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For Immediate Release

December 2001

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PAYS TRIBUTE TO SWEDISH SILENT FILMMAKER MAURITZ STILLER Mauritz Stiller—Restored December 27, 2001–January 8, 2002 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 2001–The Museum of Modern Art’s Film and Media Department is proud to present Mauritz Stiller—Restored from December 27, 2001 through January 8, 2002, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1. Most films in the exhibition are new prints, including five newly restored 35mm prints of Stiller’s films from the . All screenings will feature simultaneous translation by Tana Ross and live piano accompaniment by Ben Model or Stuart Oderman. The exhibition was organized by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Media, and Edith Kramer, Director, The Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, in collaboration with Jon Wengström, Curator, Cinemateket, the Swedish Film Institute, .

The period between 1911 and 1929 has been called the golden age of Swedish cinema, a time when Swedish films were seen worldwide, influencing cinematic language, inspiring directors in France, Russia, and the United States, and shaping audience expectations. Each new release by the two most prominent Swedish directors of the period—Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller—was a major event that advanced the art of cinema.

"Unfortunately, Stiller is largely remembered as the man who launched and as the Swede who didn’t make it in Hollywood," notes Jensen. "The Swedish Film Institute’s marvelous restoration of Stiller’s work should dispel this misjudgment once and for all."

Born to Russian Jewish parents in in 1883, Stiller began his career as an actor in Finnish and Swedish theater before becoming the director of some of silent cinema’s most accomplished epic sagas and genre comedies, such as The Treasure of Arne (1919), considered by many to be the summit of Stiller’s career, and The Atonement of Gösta Berling, Parts I and II (1924/1934), the film that launched Greta Garbo’s career. The musical flow and rhythm of his films, achieved through innovative editing and montage technique, is considered exemplary for the time. A strong literary tradition informed his detailed scripts, resulting in psychologically complex characters. Stiller’s cinematic heroes are often at odds with society: outsiders, orphans, or runaways, whose connections to their natural surroundings are indicative of their heroic character.

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Mauritz Stiller—Restored Screening Schedule

Thursday, December 27

2:30

Balettprimadonnan. 1916. . Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Djalmar Christofersen. With Jenny Hasselquist and . A gypsy dancer is discovered by a concert violinist and enters a ballet academy. The ending is justly celebrated for its beautifully staged and shot winter nighttime scene. Film fragment. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. 19 min.

Vingarne

. 1916. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and Axel Esbensen. Cinematography by . With Egil Eide, Lars Hanson, and Lili Bech. Based on the infamous novel Mikaël by Danish author Herman Bang (and adapted by Carl Th. Dreyer in a 1924 film of the same name). Passion simmers in this tale that critic Elliott Stein called "a muted drama of homosexual love." A famous artist making a sculpture of the Greek mythological figure Icarus uses his adored adopted son as a model, but when the young man falls in love with an extravagant countess, Icarus’s fall is imminent. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. 50 min.

6:00

Herr Arnes pengar (The Treasure of Arne). 1919. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and . Cinematography by Julius Jaenzon. With Richard Lund, Hjalmar Selander, and Mary Johnson. Herr Arnes pengar, considered by many to be the summit of Stiller’s career, is one of Sweden’s finest historical films. Greed, revenge, pirates, and fishermen are all part of the landscape of this sixteenth-century adventure about the love between a young Swedish girl and a Scottish mercenary. A brilliant study of the human condition, in which landscape and background are inextricably bound up with the characters’ fate. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. Newly restored and tinted copy. 106 min.

Friday, December 28

2:30

Erotikon. 1920. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and Gustaf Molander, based on a play by Ferenc Herczeg. Cinematography by Henrik Jaenzon. With Tora Teje, Lars Hanson, and Anders de Wahl. A sculptor is tormented by the thought that his lover might have been unfaithful yet is not concerned that she has a husband. The script, by Stiller and Molander, is full of an ironic detachment that also finds its way into the titles, which humorously comment on the characters’ antics. Set, decor, props, and the elegant and exotic settings, combined with brilliant acting, conspire to make this film, about an absent-minded biology professor, his wife, a niece, a pilot, and a sculptor, levitate in detail and wit. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. Newly restored and tinted copy. 97 min.

