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Home , A Lady to Love, A Man There Was, Confessions of a Queen, Ingeborg Holm, Julius Jaenzon, Name the Man

January 17, 2012 (XXIV:1) Victor Sjöström, KÖRKARLEN/ (1921, 93 min.)

Directed and written by Victor Sjöström Based on the novel by Selma Lagerlöf Produced by Charles Magnusson Cinematography by

Victor Sjöström...David Holm Hilda Borgström...Mrs. Holm Tore Svennberg...Georges Astrid Holm...Edit Concordia Selander...Edit's Mother Lisa Lundholm...Maria Tor Weijden...Gustafsson Einar Axelsson...David's Brother Olof Ås...Driver

VICTOR SJÖSTRÖM (September 20, 1879, Silbodal, Värmlands län, – Died: January 3, 1960, , av Portugallien, 1943 Ordet, 1943 Det brinner en eld, 1941 län, Sweden) has 55 directing credits, among them, 1937 Under Striden går vidare, 1939 Mot nya tider, 1939 Gubben kommer, the Red Robe, 1931 Father and Son, 1930 Väter und Söhne, 1930 1937 The Great John Ericsson, 1935 Walpurgis Night, 1934 The Die Sehnsucht jeder Frau, 1930 , 1928 The Wind, Girl of Solbakken, 1931 Father and Son, 1931 Brokiga blad, 1928 The Masks of the Devil, 1928 , 1926 The 1923 The Hell Ship, 1922 The House Surrounded, 1921 The Scarlet Letter, 1925 The Tower of Lies, 1925 Confessions of a Phantom Carriage, 1920 Mästerman, 1920 Karin Ingmarsdotter, Queen, 1924 He Who Gets Slapped, 1924 , 1923 1919 Ingmarssönerna, 1918 Thomas Graals bästa barn, 1918 The Hell Ship, 1922 The House Surrounded, 1922 Vem dömer, You and I, 1917 Thomas Graals bästa film, 1917 A Man There 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Mästerman, 1920 Karin Was, 1916 Dödskyssen, 1916 Hon segrade, 1915 I prövningens Ingmarsdotter, 1920 Klostret i Sendomir, 1919 Hans nåds stund, 1914 Högfjällets dotter, 1914 Strejken, 1914 För sin testament, 1919 Ingmarssönerna, 1918 You and I, 1917 Girl kärleks skull, 1913 Livets konflikter, 1913 Blodets röst, 1913 När from Stormy Croft, 1917 , 1916 Therèse, 1916 kärleken dödar, 1913 Vampyren, 1913 Barnet, 1912 The Dödskyssen, 1916 Hon segrade, 1916 The Sea Vultures, 1916 Springtime of Life, 1912 Saved in Mid-Air, and 1912 Skepp som mötas, 1915 Judaspengar, 1915 I prövningens stunt, Trädgårdsmästaren. 1915 Skomakare, bliv vid din last, 1915 The Governor's Daughters, 1915 Det var i maj, 1915 Sonad skuld, 1915 En av de Selma Lagerlöf (November 20, 1858 – Mårbacka, Värmlands manga, 1914 Hjärtan som mötas, 1914 Högfjällets dotter, 1914 län, Sweden – March 16, 1940, Mårbacka, Värmlands län, Gatans barn, 1914 Bra flicka reder sig själv, 1914 Strejken, 1914 Sweden) had received 35 screen credits for work based on her Dömen icke, 1914 Saints and Sorrows, 1914 Kärlek starkare än fiction or plays: 2011 “Nils Holgerssons wunderbare Reise”, hat eller skogsdotterns hemlighet, 1913 Miraklet, 1913 Half 2008 Matskhovris Saplavze Antebuli Santeli (novel), 1996 Breed, 1913 , 1913 Livets konflikter, 1913 Blodets Jerusalem (novel), 1994 “Kejsarn av Portugallien” (novel), 1989 röst, 1913 Lady Marions sommarflirt, 1913 Löjen och tårar, “En herrgårdssägen” (novel), 1986 “Gösta Berlings saga” 1913 Äktenskapsbyrån, 1912 Trädgårdsmästaren, and 1912 A (novel), 1980 “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils” (8 episodes), Ruined Life. He also acted in 44 films, among them 1957 Wild 1979 Charlotte Löwensköld (novel), 1963 “Untuvainen” (play Strawberries, 1955 Männen i mörker, 1952 Kärlek, 1952 Hård "Dunungen"), 1962 Wonderful Adventures of Nils (novel), 1958 klang, 1950 Kvartetten som sprängdes, 1950 To Joy, 1949 Farlig Phantom Carriage (book), 1958 Das Mädchen vom Moorhof vår, 1948 I Am with You, 1947 Railroad Workers, 1944 Kejsarn (novel "Tösen från Stormyrtorpet"), 1955 “Schlitz Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—2

Playhouse,”1954 Herr Arnes penningar (novel), 1952 pengar, 1919 Ingmarssönerna, 1918 You and I, 1917 Alexander Husmandstøsen (novel), 1952 “The Unexpected”, 1947 Tösen den Store, 1917 A Man There Was, 1916 Wolo czawienko, 1916 från Stormyrtorpet (novel), 1944 Kejsarn av Portugallien Vingarne, 1916 Dödskyssen, 1916 Dolken, 1916 Hans hustrus (novel), 1941 Dunungen (short story and play "Dunungen"), förflutna, 1915 Judaspengar, 1915 Mästertjuven, 1915 Madame 1940 Suotorpan tyttö (novel "Tösen från Stormyrtorpet"), 1939 de Thèbes, 1915 Det var i maj, 1915 Högsta vinsten, 1915 När The Phantom Wagon (novel "Körkarlen"), 1935 The Girl from konstnärer älska, 1914 Bra flicka reder sig själv, 1914 Strejken, the Marsh Croft (novel "Toesen fran Stormyrtorpet"), 1934 1914 Stormfågeln, 1914 Gentleman of the Room, 1914 För sin Batakli damin kizi, Aysel (story "Tösen Fran Stormyrtorpet"), kärleks skull, 1914 Bröderna, 1914 Saints and Sorrows, 1914 1930 Charlotte Löwensköld (novel), 1926 Till österland (novel Det röda tornet, 1914 Skottet, 1913 Den moderna suffragetten, "Jerusalem"), 1925 Ingmarsarvet (novel "Jerusalem"), 1925 The 1913 Brother Against Brother, 1913 Half Breed, 1913 Livets Tower of Lies (novel "Kejsarn av Portugallien en konflikter, 1913 På livets ödesvägar, 1913 Mannekängen, 1913 Värmlandsberättelse/The Emperor of Portugallia"), 1924 Gösta Lady Marions sommarflirt, 1913 När larmklockan ljude, 1913 Berlings saga (novel), 1923 The Blizzard (novel "En När kärleken dödar, 1913 Löjen och tårar, 1913 Vampyren, 1913 herrgardssaegen"), 1921 The Phantom Carriage (novel), 1920 Äktenskapsbyrån, 1913 Barnet, 1913 Den okända, 1912 The Karin Ingmarsdotter (novel "Jerusalem"), 1919 In Quest of Springtime of Life, 1912 Saved in Mid-Air, 1912 Happiness (short story and play "Dunungen"), 1919 Herr Arnes Trädgårdsmästaren, 1912 Mor och dotter, 1912 Agaton och pengar (novel), 1919 Ingmarssönerna (novel "Jerusalem"), BS Fina, 1912 Laban Petterqvist tränar för olympiska spelen, 1912 1917 Girl from Stormy Croft (novel). Samhällets dom, 1910 Regina von Emmeritz och konung Gustaf II Adolf, and 1907 Fiskerlivets farer. CHARLES MAGNUSSON (January 26, 1878, , Västra Götalands län, Sweden – January 18, 1948, Stockholm, HILDA BORGSTRÖM (October 13, 1871, Stockholm, Sweden – Stockholms län, Sweden) produced 13 films: 1923 The Blizzard, January 2, 1953, Stockholm, Sweden) appeared in 80 films, 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Erotikon, 1919 Hans nåds sojme of which were 1951 Dårskapens hus, 1949 The Girl from testament, 1919 Herr Arnes pengar, 1919 Ingmarssönerna, 1918 the Third Row, 1949 The Key and the Ring, 1948 Eva, 1948 Sin, You and I, 1917 Girl from Stormy Croft, 1917 A Man There Was, 1948 Each to His Own Way, 1948 Music in Darkness, 1947 Song 1908 Resa Stockholm-Göteborg genom Göta och Trollhätte of Stockholm, 1947 Dynamite, 1946 Sunshine Follows Rain, kanaler, 1908 Göta elf-katastrofen, 1907 Bilder från Fryksdalen, 1946 Desire, 1944 The Girl and the Devil, 1944 Torment, 1944 and 1907 Krigsbilder från Bohuslän. The Old Clock at Ronneberga, 1942 Ride Tonight!, 1940 Her Melody, 1940 Ett brott, 1940 Bastard, 1937 The Great John JULIUS JAENZON (July 8, 1885, Gothenburg, Västra Götalands Ericsson, 1935 The Girls' Alfred, 1925 Damen med kameliorna, län, Sweden – February 17, 1961, Stockholm, Stockholms län, 1924 Anna-Clara och hennes bröder, 1921 The Phantom Sweden) has 118 cinematographer credits: 1948 Life at Carriage 1920 Carolina Rediviva, 1916/I Brandsoldaten, 1914 Forsbyholm Manor, 1946 Evening at the Djurgarden, 1946 Dömen icke, 1913 Lady Marions sommarflirt, and 1912 A Ruined Private Number 91-Karlsson, 1945 Jolanta - den gäckande Life. suggan, 1944 Hans officiella fästmö, 1943 Queen for a Night, 1943 Katrina, 1942 Man glömmer ingenting, 1942 TORE SVENNBERG (February 28, 1858, Stockholm, Sweden – Löjtnantshjärtan, 1942 Livet på en pinne, 1941 Dunungen, 1941 May 8, 1941, Stockholm, Sweden) has 11 acting credits: 1940 Goransson's Boy, 1941 Landstormens lilla argbigga, 1941 Den Stål, 1938 A Woman's Face, 1935 The Surf, 1933 Vad veta väl ljusnande framtid, 1940 One, But a Lion!, 1940 Stora famnen, männen?, 1930 Fridas visor, 1929 Säg det i toner, 1922 Vem 1939 Emelie Högqvist, 1939 Valfångare, 1937 Vi går dömer, 1921 Give Me My Son, 1921 The Phantom Carriage, landsvägen, 1937 Sara Learns Manners, 1937 Klart till 1920 Klostret i Sendomir, and 1919 Ingmarssönerna. drabbning, 1937 Pappas pojke, 1936 Adventure, 1936 Johan Ulfstjerna, 1936 Bröllopsresan, 1936 Conscientious Objector ASTRID HOLM (March 9, 1893 – October 29, 1961) has 10 Adolf, 1935 The Marriage Game, 1935 Smålänningar, 1935 The acting credits: 1947 Mani, 1946 I Love Another, 1946 Discretion Surf, 1935 One Night, 1934 Man's Way with Women, 1934 Wanted, 1946 Hans store aften, 1942 Ta' briller på, 1925 Master Kungliga Johansson, 1933 Två man om en änka, 1933 Vad veta of the House, 1922 Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, 1921 väl männen?, 1933 En natt på Smygeholm, 1933 Giftasvuxna The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Lavinen, and 1919 Towards the döttrar, 1933 En melodi om våren, 1932 Sten Stensson Stéen från Light. Eslöv på nya äventyr, 1932 Kärlek och kassabrist, 1932 Svärmor kommer, 1932/I Service de nuit, 1931 Serments, 1931 Father and CONCORDIA SELANDER (June 2, 1861, Arboga, Västmanlands Son, 1931 Brokiga blad, 1930 Charlotte Löwensköld, 1930 län, Sweden – March 31, 1935, Täby, Stockholms län, Sweden) Kronans kavaljerer, 1930 Väter und Söhne, 1930 Ulla, My Ulla, has 10 acting credits: 1932 Landskamp, 1931 Brokiga blad, 1925 1930 Fridas visor, 1930 For Her Sake, 1929 Säg det i toner, Charles XII, 1923 The Blizzard, 1921 Vallfarten till Kevlaar, 1929 Hjärtats triumph, 1928 Synd, 1928 Doctors' Women, 1927 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Mästerman, 1919 Herr Arnes Förseglade läppar, 1927 Hon, den enda, 1927 Don Quixote, pengar, 1917 Girl from Stormy Croft, and 1917 Förstadsprästen. 1927 Hans engelska fru, 1926 Till österland, 1925 Ingmarsarvet, 1925 Två konungar, 1924 Life in the Country, 1924 Gösta LISA LUNDHOLM (b. 1895) appeared in only two films: 1955 Berlings saga, 1923 Karusellen, 1923 The Hell Ship, 1923 The Smiles of a Summer Night and 1921 The Phantom Carriage. Blizzard, 1922 Vem dömer, 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Mästerman, 1919 In Quest of Happiness, 1919 Herr Arnes TOR WEIJDEn (January 6, 1890, Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—3

