, but in the end Ekeby is rebuilt, a simile process to humans, particularly Gösta, of course, whose sins were cleansed, now the house has been revived, love has triumphed at the end. Gösta is certainly a fatal character, fatality chases him and everyone who relates to him, first with his terrible religious fall, then, worse, with Ebba, and the death of the girl after the affront suffered by being committed with an excommunicated man; then with Marianne, to the point almost also generating her death, he is therefore a nefarious character, with no accidental similarities with David Holm, the protagonist of another great text of Lagerlöf, Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, shot as The Phantom Carriage, book in turn taken to the cinema by the other swedish grandmaster, Victor Sjöström. From the technical point of view, and according to the time, and the stage of the development of cinema as art, the camera is still mostly static, lacking major movements or technical devices, the freedom of the camera, and therefore the cinema language, was still in its formative moments. That stillness of the camera, that absence of greater visual tricks, makes the characters, and their vicissitudes, always be the center of everything we observe. The flaschbacks are an important part of the narrative and temporal structure, although not abundant, some episodes will be grafted as a memory, being the first one the excommunication of Gösta, his humiliating expulsion from the church. The other passage that will be inserted as flashback is the mayor's misfortune, and her mother who curses her. Although, of course, the camera is located in different places during the footage, different perspectives, there are repeated cases in which the compositions of the frames inevitably refer us to a theatrical conception. In fact, an appreciable nod to the theater we observe, a story within another story, the theatrical representation in which Gösta kisses Marianne, this is a complement to the mentioned compositions of images. Very well achieved the sequence of the fire also, very serious one of the most intense sequences and summits of the film, which is already generating the final outcome. The acting section is one of the strongest of the film, the mayor, Gerda Lundequist, solid and sinister, Gösta, Lars Hanson, a great swedish star of the moment, and of course, the Divine Garbo, is more than enough incentive to see the picture knowing that she is in one of her initial roles, seeing the Swedish Sphinx Garbo in her youthful years, the goddess, the legend that was about to be born, is another factor that raises the value of the film. An extraordinary work, not in vain considered one of the best swedish films of all time, it is undeniable for the good appreciator of classic cinema, cinema in its most solemn stage.

The constant nymph (1928) - Adrian Brunel

At the end of the 20s of the last century, one of the greatest revolutions of the cinema, if not the biggest one, was about to take place, the silent cinema had the hours numbered, the sound was already close to being born for the cinematographic art, an unparalleled change. In England, one of the directors who best knew how to direct films at that peak moment, was Adrian Brunel, whose career was a bit slow with that great revolution, because during the 20's it was his moment of greatest artistic brilliance. For this, one of his final films of that period, the briton adapts a successful and controversial novel by Margaret Kennedy, in which even Alma Reville, the famous wife of Hitchcock, collaborated in the development of the script. This is the story of some artists, one, a young musical composer, who goes to visit the other, old and in the final stretch of his life, who lives with his family, exclusively formed by women, in a remote cabin. The mature composer dies, and when a cousin of the family is going to take the girls to a study center, she falls in love with the young man; what the boy does not consider is falling in love with one of the daughters of the deceased. A film full of great stars of the moment in silent movies, with a direction certainly not extraordinary, but very correct, which is part of the work of a respectable british director of the silent era.

                                                 

In a train, the young musician Lewis Dodd (Ivor Novello) travels to see an old master, retired in the austrian countryside with his wife and daughters. Upon arrival, he meets the beautiful Tessa (Mabel Poulton), his childhood friend, in addition to Antonia (Benita Hume), Pauline (Dorothy Boyd), daughters of Albert Sanger (Georg Henrich), the elderly composer, and the third wife of this one, Linda (Mary Clare). Lewis spends very good times with the family, they have dinner, they laugh, they get along, while Ike (Peter Evan Thomas) courts Antonia, but Albert dies suddenly. Ike and Antonia will marry, an uncle of the girls goes to the remote house, Tessa and Pauline will go with him to England to study; the daughter of this uncle, Florence (French Double), after a brief courtship of Lewis, falls in love, commits, and marries the musician, to the disappointment of Tessa. Weddings happen, already in England, Lewis is uncomfortable because Florence organizes meetings with her influential friends to benefit his musical career, the frivolity harasses him, while Tessa and Pauline, fed up with the english school, escape and go to their house; Florence receive them with reluctance. Lewis snubs Florence and her meeting with musical friends, humiliates her several times, while a powerful mutual attraction with Tessa is born, Florence notices it, but there is no turning back, the lovers plan to flee together, they do it, they leave everything; however, a tragic outcome awaits them.