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6:00

Johan. 1921. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and Gustaf Molander, based on a novel by Juhani Aho, and one of three cinematic versions. Cinematography by Henrik Jaenzon. With Mathias Taube and Jenny Hasselqvist. This finely tuned film is in the early tradition of romance, tragedy, and the evocation of man and nature that Stiller helped refine. In this variation of the theme of the eternal triangle, an enigmatic stranger enters a staid community with fixed characters—the domineering mother, the weak son who finally stands up to her, the orphaned servant-girl whom he marries—and becomes a human catalyst, bringing about unexpected and unknown reactions within the spiritual and social framework of the community. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. Newly restored and tinted copy. 84 min.

8:00

Gunnar Hedes saga. 1923. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. With Einar Hansson and Mary Johnson. Orchestrated with a sense of melancholy and isolation, the early scenes of Gunnar Hedes saga create the stultifying atmosphere of the ancestral home of a boy whose artistic nature has been denied. Stiller is at the height of his power as a director here, with a series of amazing tracking shots over ice and astonishing, quickly cut action sequences of a reindeer stampede, which move into a series of long dissolves as the lead reindeer is transformed from a wild beast into a spirit that carries off the hero. Through masterful cutting, the filmmaker creates a mystical relationship between character and environment in this most subtle of the director’s films. The film is imbued with a visionary quality not otherwise found in his work. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. Newly restored copy. 71 min.

Saturday, December 29

2:00

Herr Arnes pengar (The Treasure of Arne)

5:00 Balettprimadonnan

Vingarne

Sunday, December 30

2:00 Erotikon

5:00 Gunnar Hedes saga

Monday, December 31

2:30 Johan

Tuesday, January 1

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2:00 Thomas Graals bästa film. (Thomas Graal’s Best Film). 1917. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and Gustaf Molander. With Victor Sjöström and . One of the earliest of the film-within-a- film genre, this mischievous satire on the movie business concerns a famous scriptwriter who, finding himself out of ideas, devises a script around his fantasies about a secretary with whom he is infatuated. Sjöström proves as talented an actor as he would later be a director with his textured portrayal of Thomas Graal, the devious yet endearing hero of this sophisticated comedy of manners. A complex web of flashbacks and daydreams intermingles reality and fantasy almost to the point of incomprehension, while the film’s visual gags and light touch keep the fun bubbling. Swedish intertitles with English subtitles. 59 min.

5:00

Thomas Graals bästa barn (Thomas Graal’s First Child). 1918. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Gustaf Molander. With Victor Sjöström and Karin Molander. A sequel to Stiller’s 1917 box-office hit Thomas Graals bästa film, this satire on sex and marriage shows off Sjöström’s and Molander’s acting skills to even greater effect. Their deliciously amusing interaction anticipates the wit of later famous movie couples like Myrna Loy and William Powell. The film opens with Thomas Graal getting ready for his marriage to Bessie Douglas, then takes them through their marriage’s first major upset (on the way back from the church), Bessie’s pregnancy, and the birth of their child. All of Stiller’s masterly strokes of comedy are in place. Exquisite visual rhythms spin the (mostly) visual jokes along delightfully without obscuring the more profound layers of meaning beneath the scintillating surface. Swedish intertitles with English subtitles. 95 min.