Sweden – 1931) was in 10 films: 1929 Hjärtats triumph, 1925 joined this exodus in 1880, arriving in New York when he was Halta Lena och Vindögda Per, 1925 Charles XII, 1924 Grevarna seven months old. på Svansta, 1923 Andersson, Pettersson och Lundström, 1923 Most of the emigrants went on to farm in Minnesota, Värmlänningarna, 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 but the Sjöströms remained in Brooklyn, where they ran a small Mästerman, 1920 Karin Ingmarsdotter, and 1918 Thomas Graals boardinghouse. Elisabeth Sjöström died a few years later and her bästa barn. husband soon remarried. He was a religious bigot and a domestic tyrant who had made his son’s early childhood wretchedly EINAR AXELSSON (February 25, 1895, Lund, Skåne län, Sweden unhappy; there was conflict with the new stepmother as well. At – October 30, 1971, Stocksund, Stockholms län, Sweden) was in the age of seven, Victor Sjöström was shipped back to live with 59 films, some of which were 1963 Adam och Eva, 1963 “A an aunt and uncle at Uppsala, the university town north of Dream Play,” 1958 Vi på Väddö, 1958 Flottans överman, 1956 Stockholm. He was educated there, but not at the university. Like Girl in Tails, 1946 Iris and the Lieutenant, 1935 The Marriage his mother, his uncle Victor was an actor, then employed at the Game, 1935 Perhaps a Gentleman, 1927 Girl in Tails, 1923 in Stockholm. Entranced by an exciting Thomas Graals myndling, and 1921 The Phantom Carriage. new world remote from the dour Puritanism of his early years, Sjöström plunged into amateur theatricals at the age of fourteen OLOF ÅS (September 21, 1892 – September 4, 1949) was in 15 and three years later, in 1896, joined a theatre company touring films: 1946 Harald Handfaste, 1929 Konstgjorda Svensson, 1928 Finland. A.-B. gifta bort baron Olson, 1927 Hin och smålänningen, 1922 Sjöström was married for the first time around 1900 to Vem dömer, 1921 The Phantom Carriage, 1920 Mästerman, Sascha Stagoff, an actress of Russian descent who died a few 1920 Karin Ingmarsdotter, 1919 Hans nåds testament, 1919 years later. Between 1900 and 1911 he became well known in Sången om den eldröda blomman, 1919 Ingmarssönerna, 1918 both Sweden and Finland as an actor of exceptional power and Thomas Graals bästa barn, 1917 Alexander den Store, 1917 intensity and—with his long, sensitive face and sad eyes— Thomas Graals bästa film, and 1912 Agaton och Fina. something of a matinee idol. He also traveled abroad, visiting theatres in Paris, London, and Berlin. For a time he was a director at the Royal Theatre, , and it was there that he met his second Wife, Lili Bech. Sjöström’s interests turned increasingly to production, and in 1911, with Einar Fröberg, he established his own theatre company in Malmö, in southern Sweden. By this time, the Swedish film industry was gaining strength, led by the Svenska Bio company under its able production manager Charles Magnusson. He had joined the company in 1909, initiating a policy of filming adaptations of popular classics using actors and directors already established in the theatre. The movies were still regarded as a vulgar and probably pernicious form of entertainment, but a few films of real quality were beginning to appear in Sweden, especially after Svenska Bio added the brilliant cameraman Julius Jaenzon to its staff in 1911. Sjöström joined Svenska Bio in June 1912, when he was thirty-two—a few months after another Magnusson discovery, Maurice Stiller, soon to become a close friend. “The thing that brought me to filmmaking,” Sjöström said, “was a youthful desire for adventure and a curiosity to try this new medium of VICTOR SJOSTROM From World Film Directors, Vol. I. which I then did not have the slightest knowledge.” Looking Edited by John Wakeman. H. W. Wilson Co., NY, 1987 back, long after at his beginnings in the cinema, he said, “I am (September 20, 1879-January 3, 1960), Swedish director, sure that it did not for a moment occur to Stiller or to me that scenarist, and actor, was born in Silbodal, a small rural those days we were doing something that would be remembered community in the central Swedish province of Värmland. He was or talked about years later. We happened to enter the job at a the son of Olof Sjöström, a farmer, and the former Elisabeth lucky time.” Hartman, who had been an actress. It was as an actor that Sjöström made his film debut, The conditions into which Sjöström was born were appearing in Paul Garvagny’s I livets var in1912. The same year markedly similar to those evoked in Jan Troell’s film he had the lead roles in two movies directed by Stiller, De svarta Utvandrarna (The Emigrants, 1970), about the homesteaders and maskerna (The Black Masks) and Vampyren (The Vampire, as tenant farmers of Smaland, a heavily forested region much like well as the first film he himself directed, Trädgardsmästaren Varmland. The desperate hardships involved in wresting a (The Gardener), scripted by Stiller. Nothing seems to be known livelihood from a small farm on poor soil led in the mid- about this picture except that it also featured Sjöström’s wife, nineteenth century to a great exodus in which thousands of Lili Bech and “Sweden’s John Barrymore,” Gösta Ekman, and homesteaders emigrated to the United States. Sjöström’s family that (according to the director himself) it was banned by the Swedish censors and never released. Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—4

Peter Cowie says that as an actor Sjöström “was as infuses his mature work. He cabled Magnusson that he would intrepid as Fairbanks or Flynn, which the [same] capacity for film and shooting began in August 1916. suggesting nobility, dignity, and emotional stress.” He continued The poem was adapted by Gusaf Molander (verses from to work as an actor for Svenska Bio, usually in his own films or it being retained as titles) and photographed by Julius Jaenzson— Stiller’s, but devoted himself increasingly to direction, turning not at Grimstad but more economically on the rocky coast near out an average of eight films a year between 1912 and 1916. Stockholm. The Norwegian actor cast as Vigen accepted another Most of them were three-reelers—the commonest length for assignment and Sjöström decided to play the part himself. The features at that time—but some were as long as modern features, film is set during the Napoleonic Wars. Terje Vigen is a like Sjöström’s first notable work, Ingeborg Holm (1913). Norwegian fisherman who runs the British blockade to secure Adapted by the director from a play by Nils Kroos food for his family until he is captured by a British frigate and (itself based on an actual case), this was a tense social drama imprisoned. Released after the war, he finds that his wife and about a woman (Hilda Borgström) who, after her husband dies, is baby have died of starvation. With nothing left but hatred, he confined to a poorhouse while her children are auctioned off to retires to a lonely island. One day he rouses himself from his speculators in forced labor. Hearing that her daughter is ill, she dreams of revenge to rescue the crew of a small boat that is escapes from the poorhouse to help her but is caught by the foundering in a storm. In the boat is the English captain who had police and returned, white-haired and insane with grief, cradling captured him years before. Terje Vigen is tempted to let him a piece of wood as if it were her baby. There is an unconvincing drown, but the sight of the officer’s wife with a baby in her arms happy ending—a bow to the reawakens his humanity. He conventions of the time—but relents, and his obsession with otherwise this early movie shows revenge ebbs away. a scrupulous concern for detailed Einar Lauritzen wrote authenticity, including some that in Terje Vigen “that scenes shot on location. The stark peculiar juxtaposition of man photography (by Julius Jaenzon’s and nature that was to be the brother Henrik) intensifies the hallmark of the ‘Swedish force of this savage indictment of school’” was for the first time the barbaric poor laws of the fully evident. Peter Cowie time. agrees, saying that here, “for A critical and financial the first time in the cinema, the success, Ingeborg Holm was natural background reflects the greeted as the first Swedish film struggles between the with any real claim to artistic characters and within merit. It is