The end of the 20s, and early 30s, more specifically 1929, with The Jazz Singer, implied irreversible changes for the seventh art, in the form of the arrival of sound to the cinema; some careers ended, they abruptly came to an end as the artists could not adapt to such a change. Problems of diction for some actors, silent directors who could not make the leap to the sound -the giant Chaplin predicted that the arrival of sound was something temporary and without a future in the cinema; it was difficult for him to adapt, but he finally succeeded-, various reasons, many careers that were not the same again. In this context, just before that great change, this film is released, still framed, naturally, within the guidelines of the silent cinema, as we will see. To begin with, the film is characterized by having in its totality, moveless, static shots, there will be close-ups, general shots, the perspective will vary, but never the lack of movement, the eternal stillness of the camera, a null dynamism, an almost non-existent development; with the camera locations, also, it approaches the theatrical representation. The only thing that breaks warmly, timidly, that flatness and linearity in the narrative and visual language, is the employment, ephemeral, of some superimpositions of frames, in which we see the bell of the Sanger steward, and the musical notes during some interpretations, or the lyrics of the respective song; but apart from that, nothing more, the whole film will be narrated in a conventional and flat way. Being the arrival of the sound to the world of the cinema just about to happen, during the integrity of the film, will not vary that unfolding of the camera, static like a tree, and with the aforementioned exception of the succinct frames overlayings, that visual rigidity will not be broken.

To compensate for this somewhat sterile development of the camera, the acting quality of the actors was necessary, and of course the stars fulfilled with the work. We have Mabel Poulton, one of the biggest female stars in the decline of the silent film, accompanied by Ivor Novello, at the peak of his career, a sex symbol of the time, before the arrival of sound truncated his stardom, for the days in which the master Hitchcock would discover him for the year before released The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), perhaps mediated by Alma, his wife. The hitherto meteoric career of Novelo continued its course, here surrounded by women, reinforcing his image of masculine star, one of the main references of the british cinema, before of course that the sound changed everything forever. The decade of the 20 was the most successful for the filmmaker, making this patent in the work now analyzed, serious staging, and reinforced by, as we see, the flashing stars of the moment. Likewise, as in so many other films of the time, brilliance, greater ambitions and technical complexities -technical liberties, freedom of the camera, which, naturally and being just, would come successively in coming years- are sacrificed, to give preponderance to the drama, the drama that is represented is everything, the vicissitudes and tragic hardships are the center of everything, before whose primacy is dispensed any greater technical ornaments. It is thus in the movie preponderance of human beings, their actions, their avatars, over greater virtues, tricks or technical devices in the staging, and that is one of the causes why the picture is much more closely related to a set in a theatrical scene that to a purely cinematographic exercise, sticks more closely to the conception of the original work, the theatrical drama.

The drama is, by the way, a great human sketch, but mainly, a feminine sketch, numerous females, each one in their inner world, they are flourishing, discovering the maturity, the sexuality, the necessity and almost obligation to marry; many are the prospects but naturally Tessa is the main character, facing a severe duel with Florence. The women who discover a new world are the nucleus of the film, their father has died, the situation is urgent, they are sent to study in England and to avoid it, they can not think of a better idea than to marry, with different destinies each, from the butler of the family, to the wealthy Ike. Disparates are their destinies, as is normal in life, but the need is the same, marriage as a necessity, a way out to a radical change in their existences, they become women, life with the sisters has to change, to seek husband, live with a man, although only Antonia achieves it immediately. Something controversial and taboo unleashed the film, by the way, by the subject of some adolescents who discover in a relatively forceful way, for the time, sexuality and adulthood, although in the film that adolescence is diminished a little fot the older females featured. The females overflow the film, being of course the central duel the most tense, Tessa faces Florence, the naive young girl against the dominant and eager to rise socially Florence, in a contrasting and remarkable feminine and actoral duel. However, within the general trend of the film, one of the most interesting sequences is that of the concert, in which normality is broken, the monotony that hitherto prevailed unbreakably in the film, the distribution of people is contrived and of the camera, and the framing of those shots in a precise way, giving these sequences a nature that is noticeably different from the rest, a sequence that, together with the short ones of outdoors, are the most different from the film in the technical aspect. As it was said, although it can hardly be considered a masterpiece, the film is a remarkable exercise in silent films, british silent films, always supported by the great solvency of its stars in the cast; it is also important the picture because, after the arrival of the sound, and the decrease in production of Brunel, many of his sound films were declared officially lost, being considered today as valuable cinematographic gems to be rescued, so this feature is one of the last works of this great filmmaker that are preserved. Finally, the drama must have a tragic end, according to the nature of unleashed passions, jealousy, lack of love, frustration, poor Tessa can not enjoy the warmth of her beloved, fatally closing this appreciable film adaptation, by a director almost never mentioned between the best or most famous, but not in vain some critics try to vindicate and rescue his work.