Thursday, January 3

2:30

Sången om den eldröda blomman (Song of the Scarlet Flower). 1919. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Johannes Linnankoski and Gustaf Molander. With Lars Hanson and Edith Erastoff. Hanson plays one of Stiller’s lone heroes on a quest for love and freedom in this film, which combines traits of both Stiller’s earlier comic films and his later, more complex, and also more romantic, ones. A handsome, enigmatic stranger goes through relationships with three different women, each episode an important step in his moral progression. The film was shot in Norrland (northern Sweden), an exotic landscape of mountains, vast forests, and wild rivers that served the director well: he understood how to create emotional and metaphorical links between landscape, story, and psychology. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. Newly restored and tinted copy. 100 min.

6:00

Hotel Imperial. 1927. USA. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Lajos Biró and Jules Furthman. With , James Hall, and George Siegmann. Hotel

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Imperial is the only surviving film completed by Stiller in Hollywood during his four-year stay. In a town on the eastern front during World War I, an Austrian officer is fleeing the advancing Russian army. Persuaded by a maid at the Hotel Imperial to pass himself off as a waiter, he finds himself vying with a Russian general for the girl’s affections. The film was lauded for its production values, and for the atmosphere that the director achieved through the skillful use of imaginative lighting, sets, and costumes. A scene in which Negri has a dream that merges with the reality of a Russian invasion is pure Stiller, who used sophisticated technology to provide deeper texture to his narratives. English intertitles. 85 min.

Friday, January 4

2:30 Kärlek och journalistik (Love and Journalism). 1916. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Harriet Bloch. With Karin Molander and Richard Lund. A handsome reporter returns home from exotic exploits abroad. When he refuses to be interviewed, a pretty reporter poses as an incompetent maid in order to get the details for her story. The facial expressions and body language of the especially marvelous Molander make this farcical comedy work. The film is a prime example of Stiller’s agile and witty style, said to have inspired the director Ernst Lubitsch. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. 40 min.

Alexander den store

(Alexander the Great). 1917. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Written by Stiller and Gustav Esmann. With Hauk Aabel, Albin Lavén, and Stina Stockenstam. This subtle comedy of manners, morals, and aspirations takes place among the upper classes in a small provincial town and centers around their meeting place, a large hotel run by a striving restaurateur named after Alexander the Great. Constructed as a series of courtships and affairs of the heart (in which the implications are even funnier than the actual happenings), the film was heavily censored, and apparently a number of daring scenes were removed. Still, its depiction of the conflict between high and low and moral and immoral behavior in a provincial town remains revealing of its time. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. 73 min.

6:30

Gösta Berlings saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling, Parts I and II). 1924/1934. Sweden. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Adapted by Stiller and Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius from the novel by Selma Lagerlöf. With Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundeqvist, and Greta Gustafson. A long and turbulent tale of a defrocked priest and his search for moral and emotional redemption. One of the several women who offer him spiritual salvation is played by the nineteen-year-old Gustafson (soon to be Garbo), in this film that launched her career. Stiller’s overriding interest in character and incident makes for a somewhat episodic structure, which occasioned the novelist Lagerlöf to comment that "Mr. Stiller has seen too many poor serials." But even in this version, a 1934 reedit that collapses the original two films into one, Stiller’s technical innovations are daring, and they render many scenes unusually effective for the time. The

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film’s sets and costumes are beautifully evocative of the period, and the combination of pictorial beauty and psychological complexity achieves a rare emotional continuity. Swedish intertitles with English voice-over. 183 min.

Saturday, January 5

2:00 Thomas Graals bästa film (Thomas Graal’s Best Film)

5:00

Thomas Graals bästa barn (Thomas Graal’s First Child)

Sunday, January 6

1:00

Gösta Berlings saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling, Parts I and II)

5:00

Kärlek och Journalistik (Love and Journalism).

Alexander den store (Alexander the Great)

Monday, January 7

2:30

Herr Arnes pengar (The Treasure of Arne)

6:00

Sången om den eldröda blomman (Song of the Scarlet Flower)

Tuesday, January 8

2:30 Hotel Imperial

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© 2001 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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