also the only one of themselves….The film is Sjöström’s early movies to have swept along by the feeling for survived. The rest—like other Swedish films of the period-were landscape and atmosphere, by the almost prehensile attacks of mostly trite or thrillers, interspersed with occasional the sea, and by that brilliantly syncopated editing which is at its comedies. Though his material was often banal, Sjöström’s early most impressive in the scene where Terje rows desperately away work is said to have been distinguished by a gift for from the frigate’s boat. Sjöström alternates close-ups of Terje’s characterization and “his way of using sets and landscapes with tired arms heaving the oars back and forth with shots of the well- an absolute stylistic economy.” Unlike most of his drilled English crew slipping easily through the breakers. The sea contemporaries, he filmed on location whenever he could—for is Terje’s real foe and there is a magnificent back view of example in Halvblod (Halfbreed, 1913), a “Western” shot in the Sjöström shaking his fist at the boiling waves. This defiance in forest near Stockholm, and in Miraklet (The Miracle, 1913), a the face of nature runs through the best Swedish films.” medieval drama based on Zola’s Lourdes and filmed at the ruins Released in 1917, Terje Vigen became a major of Visby in Gotland. international success, screened and admired in the United States, In 1916 Charles Magnusson asked Sjöström to make a Latin America, India, Japan, China, and all over Europe. And film based on Ibsen’s epic poem Terje Vigen. The director at first Sjöström’s next picture confirmed that Swedish cinema had refused this assignment, arguing that there was no place for a matured into a serious threat to Hollywood’s domination of serious work of literature in the show-business atmosphere of the world screens. This was Berg-Evjind och hans hustru (The contemporary film industry. He was in fact at a low point in his Outlaw and His Wife, 1918), based on a play by Johan career, demoralized by the vulgar rubbish that occupied his days Sigurjuonsson in which Sjöström had scored one of his greatest at Svenska Bio and bruised by the failure of his second marriage. successes as a stage actor. He recreated the part for the screen That summer he went on a bicycle tour of his birthplace near the and himself wrote the adaptation, in collaboration with Sam Ask. Norwegian border, searching for his roots in that inhospitable The heroine was played by Edith Arastoff, who had appeared as landscape. An old nurse’s memories of his mother awoke his the British officer’s wife in Terje Vigen and who became regard and admiration for her and renewed his sense of himself. Sjöström’s third wife in 1922, beginning a happy marriage that Continuing his journey down the southern Norwegian coasts, he lasted until his death. The film was shot partly in the studio and came to Grimstad and Terje Vigen’s rocky islands. Sjöström partly in the mountains of northern Sweden, with further exterior experienced a kind of epiphany there, from which he developed camerawork by Julius Jaenzon in Iceland. the almost pantheistic feeling for landscape and nature that Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—5

Like Terje Vigen, Berg-Evjind is a man of iron integrity The girl from Stormy Croft is Helga (Greta Almroth), who does what he believes is right and is punished for it by an who lives in poverty in a wretchedly overcrowded mountain hut. unjust society: in nineteenth-century Iceland, he steals a sheep to Scorned as the mother of an illegitimate child, she is taken in as a feed his family and is imprisoned. Escaping, he finds works on a servant by Gudmund (), a landowner’s son in the farm belonging to Halla (Arastoff), a rich young widow. They rich valley below. This angers Gudmund’s fiancée (Karin fall deeply and passionately in love, and when Berg-Evjind is Molander)and her magistrate father. After a brawl in the local forced to flee to the mountains, she joins him there, abandoning tavern, Gudmund finds himself facing a murder charge and the her estates. In that magnificent landscape they share a few years elaborate wedding preparations are called off. It is Helga who, of ecstatic happiness, and a child is born. They are betrayed. with selfless devotion, proves his innocence and wins his love Driven higher into the mountains, with time and hope running and the respect of the community. out, they kill their little daughter—casting her from a precipice Once again, landscape is used with a subtlety and almost as a propitiatory sacrifice to the gods of nature (or symbolic weight unequalled by Sjöström’s contemporaries, and perhaps to conventional morality). In the end, exhausted and the film also provides a convincing and detailed study of an starving, they die together in the snow: nature gives and nature unfamiliar society. Regarded by contemporary reviewers as a takes away. minor piece. This was more recently described by Thomas Milne The Outlaw has two central themes: Hall’s belief that as “a deceptively simple, low-key film infused by a quiet “love is the one and only law”; and Berg-Evjind’s stoic lyricism….[It] has its melodramatic flaws…but still manages to recognition that “no man can escape his fate, though he run faster astonish by its psychological accuracy and emotional than the wind.” The second theme in particular is deeply subtlety…full of delicate nuances and exquisitely underplayed.” embedded in Scandinavian literature, all the way back to the Writing in Richard Roud’s Cinema: A Critical Dictionary sagas, with their stories of men (1980). Milne in fact states an and women who intransigently extremely unconventional and offend the old gods of nature interesting view of Sjöström’s and pay the penalty. This work as a whole. The received fatalism pervades Sjöström’s opinion, as he says, is more or most deeply felt work, along less that voiced (in French) by with his belief that “human René Jeanne and Charles Ford in love…is the only answer to their 1963 monograph on fling in the face of a Sjöström: “After painting a cruel…nature.” Both themes depressing view of Sjöström and recur in the products of the his work as slow, somber and “Swedish school” of cinema impeccably sincere, they define that Sjöström fathered, as they his dominant themes as still do in the work of Ingmar ‘redemption by Nature, the Bergman. purification of souls by vast The film’s success natural phenomena,’” dismissing exceeded even that of Terje Vigen. It was praised for its acting as minor or misguided films that do not fit these preconceptions. and above all for its photography. One critic wrote that Milne, on the contrary, tends to reserve his warmest praise for “particularly in the scene at the sheepfold with its snow and precisely those works that escaped the adulation of the director’s subtle night-lighting, its sense of silence and desperation, contemporaries, and to denigrate the established masterpieces. Sjöström created effects not found outside the work of Griffith, Thus, for him, is not “the most yet more sophisticated and complex than anything even he had beautiful film in the world,” but “a tempestuous …in done.” Maurice Bardèche and Robert Brassilach called it “an which all the attention is lavished on the majestic, inimical important event in the history of cinema art. Perhaps the most landscapes”—a movie as “monumental but hollow” as the three important since 1895, because here for the first time a film Lagerlöf adaptations that followed between 1919 and 1921. consciously invaded the domain of art.” And for Louis Delluc it The first of these was Ingmarsönerna (The Sons of was simply “the most beautiful film in the world….directed with Ingmar) released in two parts in 1919. This massive and a dignity that is beyond words….It is the first love duet heard in ponderous family saga, shot partly on location in Jerusalem, and the cinema. A duet that comprises all life.” largely an exercise in social realism, also reflects something of Tösen fran Stormyrtorpet (The Girl From Stormy Croft), Lagerlöf’s fondness for the supernatural—notably in the famous Sjöström’s next picture, was released in September 1917, a few scene in which Ingmar climbs an enormous ladder to Heaven to months before The Outlaw. This rustic drama was the first of his seek the advice of his ancestors. Though modern critics find the adaptations from the novels of Selma Lagerlöf, who had assigned film lacking in the emotional intensity of Terje Vigen or The the screen rights to her books to Svenska Bio partly on account Outlaw, it was an immense commercial success in 1919, of her admiration for Sjöström. Later to become the first woman enabling Charles Magnusson to build new studios and to receive the Nobel Prize, Lagerlöf was, like Sjöström, a native amalgamate Svenska Bio with its principal rival to form Svensk of Värmland. Many of her voluminous novels were inspired by Filmindustri, still the largest Swedish production company. the legends and folktales of the province and by her conception The Ingmar saga continued in Karin Ingmarsdotter of nature as an active force in the destiny of her characters, torn (Karin, Daughter of Ingmar, 1920), Sjörström’s first film for the as they are, between good and evil. new company. This was followed by the most famous of the Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—6

