Sweden

 Sweden

In 1912,
1)Sweden suddenly began producing a string of innovative films.
2)Most of these were made by only three directors: Georg af Klercker, Mauritz Stiller,
    and Victor Sjöström.
3)The Swedish cinema initially had little impact abroad, and so its filmmakers were working
   without the larger budgets made possible by export.
4)Sweden was among the first countries to create a major cinema by drawing deliberately
   on the particular traits of its national culture.
5)Swedish films were characterized by their dependence on northern landscapes and
6)by their use of local literature, costumes, customs, and the like.
7)After the war’s end, their specifically Swedish qualities made these films novel and
   popular in other countries.

In 1912,
1)Svenska moved to a larger studio near Stockholm.
2)The first director hired was Georg af Klercker,
   who became head of production.
3)That same year, actors Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström were hired to boost
   Svenska’s production.
4)All three directed, wrote scripts, and acted.
5)They made many short films with modest budgets during the next few years.

World War 1
1)After the beginning of the war,
2)Germany blocked film imports to several northern European countries.
   few films got past this blockade,
3)Swedish production was boosted and filmmakers were relatively free
   of foreign influences for a few years.

Georg af Klercker
1)was a versatile director with a strong sense of pictorial beauty.
2)Af Klercker had begun as an actor, and he also did set designs when he first joined
   Svenska.
3)He was soon directing but did not get on well with Magnusson and quit in 1913.
4)He then worked at smaller production firms, primarily Hasselbladfilm
   (founded in 1915).
5) There he was the undisputed leader, directing most of the firm’s output.

Af Klercker
1)made comedies, crime thrillers, war films, and melodramas, usually with fairly
   conventional stories.
2)In all of them, however, he displays a distinctive eye for landscape, light, and
   a variety of framing within scenes.
3)His films contain some of the most beautiful sets of this period,
  defined by simple lines but richly furnished with details.
4)Af Klercker skillfully suggests offscreen space: background rooms are often just visible
   through beaded curtains, and mirrors reveal action occurring outside the frame.
5)He also elicited subtle, restrained performances from his actors.
6)From 1918 to 1919, Hasselblad went through mergers that made it a part of Svenska Bio,
   which then became Svensk Filmindustri (the name it has kept ever since).
7)At that point af Klercker gave up filmmaking to go into business.

Stiller and Sjöström,
1)Af Klercker’s more famous colleagues, Stiller and Sjöström, both stayed at Svenska,
    directing, acting, and writing scripts.
2)They were extremely prolific until both went to Hollywood,
    Sjöström in 1923 and Stiller in 1925.
3)Unfortunately, however, most of the negatives of the films made by Svenska were
   destroyed in a fire in 1941.
4)This disaster, one of the most tragic losses among many nitrate fires, means that few of
   Svenska’s early films have survived.
5)Most existing prints of Stiller and Sjöström films have been copied from early release
   prints.

Stiller
1)So many of Mauritz Stiller’s early films are lost that it is difficult to judge his career
   before the mid-1910s.
2)He is mainly remembered for the urbane wit of several films he made between 1916
   and 1920,
3)as well as for his adaptations of the works of Nobel prize–winning Swedish novelist
    Selma Lagerlöf.

Stiller and Thomas Graal’s Best Film (1917)
1)The wit was well displayed in the comedy Thomas Graal’s Best Film (1917).
2)In it, an eccentric scriptwriter-actor (played delightfully by Victor Sjöström)
   glimpses and falls in love with a young woman, Bessie,
3) and refuses to finish his overdue scenario unless she can be found and persuaded to star
   in it.
4)Meanwhile, the free-spirited Bessie rejects her wealthy parents’ choice of a fiancé
    and decides to accept the movie role.
5)The film alternates between the two main characters, including scenes representing the
   scenario the hero writes, which fantasizes a love story between him and Bessie.
6)Eventually the two actually meet and become engaged.
7)The result was one of the cleverest films about filmmaking made in the silent era.

In the following scene, the heroine finds out she is to star in a film and practices acting—in a flamboyant style that parodies Italian diva films.

Thomas Graal’s Best Film (Mauritz Stiller, 1917)
Intertitle:
Bessie's behaviour assumes day by day, a tinge of deeper mystery, and her sudden passion for domestic duties fills he doting parents with astonishment. 

Intertitle:
Bessie knows nothing whatever about acting, so naturally is filled with ambition
to play all the great tragic roles.