Lagerlöf adaptations, Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage/ Thy inheritance to the benefit of two young lovers “without actually Soul Shall Bear Witness/Clay), made in 1920 and released in doing anything about it.” 1921. It begins on New Year’s Eve, with a dying Salvation Army The conventional view is that, of the two masters of the nurse sending for the alcoholic David Holm (Sjörström) so that Swedish silent cinema, Stiller was the exponent of comedy, she can make one last attempt to return him to his penniless wife Sjöström the somber intellectual (who, as an actor, achieved and children. David is at the time drinking with his cronies in a some memorable comic performances, thanks mainly to Stiller’s cemetery, where in a drunken squabble he is knocked out, direction). Tom Milne allows that Sjöström may well have been apparently dead. According to legend, a man who dies at profoundly serious by temperament, but maintains that he could midnight on New Year’s Eve must drive the phantom carriage match Stiller as a director of comedy when he chose to try. Milne for a year, collecting the souls of the dead. A long flashback writes that “few films of the period could rival the airy grace shows us how David has fallen from grace, tempted by his boon with which His Lordship’s Last Will opens. A shot of a stately companion Georg (Tore Svennberg), mansion. Pan down to a shabby now himself deceased. It is Georg tramp sleeping in the sunshine who has been driving the phantom outside the gates. Cut to a farm carriage and he now delivers it to labourer and a bevy of pigs happily David. But the latter is only blending their snores in the unconscious and, recovering, hurries courtyard. Cut inside to a kitchen home in time to save his family from where the butler and his staff doze communal suicide. with their heads on a table while a “Sjöström plays David cuckoo clock vainly chimes the Holm with dazzling ease and without hour.” any make-up,” writes Peter Cowie; Milne goes on: “With a here he retains the control that he lazy wit oddly reminiscent of the sometimes lost as an actor, ranging Renoir of Boudu sauvé des eaux, “from cynicism and wry humour to Sjöström uses thus opening moments of agony and sequence not only to establish an bewilderment….But The Phantom Carriage derives its unusually precise picture of the geographical layout of the house, originality from from the luminous, double exposure but to adumbrate his theme….Aided by a performance of photography of Julius Jaenzon. The construction of flashbacks is marvelous fantasy by Karl Mantzius…Sjöström scarcely puts a highly complex. And in fact about four-fifths of the film takes foot wrong in elaborating an exquisitely funny and touching place in the cemetery itself. Occasionally, as many as four comic fable out of this story of a sleeping beauty who stubbornly images are superimposed in one frame….The images of a resists the world’s efforts to free him from a self-imposed spell.” carriage moving over the waves, or silhouetted…against a Mästerman (Master Samuel, 1920). Also scripted by twilight sky, carry a highly charged appeal to the Sjöström’s friend Hjalmar Bergman, is another comedy—a imagination….The phantasmic scenes are even more credible “wonderfully funny and touching” original story about a because they are placed at intervals between the often brutally fearsome old moneylender (played by the director) whose hard realistic incidents…[of] daily life.” heart is melted by a young woman (Concordia Selander) whom It seemed to Léon Moussinac that Sjöström had he rashly accepts as a debtor’s pledge. At the same time, “attained an encompassing lyricism, unknown until now on the Sjöström was exploring a Gothic vein in Klostret I Sendomir screen: tragic stillness, noble and potent serenity of some scenes. (The Monastery of Sendomir, 1920), adapted by himself from a Though he tries to hypnotize us with the tragic dream of his novel by Franz Grillparzer. A “lurid tale of marital deceit and Phantom Carriage…he never fails to draw out the gentle revenge” full of chiaroscuro lighting effects, flickering candles, pervasive force of familial intimacy and of the nuances of and deceitful mirrors, it impressed Carl Dreyer above all because feelings externalized through a gesture or an illuminated of the skill with which Sjöström had given expression to mental expression. His films are for the most part freely elaborated suffering. etchings.” Greeted as a masterpiece in 1920, the film, as Cowie Vem Dömer (Love’s Crucible), made in 1920 but not says, has not endured as well as some of Sjöström’s earlier released until 1922, is another story of marital infidelity, set this work—perhaps because its advances were technical rather than time in Renaissance Florence, and photographed by Julius psychological.” There have been two inferior remakes of The Jaenzon with a “glowing opulence” inspired by the paintings of Phantom Carriage—by Julien Duvivier In 1938 and by Arne the period. It ends with a spectacular scene in which the wife Mattsson in 1958. accused of poisoning her husband, undergoes a terrifying trial by But while Sjörström was trudging through his massive fire amid “a crowd of black shadows” and drifting smoke. By series of Lagerlöf adaptations, he was also producing other works this time, indeed, Sjöström—influenced perhaps by the example of a quite different nature. Hans nads testamente ( His of —was showing greater willingness to entertain Lordship’s Last Will, 1919), scripted by Hjalmar Bergman from his audiences with exciting set-pieces, and to spare them tedium his own play, is an eccentric comedy about an old aristocrat (Karl by accelerating the pace of his editing. Mantzius) who, having discovered the vanity of all human All the same, Hans Pensel describes Love’s Crucible as endeavor, desires to pass what remains of his life in absolute “an unusually beautiful but otherwise fairly empty picture,” and indolence, undisturbed by any kind of activity whatever, there is a general feeling that Sjöström’s last Swedish pictures anywhere in his domain. He nevertheless manages to settle his showed a decline in vitality and confidence that reflected the Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—7 condition of the industry as a whole. “During World War I,” predictably, it was less warmly received by Swedish reviewers, Pensel says, “neutral Sweden experienced a boom in its film one of whom found it “badly composed and unartistic to a high production, supplying paralyzed Europe with pictures. After the degree, revealing that Sjöström had worked without joy or war, both the USA and the Continent were increasing their interest.” production… and the market for artistic Swedish film fell off In the spring of 1924, when Goldwyn Pictures became badly…..Svensk Filmindustri made desperate efforts to produce Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the new company’s first picture was pictures with international appeal.’ Sjörsrom’s last silent Swedish assigned to Victor Sjöström. This time, thanks to MGM’s films…are all examples of this effort.” brilliant young production chief Irving Thalberg, the director was Beginning with Love’s Crucible, Pensel goes on, “these given a farm more sympathetic project than his first—an films were all set in a foreign milieu and many parts were played adaptation of Leonid Andreyev’s nihilistic play He Who Gets by foreign actors. It is also significant that all were studio films Slapped. Sjörström wrote the adaptation himself, in collaboration and not made on outdoor locations.” Det omringade huset (The with Carey Wilson and, with Thalberg as his producer, worked Surrounded House, 1922) is a routine story about a party of quite without studio interference. The only difficulty he reported British soldiers in the African desert, featuring the English actor was in persuading MGM technicians not to drench every scene Matheson Lang. Eld ombord (The Tragic Ship, 1923) is an with brilliant and unmodified lighting. Filming was completed equally conventional drama. Combining a shipwreck story and a within a month, at the low cost of $140,000. love triangle, in which Sjöström “loses the heroine to Matheson As adapted, the movie tells the story of a dedicated Lang in order to please the English audience.” scientist (Lon Chaney) whose false friend steals not only his wife In 1931i n an article called “Sweden and Sjöström,” but the fruit of a lifetime’s research. In a moment of absolute C.A. Lejeune wrote that “ten years ago Sweden was to the screen disillusionment, it comes to him that is only possible future is as what Russia is today. It was first in intelligence, first in force, a clown—the personification of humiliation and ridicule. “The first in imaginative zeal….Watching those old Swedish pictures, moment, brilliantly enacted by Lon Chaney, is also brilliantly we used to feel almost under our realized by Sjöström,” wrote fingers the texture of the velvets, Tom Milne; “as the scientist the stains, the lace….The sinks down in despair at his candlelight too, the pale cluttered desk, he accidentally sunlight, the shadows, were rich knocks over a globe of the in an almost tangible quality; we world that rolls away to felt the light as a physical become a ball spinning on the experience….The old fingertip of a grimy, white- personification of the elements faced clown, which in turn has never quite left the becomes a huge globe with a Scandanavian mind, and wind, horde of tiny clowns wood, water is still alive; light clambering down invisible and darkness are still ropes to perch on its horizontal elementals.” For her, Sjörström band, which, in a final would “always stand as the metamorphosis, becomes a classic representative of Sweden circus ring with a troupe of in the cinema,” and the decline in clowns watching a rehearsal.” that cinema began when first Sjöström and then Stiller left for In the circus, the sad hero falls in love with a beautiful bareback Hollywood. rider (Norma Shearer). Renouncing any hope of claiming her for Ironically enough, it was in 1922, when Svensk himself, he rescues her from the attentions of an evil aristocrat, Filmindustri was fighting for its life and Sjöström’s own work facilitates her happy marriage (to John Gilbert), and is murdered had begun to falter, that he was “discovered” in the United for his pains—though not before he has set the lions on the States. It was then that The Phantom Carriage reached America disgusting baron. and that The Girl From Stormy Croft (then five years old) was He who Gets Slapped opened in November 1924 at the voted the best foreign film of the year. In December 1922 Capitol Theatre in New York, accompanied by a big stage show Sjöström signed a contract with Goldwyn Pictures in which, and much ballyhoo. It was an enormous financial success, among other things, he agreed to sign himself Victor Seastrom. breaking a whole series of box-office records. The critical In return, he was granted quite exceptional privileges, including reception was equally positive, and not only in the Unite States, the right to choose his own scripts. where reviewer found in it “the genius of a Sjöström arrived in Hollywood with his wife and two Chaplin or a Lubistch, and called it “the most flawless picture we daughters in February 1923. He had hoped to interest Goldwyn have ever seen.” The Swedish critic Bengt Idestam-Almquist in an Ibsen adaptation; instead he was offered novels by Elinor concluded that it and The Phantom Chariot were Sjöström’s best Glyn. Finally, in desperation, he chose as his first script a films to date. ” The director’s use of light and shade was melodramatic novel by , adapted by Paul Bern as universally admired, and so was the acting. The movie launched Name the Man (1924). It is a courtroom drama involving an Norma Shearer’s career and confirmed Chaney’s status as a unmarried mother (Mae Busch) who happens to be the mistress major star. of a judge (Conrad Nagel). In the United States, Name the Man In spite of its melodramatic plot, He Who Gets Slapped was a success, both critically and financially; perhaps has stood up remarkably well to the test of time. It is said to Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—8 show a greater concern for narrative and characterization than with her cousin and his wife in Texas. The coarseness, dirt and Sjöström’s Swedish films, and a “new grace.” Tom Milne ugliness of pioneer life reduce her to a state of almost unbearable regards it as “one of Sjöström’s most daringly inventive revulsion, and the endless wind drives her to the edge of insanity. films….In its acute masochism, expressionism blending neatly And there is worse to come. Forced into a marriage of into the ethos, He Who Gets Slapped is sui generis in convenience with a clumsy but goodhearted cowboy (Lars Sjöström’s work. A blood brother here to the Tod Browning of Hanson) whom she despises, she welcomes during his absence an The Unknown, Sjöström visualizes the clown’s searing pain as a ingratiating stranger in whom she sees hope of deliverance. The series of stark black-and-white contrasts radiating from the man is a rapist, and in defending herself she kills him. astonishing moment when, as he broods alone in the ring, the The exterior shooting was done in the Mojave Desert spotlight is switched out on him, leaving his chalk-white face as under such dreadful conditions that Gish found it easy “to enter a tiny balloon suspended in a sea of darkness where it gradually into the state of the character I play.” But the result justified the vanishes, leaving emptiness.” suffering of the cast and crew. “Illusions are literally swept away After this piece of “expressionistic sophistication” came by the eternally raging wind, buried under the choking drifts of (1925), sand that creep into every an opulent costume romance crevice of the soul,” wrote To, ruined by a weak script, and then Milne. “And in the final The Tower of Lies (1925), which magnificent sequence where recruited Lon Chaney and Norma Letty watches in terror as the Shearer. Adapted from one of wind gradually erodes the Selma Lagelöf’s best-known grave to expose the dead hand novels, the latter is a film very of the stranger she accidentally much in the manner of killed and tried to bury, her Sjöström’s Swedish pictures. hallucinated terror materializes Chaney plays a peasant driven to in the form of a white madness by the discovery that his stallion…who rides the beloved daughter has become a duststorm like a beautiful, prostitute in the evil city. Filmed haunting omen of doom. Here on location in California, this Sjöström blends fact and was in its day one of the most fantasy so completely that the admired of Sjöström’s American West itself…becomes a movies, praised above all for its psychological penetration. towering poetic image.” And the director had even greater success with a The Wind reminded Peter Cowie of the Westerns of radically truncated adaptation on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel and of Stroheim’s Greed, but he also found ”an about adultery and intolerance in seventeenth-century undeniably Scandinavian character in this masterpiece of the Massachusetts, The Scarlet Letter. It was Lillian Gish, then one Twenties,” with its characters drifting at the mercy of their of MGM’s greatest stars, who sold this production to the studio, environment. It was reportedly the studio that insisted on the calming Mayer’s anxiety about her daring project by canvassing happy ending, in which the trauma of the rape and killing the support of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ. exorcises Letty’s fear of the elements, allowing her to adjust to Thalberg selected Sjöström as director, and Gish was delighted her new environment and to recognize her husband’s simple by his Scandinavian thoroughness and the restrained acting style goodness… Some but not all critics thought the film weakened he demanded, calling him the finest director she had ever worked by this conclusion; most agreed that Lillian Gish’s performance with. Sjöström devoted a year and a half to this film, some of was the most powerfully dramatic of her career. which was shot on location in New England. Released in August After filming Masks of the Devil (1928), an 1926, it earned critical superlatives for its authenticity of detail unexceptional variation on the Dorian Gray theme, Sjöström and atmosphere, and for the excellence of Gish’s performance as returned to Sweden to be at the deathbed of his great friend Hester Prynne. Mauritz Stiller. Back in Hollywood, he made his first talkie, A The Puritan pastor Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter Lady to Love (1930), based on Sidney Howard’s play They Knew was played by the Swedish actor Lars Hanson, who in Sjöström’s What They Wanted, a routine comedy about a mail-order bride. next film was cast opposite the most famous of Hollywood’s After that Sjöström made another visit to Sweden. He intended a Swedish immigrants, . It is said that all three “felt as temporary stay, but, once there, decided to remain. if they were working back in Stockholm again.” The Divine It is not entirely clear why Sjöström abandoned his Woman (1928) was very loosely based on a play about incidents Hollywood career, which had been so much more successful than in the early career of Sarah Bernhardt. Rather coolly received by Stiller’s. Some critics maintain that he had been unhappy at contemporary reviewers, it was nevertheless another box-office MGM, and that his grapplings with commercial texts like Name success and is now (as Richard Roud says) among the more the Man and Confessions of a Queen had damaged him as an interesting of Hollywood’s “lost “films. artist. C.A. Lejeune thought that “Sjöström, on leaving Sweden, Lillian Gish’s second film for Sjöström is generally has ceased to be Sjöström,” and Andrew Sarris wrote much later regarded as the greatest of his American films, The Wind (1928). that it was “as if when Sjöström left Sweden, his artistic soul Adapted from a novel by Dorothy Scarborough, it centers on a couldn’t breathe. There was not enough air on the Hollywood repressed and fastidious young Southern belle who goes to live sound-stages.” But in a letter to Lillian Gish the director himself Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—9 referred to his Hollywood experience as “perhaps the happiest Peter Cowie writes that “Victor Sjöström is