Stiller’s most famous film was the antithesis of these comedies. A tragedy set in Renaissance-period Sweden, Sir Arne’s Treasure (1919) was adapted from a Lagerlöf story. Three fugitive mercenaries pillage the castle of Sir Arne, trying to escape with his treasure. The town’s harbor is icebound, however, trapping them until spring. The young woman Elsalill, the sole survivor of the massacre, falls in love with Sir Archie, not realizing that he is one of the killers. Despite his love for Elsalill, Sir Archie uses her as a shield in a vain escape attempt. The final scene shows the townspeople bearing her coffin across the ice as spring approaches.

Sir Arne’s Treasure (Mauritz Stiller, 1919)

intertitle:
And after the evil-doers were taken away from the ship it started storming again.
And from his high deck the skipper could see-a long line of people heading toward his ship.

Intertitle:

These were all the women from Marstrand, both young and old, They were all in mourning, -and they were accompanied by young men carrying a stretcher.

Intertitle:
The had come to fetch the young maiden who had loved an evil-doer,-and sacrificed

her life to destroy the one she loved.

Intertitle:
...and as they came closer the storm and the waves tore up the ice behind them.
And by the time they reached Marstrand with Elsam all the sea gates were open. 

End

Victor Sjöström
1)was one of the most important directors of the entire silent era.
2)His style was austere and naturalistic.
3)He used restrained acting and staged scenes in considerable depth,
   both in location shots and in sets.
4)His narratives frequently traced in great detail the grim consequences of a single action.

Sjöström’s early masterpiece, Ingeborg Holm (1913),
1)begins with a happy middle-class family;
2)the father falls ill and dies and the wife descends into poverty and madness
  as she struggles vainly to keep her children.
3)The film consists primarily of lengthy shots that hold on a series of actions
   that unfold within deep spaces.
4)The slow, steady pace conveys a remarkable impression of the heroine’s decades
  of misfortune,
5)despite the fact that Ingeborg Holm lasts only about seventy minutes.

In the following scene,
1)a long shot framing shows the heroine parting from her son.
2)Reluctant to leave her, he returns to hug her again as the gatekeeper opens the gate.
3)As the boy moves away again with his foster mother,
   Ingeborg quickly ducks into the doorway.
4)The boy turns back once more and, not seeing his mother,
   sadly follows his foster mother.
5)Once the pair has gone, the gatekeeper locks the gate and returns just in time to catch
   Ingeborg as she emerges again and begins to faint.
6)The staging with the heroine’s back to the camera displays Sjöström’s refusal to
    overemphasize emotions.

Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjöström, 1913)

Sjöström

1)Landscapes are prominent in Sjöström's The Outlaw and His Wife (1917).
2)Again a single desperate action, the hero’s theft of a sheep to feed his family,
   affects his entire life.
3)Fleeing arrest (3.28), Berg-Ejvind finds temporary safety working on the farm of a rich
  widow, Halla.
4)They fall in love, but he is again pursued by the authorities.
5)Abandoning her estate, Halla follows Berg-Ejvind into the mountains,
6)where they live together for many years before dying in each other’s arms in a blizzard.
7)Sjöström daringly undercut the intense romanticism of this story by making the final
   scene in a snowbound cabin involve an ugly, petty quarrel between the couple;
8)they reconcile at the end, just before they die.

In the following scene, the fugitive hero (played by Sjöström) wanders in the vast countryside.

The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjöström, 1917)

Intertitle:
The story is set in Iceland in the middle of the 18th century, when, as a result of the severity of the prevailing laws, the mountains still hid many outlaws. The lives of the two leading characters - Halla and Kari - are based on historical events. 

Baliff

Intertitle:
The sheep have been restless today. The boy has let two of them stray up in the mountains."

(The baliff whips the boy)

Arnes, an itinterant labourer.  - is sheering the two lost sheep

Baliff, 

"Off you go at once, both of you, and look for the animals. God help you if you do not find them!"

A Stranger, (Victor Sjostrom)

"This is the work of a thief or an out-law. The master will never forgive us if we do not catch the evildoer!"

Well done says the stranger - he put leaves on top of the wool. 

He puts a hole in the bag (the stranger)

"Do you call that lichen too? Do you think it would taste delicious boiled in milk?"

Intertitle:
Stranger: "Put your knife away - you need not be afraid of me. "
"My name is Kari - I have come from the south to look for work."

"Do you know of any place where two strong arms would be of use?"

"Down there is Halla's farm. She is a woman with a big heart and an open hand. 
You're sure to find work there."