one of that days of my life,” and recent criticism has tended to the view small band of directors…who have led the cinema into altogether expressed by Tom Milne—that the handful of Sjöström’s fresh channels. No filmmaker before Sjöström integrated Hollywood films that survive “suggest that these may have been landscape so fundamentally into his work or conceived of nature anni mirabili for him.” as a mystical as well as a physical force in terms of film Back in Sweden, Sjöström planned a film based on language.” Hans Pensel calls him “the first important intellectual Strindberg’s Miss Julie, a project later triumphantly realized by of the screen,” who “showed that an exciting film can be created Alf Sjöberg. Instead Sjöström made and starred in Markuells i by revealing what goes on in the human mind and heart.” And Wadköping (The Markurells of Wadköping), a revenge drama Andrew Sarris thinks it possible that he “was the world’s first reminiscent of Terje Vigen, adapted great director, even before from a novel by Hjalmat Bergman Chaplin and Griffith.” and photographed by his old colleague Julius Jaenzon. Peter Victor Sjöström 1879-1960 Cowie called this study of small- (Victor Sjöström : his life town life “the last significant work and his work, translated by directed by Sjöström, and arguably Peter Cowie with the the last Swedish film of quality for assistance of Anna-Maija a decade.” It is generally assumed Marttinen and Christer that Sjöström ended his career as a Frunck) (New York: New director partly because he was York Zoetrope, 1988) uncomfortable with sound, partly …In 1919 Svenska because he had no interest in the Bio, where Sjöström had frivolity that dominated the Swedish been employed since 1912, cinema during the 1930s. The only merged with Filmindustri other picture he directed, Under the AB Skandia to form a new Red Robe, was a historical romance company, Svensk made in 1937 for Alexander Korda Filmindustri. A year later in Britain. the new studios at Råsunda, just outside Stockholm, were During the last part of his long life, Sjörström returned completed. The first project for the new company was Victor to his first career as an actor. Between his return to Sweden in Sjöström's magnum opus The Phantom Carriage, based on Selma 1931 and his death in Sweden in 1960 at the age of eighty, he Lagerlöf's 1912 novel. Although not regarded as one of appeared in a total of nineteen films, most of them for Gustaf Lagerlöf's best works, the novel's theme of conversion and moral Molander or Arne Mattsson. From 1942 to 1949 Sjöström also struggle fascinated Sjöström. and the supernatural elements has a served as an “artistic advisor” to Svensk Filmindustri, where special appeal to the cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, who was among his protégés. A profound admirer of relished the chance to experiment with special effects. In Sjöström, Bergman has said that he works always with an image technical terms the film set new standards and was an all-round of the older director and his Swedish films before him as a success. Ingmar Bergman, who wrote the play Bildmakarna model. Sjöström was cast as an old orchestral conductor in about the reception of the film, still regularly watches The Bergman’s Till gladje (To Joy, 1950), and gave his last and Phantom Carriage every summer at his private cinema on Fårö: greatest performance in Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries, "My relationship with The Phantom Carriage is very 1957). Already ill and in pain, he played the lead role as special. I was fifteen year old when I saw it for the first time. Professor Isak Borg, brought through dreams and human contacts […] I remember it as one of the major emotional and artistic to a recognition of his failures in humanity. experiences of my life." At a Swedish Film Academy tribute to Sjörström in …Between 1939 and 1943 Sjöström worked almost February 1960, shortly after his death, Ingmar Bergman said that exclusively in the theatre, but in 1942-43 he was called back to what he had observed in Sjörström’s performance in Wild Svensk Filmindustri by the new head of the company Carl Strawberrieswas “a colossal fight of will against the forces of Anders Dymling, as artistic director responsible for all film destruction which raged continuously.” And Bergman quoted production. In this role he was inspired by Irving Thalberg, from his diary of the film’s making: “I never tire of studying, becoming heavily involved in screen writing ("If you've got a with unabashed curiosity, this mighty face. Occasionally there good screenplay you can assume that any film is 75 per cent passes over it a muffled shriek of pain. Sometimes it is disfigured home and dry") and to a certain extent in editing, but he stayed by suspicion and mistrust, by senile distemper….All of a sudden away from the actual film shoots. During this period he first he can turn around with a smile of spontaneous tenderness, and came into contact with Ingmar Bergman, who was working in the speak with a shrew wisdom.” Finally, of the close-ups of Isak company's script department. He steered Bergman's first Borg arriving at understanding and reconciliation, Bergman screenplay Torment through to production, and when Bergman wrote: “For these close-ups Sjöström’s face shone with a mystic himself got to direct Crisis, Sjöström was the young director's brightness, as though it reflected the light of another world; his only ally in a company in which Bergman made himself so manner became mild, almost meek….It was marvelous—the unpopular that he ended up getting the sack. clarity and tranquility of a soul at rest. Never before had I …In the 1950s Victor Sjöström went back to his life in contemplated a face so noble and free of care.” travelling theatre. His roles included Willy Loman in Arthur Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—10

Miller's Death of a Salesman, the title role in Swedenhielms and dominated by an abusive father. This was a background to (Max von Sydow played one of the sons when Sjöström made a some extent shared by Selma Lagerlöf, author of the novel guest appearance at the Helsingborg City Theatre), his last part Körkarlen – the source of Sjöström’s adaptation – and Larsson being the title role in Johan Ulfstjerna (1957-1958). sketched at least two portraits of the writer, in 1902 and 1908 . In 1957 Ingmar Bergman repaid his indebtedness to But the most striking of Larsson’s works, and one uncannily Sjöström by giving him the main part in Wild Strawberries predicting the special effects for which Körkarlen (The Phantom [Smultronstället], which alongside The Phantom Carriage is the Carriage) is famous, is “The Home’s Good Fairy” (1909), in for film which Sjöström is best remembered. Bergman adapted which a benevolent ghost hovers in a bedroom like a double the role specially for the great man, whose first inclination was to exposure . Sjöström and his legendary cameraman Julius Jaenzon decline a part he thought too difficult to play. Yet Bergman (credited here under his pseudonym “J. Julius”) used double prevailed: "Victor was in a bad mood, saying: 'I don't want to do exposures in The Phantom Carriage to create the illusion of two this, I don't think you're right'. We clashed because I wanted worlds – one natural, the other supernatural – in the same space . Victor to do certain things that he didn't want to do, or rather […] Sjöström was not the first major Swedish artist to evoke he was tense and wanting to do too much and I didn't want him the spirit world through photography. , as well to do anything at all. But then he was amazing to work with […] as creating modern drama and pioneering many of the concerns as long as he was home by quarter past five sharp in time for his and methods of 20th century avant-garde painting, experimented daily whisky." with photography throughout his life, even inventing the …Following Sjöström's death, Ingmar Bergman read “Celestograph”, an image taken without a lens (which Strindberg out the following extract from the diary he kept during the thought distorted and subverted reality), with sensitised filming of Wild Strawberries at a photographic plates turned to the sky memorial ceremony organised by and left to expose; and the lensless the Swedish Film Academy on 20 Wunderkamera, a camera that enabled February 1960: him to take “psychological portraits” "We had just shot the final endowed with “mystic meaning” or scenes to round off Wild “visionary suggestion” . Strawberries [Smultronstället] – Of course, Sjöström and the final close-ups of Isak Borg Jaenzon’s experiments were primarily when he feels the sense of clarity a response to Lagerlöf’s 1912 novel. and reconciliation. His face The Phantom Carriage is remarkably became illuminated with an faithful to its source, and the double enigmatic light, reflected from exposures and other effects can be another reality. His facial seen as at once: expressions suddenly became mild, 1. A visual correlative to the almost serene. His expression was literary narrative’s interpenetration of open, smiling, full of love. . . physical and supernatural worlds or states, where material It was a miracle. . . actions, settings and objects are spiritually freighted ; 2. An equivalent of the narrative’s recessive structure of Such total tranquillity – a soul that had found peace and lucidity. stories and flashbacks, all controlled by Georges (Tore Never before or since have I experienced a face so noble and Svennberg), Death’s driver ; tellingly, the carriage itself is enlightened. And yet this was nothing more than a piece of acting introduced in a story within a flashback. In other Lagerlöf books, in a dirty studio. And it had to be acting. This exceedingly shy storytelling seems to be linked to the resurrection of the dead and human creature would never have shown us bystanders this moral regeneration (11); and deeply buried treasure of compassion and purity had it not 3. Marking the film world’s threshold points: the involved of a piece of acting, a performance…" narrative begins with the Salvation Army’s Sister Edith [Astrid Holm] at “death’s door”, the first of many doors that physically, The Phantom Carriage by Darragh O’Donoghue Senses of psychologically and spiritually block characters; while most of Cinema 61: the first hour is set in a graveyard, that liminal space where the Lawyer: “Those are life’s little difficulties, you see!” living bury their dead. - August Strindberg, A Dream Play (1901) Although the novel, like much of Lagerlöf’s work, takes its cue from Swedish folklore and superstition , its theme is When Ingmar Bergman wanted to recreate the late 19th festively Christian. It is the tale of a misanthrope who appears to century youth of Isaac Borg in Smultronstället (Wild die on New Year’s Eve and is shown the lives he has ruined by Strawberries, 1957), he turned for inspiration to Sweden’s most an emissary of Death, before being given a chance to redeem famous artist, Carl Larsson. In a series of picture books with himself, and is essentially a variation on Charles Dickens’ titles such as Ett hem (Our Home, 1899), Spadarfvet, mitt lilla novella A Christmas Carol (1843). The film seems to endorse landtbruk (Spadarfvet, Our Place in the Country, 1906) and Åt such sentiments by ending with David Holm (Sjöström) solsidan (On the Sunny Side, 1910), Larsson portrayed family repeating Georges’ prayer for mankind: “Lord, please let my soul life in cosy farmhouse interiors and brightly lit rural idylls. This come to maturity before it is reaped”; the title of the book’s 1921 idealism was hard won, and Larsson’s youth, like that of Victor tie-in English translation, Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, further Sjöström, who plays Borg, was marked by rupture and poverty, emphasises this exhortatory didacticism . Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—11

The film’s Christianity, however, is more Hitchcock and redemption, and Holm’s second resurrection in the world than Dickens. Four decades before Eric Rohmer and Claude we’ve been shown is serial, without end. Chabrol identified “exchange”, in particular the “transfer of guilt”, as the English master’s preeminent theme , Sjöström was Paul Mayersber: Phantom Forms: The Phantom Carriage elaborating on its possibilities . Although David Holm is clearly …While American silent cinema was defined by its conceived as the narrative’s sinner, his actions and fate are part various genres—comedy, melodrama, adventure—Swedish of a roundelay of guilt, blame and punishment. His destiny is cinema was almost entirely devoted to national folktales and intimately bound up with that of saintly Edith – their narratives sagas, which gave it a unique identity, a landscape never seen are intercut in the first “chapter”; each can see Death; they are before. With films like A Man There Was (1917), The Outlaw defined throughout by being prone (Edith is on her deathbed; and His Wife (1918), and The Sons of Ingmar (1919), Sjöström Holm is repeatedly tempted, for good and ill, when lying down, was established as a master, with a reputation as grand, if not as an image of his death-in-life, his lost humanity); and both destroy international, as D. W. Griffith’s. Then came The Phantom Mrs Holm’s well-being. The consequences of Holm’s moral Carriage, a major departure from his outdoor dramas. failures physically manifest as consumption and are transmitted The film begins on New Year’s Eve. Edit (Astrid to Edith when she repairs his germ-ridden coat. But Edith is not Holm), a Salvation Army sister, is dying of tuberculosis. She sits as innocent as she seems; she subsumes her physical attraction to up in her bed to call for a man named David Holm before she Holm into an obsession with saving his soul, with disastrous dies. The clock ticks toward midnight. David (Sjöström), a results for everyone. violent alcoholic, is located drinking with down-and-out friends Another system of transference originates with Georges, in a cemetery. He refuses to visit Edit, gets into a brawl, and is the smooth-talking, pointy-bearded Mephistopheles who tempts accidentally struck dead at the midnight hour. A carriage arrives Holm from his contented family life – one significantly rooted in in a ghostly double exposure, with a phantom hooded coachman, work and nature – to a dissolute urban existence which, Georges (Tore Svennberg), to take away David’s soul. The paradoxically for a fantasy legend is that any person who film, returns Sjöström, after dies at midnight himself becomes the romantic pantheism of the the new coachman employed by films that brought him global Death to pick up souls and wait fame (Terje Vigen [A Man for next year’s midnight death, There Was, 1917] and Berg- when he will hand over the reins Ejvind och hans hustru [The of the carriage to the new Outlaw and His Wife, 1918]), incumbent. to the unblinking social- At death, David is forced realism of Ingeborg Holm to recall his life, and his mind (1913). That film’s title becomes the narrative itself. character was performed by Through an intricate series of Hilda Borgström, who here flashbacks, we discover a plays Holm’s wife – on one reprobate who has abused his level, The Phantom Carriage wife (Hilda Borgström) and imagines what might have children, his younger brother changed for the luckless (Einar Axelsson), and Edit, Ingeborg if her husband had whose mission has been to lived; Sjöström bleakly suggests: not much. For all its brilliant personally save him from his addiction. Lagerlöf, whose book and evocative use of double exposure, the most moving piece of owes much to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, was the star of technical “trickery” in The Phantom Carriage is a dissolve that Swedish fiction, and Sjöström himself filmed four of her novels. turns a family picnic in a lakeside glade into a drunken orgy. Together with their friend the director Mauritz Stiller—who This triad of inebriates will be repeated in a tavern, with Holm discovered Greta Gustafsson and turned her into Garbo in The taking over Georges’ role as tempter, just as he must replace him Saga of Gösta Berling (1924)—they created the golden age of as Death’s driver. Swedish cinema, which declined abruptly when they all left for From Blodets Röst (The Voice of Passion, 1913) to his Hollywood. last, underrated film, Under the Red Robe (1937), Sjöström’s Sjöström quarreled with Lagerlöf about the style of the work has frequently dramatised themes of declining fortune and adaptation of The Phantom Carriage. She wanted it shot on the redemption of “bad” or hardened men, and The Phantom location in the southern town of Landskrona. He opted for a Carriage fits neatly into this pattern. But another reading is studio production at Filmstaden in Råsunda, built for the new possible: the film’s systems of transference, repetition, company Svensk Filmindustri. The film was a bold experiment in parallelism and circularity; its course of moral and physical controlled conditions, carried out with his cinematographer, infection that spreads to every character; its world where the Julius Jaenzon, who had already used double exposure in Stiller’s family is a site of violence, disease and threat, are most chillingly Sir Arne’s Treasure (1919), and the laboratory work of Éugen emblematised when Holm hatchets down the kitchen door to stop Hellman. This time, the superimpositions were layered up to four his brutalised wife from fleeing him. The power of this times. The ghosts appeared to move within the sets, disappearing inexorable scene overshadows the narrative’s final reconciliation from time to time behind the other characters and the solid foreground objects. A hand-moved camera followed each of Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—12 them. And they were lit differently, using filters, to give them a predecessor, coachman Georges, who is touched by David’s special reality. The final effect was to create a seemingly three- loving wife and the devoted Edit, who have fought so hard and dimensional image. Sjöström’s studio work did not undermine long to save the man. his realism but enhanced it. The sets, interior and exterior, were Sjöström’s women are independently minded rather shot in exceptionally deep focus for the time. Busy background than compliant, resolutely loving rather than sadly helpless when action was as clear as the foreground, impossible without beset by monstrous male authority. The success of The Phantom artificial studio lighting. Carriage brought the director an invitation to America, where as Before 1920, the cinema has no history of its own. In a revenant from his own childhood, he made two films with Germany, Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, and G. W. Pabst, the Lillian Gish, The Scarlet Letter (1926) and the masterpiece The fathers of film noir, continued the theatrical and painterly Wind (1928). Her face was unnervingly similar to that of The tradition of expressionism. In France, Louis Feuillade, the father Phantom Carriage’s Hilda Borgström. As Norma Desmond, of comic-book cinema, made serials in which fantastic, costumed ghost of silent cinema in Sunset Boulevard (1950), proclaims, characters roamed the real streets of Paris. In Italy, Giovanni “We didn’t need voices. We had faces then.” Pastrone, father of the epic, went straight back to the Roman In America, where Sjöström’s name had been changed Empire. But like Griffith, Sjöström explored what Bergman to Seastrom, he made an extraordinary film, He Who Gets called the ultimate truth of cinema, the human face, to which Slapped (1924), adapted from Leonid Andreyev’s play, in which Sjöström constantly guides us even without close-ups. Lon Chaney’s scientist, having lost his wife and his original Coming from the theater, Sjöström nonetheless rejected research to another man, becomes in his humiliation a circus traditional stage acting as detrimental to films. He wanted clown. Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, who defined another style of performance since the dialogue could not be horror as “a clown at midnight,” was an expressionist heard, concentrating on face, movements, and gestures. His own metamorphosis of David Holm. Despite the success of performance in The Phantom Carriage avoids melodrama by Sjöström’s American films, however, he returned to Sweden in admitting David’s inner confusion, which simultaneously erupts 1930, at the dawn of the sound era, to work in the theater, feeling into violence. His outward realism explores inner states. Some of perhaps that this was where speech belonged. the intertitles are actually voice-over, as he talks to himself. His influence remained. David Holm is possessed by The scene where David takes an ax and splinters a drink as a vampire is by blood. Murnau’s spectral locked door to get to his terrified wife and children is an exact (1922) owed something to this film. David renouncing his forerunner of the crazed attack by Jack Nicholson’s character in alcoholism at the stroke of midnight is surely as impossible as The Shining (1980). There is a similar scene in Griffith’s Broken Dracula swearing off blood. But Sjöström, the humanist, could Blossoms, made a year before The Phantom Carriage, which not resist. Sjöström may or may not have seen. Interestingly, Kubrick The Phantom Carriage is at root a Faustian tale, with played down Jack’s progressive alcoholism from Stephen King’s drink as the devil. If the film were the work of a Jansenist original and went for out-and-out schizophrenia, the origins of Catholic like Robert Bresson, David’s suffering would be a which he scrupulously avoided. Sjöström hints at social causes, struggle with God’s design for him, alcohol being the mysterious poverty and unemployment, but the truth about David may lie presence of the divine in his bloodstream, and would probably elsewhere. end in suicide. But for Sjöström, God helps those who help In 1881, as a small child, Sjöström went to America themselves. There is an extraordinary moment when David’s with his father, Olaf, and mother, Maria Elizabeth, to whom he wife faints out of fear at his ax attack and he fetches her a cup of was devoted. Tragically, she died when he was seven, and soon water, only to berate her violently when she recovers afterward his father married the family nursemaid, twenty years consciousness. Here is a glimpse not of God but of a good man his junior, whom Victor did not like. Olaf was a womanizer, within a bad man. Sjöström the actor marvelously conveys the twice bankrupt, and a born-again Christian. In 1893, Victor was brutish, the melancholy, the sarcastic, and the reflective aspects returned to Sweden to live with his aunt. (By then, he was fluent of his character. The Shining treats Jack as a man with the in English, which was extremely valuable when, in the twenties, aggressive need to humiliate others. He is all demon, and the film he returned to America.) All his life, Sjöström feared becoming is essentially a spectacle. Sjöström’s David is a study of tortured like his father, whom he closely resembled physically. He lived self-humiliation, like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov. The original frugally and was terrified, even when successful, of being draft of Crime and Punishment was entitled “The Drunkards.” without money. Perhaps his rendering of David’s alcoholism When The Phantom Carriage opened at the Criterion derived from the tensions in Sjöström’s relationship with his Theater in New York, it was lauded for being precisely what it father. His performance is so realistically and subtly detailed that was not: a cautionary tale of the evils of drink. The distributor it may have come from precise memories, a ghostly reincarnation had completely reedited it as The Stroke of Midnight. The legend of his father, in other hands a model for a horror film. of the Phantom Carriage didn’t come in until almost halfway. The father and God. The film is surprisingly Sjöström’s structure had been dismantled, and the film became a disconnected from Swedish Lutheranism. It is closer to straightforward narrative. As such, it works well—as a Bergman’s demonic (1968) than to the Hollywood film with a quasi-religious score performed on a religious crisis of (1962). David’s sudden cinema Wurlitzer. conversion at the end is not altogether convincing. He is given a Julien Duvivier remade The Phantom Carriage in 1939 last chance by coming back from the dead to save his wife from as La charrette fantôme, with Pierre Fresnay as David and Louis poisoning herself and their children out of hopeless desperation. Jouvet as Georges, an interesting expansion of their relationship. But it isn’t God the Father who intervenes. It is his dead It was reborn again as Arne Mattsson’s Körkarlen in 1958, and in Sjöström—THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE—13

Bergman’s TV film on the making of the original, The Image about unseen fear. It is not dark but powdery white. He does not Makers (2000), based on the Per Olov Enquist play. The subject rely on double exposure for the supernatural but, subverting came back unheralded in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life Soviet montage, implies missing pieces to evoke the absent (1946), a gloomy film noir subversively reimagined as a feel- menace. good Christmas story. The Phantom Carriage, the most experimental of The special handmade visual beauty of The Phantom Swedish films, reaches for inward realism. In Search of Lost Carriage has never been equaled. When Georges drives to a Time was concurrent with the early development of film. rocky seashore to pick up a woman who has drowned after a Proust’s creation of memory as a literary form is parallel with the wreck, the coach glides through the crashing waves. When he experiments in film as a dream form. Proust’s “printing” of goes down into the sea to get her, the effect of the ghostly figure recovered memory is a photographic process. Film is in fact a under the swirling water is delirious, a hallucination of sequence of still photographs, frozen images, “dead” pictures drunkenness. The film itself is drunk. The carriage is an emblem brought back to life on the screen. With The Phantom Carriage, for cinema as a phantom form capable of the documentary we may properly ask, are the dead more alive than the living? (Lumière) and the imaginary (Méliès) at the same time. Jean Paul Mayersberg started as a film critic, worked as an Cocteau’s film Orpheus (1950) was probably influenced by assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville, Joseph Losey, and Roger Sjöström and Murnau in its use of negative printing to evoke the Corman, and became the screenwriter of The Man Who Fell to spectral in the real—or vice versa. Cocteau had a word for it: Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Eureka, and Croupier. He l’irréel. is the author of Hollywood: The Haunted House and a novel, The influence of Sjöström on his friend Carl Dreyer in Homme Fatale. the spectral Vampyr (1932) is often cited. But Dreyer’s film is

SPRING 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIV Jan 24 William A. Wellman, The Public Enemy 1931 Jan 31 Merian C. Cooper, King Kong 1933 Feb 7 Ernst Lubitsch, To Be or Not to Be, 1942 Feb 14 Luchino Visconti, Senso 1954 Feb 21 , Paths of Glory 1957 Feb 29 Sidney Lumet, 12 Angry Men 1957 Mar 6 Satiyajit Ray, The Music Room 1958 Mar 13 spring break Mar 20 Clint Eastwood, The Outlaw Josey Wales 1975 Mar 27 John Woo, The Killer 1989 Apr 3 Krzysztof Kieslowki, Kieslowski, Red 1994 Apr 10 Terrence Malick, Thin Red Line 1998 Apr 17 Fernando Meirelles City of God, 2003 Apr 24 Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight 2008

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