Greta Garbo and Victor Sjostrom

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Swedish Silent Film: Karleck Och Journalistik (Mauritz Stille...

Mauritz Stiller directed "Karleck och Journalista", a comedy based on the writing of Harriet Bloch, in 1916. The film stars Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Stina Berg, Gucken Cederberg and Karin Molander.

The most widely known films directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1916 were "The Ballet Primadonna" (Balletprimmadonnan), starring Lars Hanson, and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson and "The Wings" (Vingarne), a film in which both photographer Julius Jaenzon and director Mauritz Stiller appear on screen, starring Lars Hanson and Lilli Bech.

The film "The Ballet Primmadonna" was phtographed by Julius Jaenzon and featured one of the only two photoplays written for Svenska Biografteatern by Djalmer Christophersen.

When recently screened by curator Jon Wengstrom of the Swedish Institute, Mauritz Stiller was commended for his onscreen appearance by virtue of his adding a self-reflexive scene with the on the set filming of a film to the framing structure when adapting the original story written by Herman Bang. The film currently screened by Wengstrom at Silent Film Festivals is in fact a restoration of an incomplete print which includes the footage of Stiller and Jaenzon, which had been unpopular and neglected as a lost film sequence. Wengstrom writes, "The erotic drama, and the delightful play of ancient myth and urban modernity is framed by a prologue and epilogue where Stiller gets the idea to the manuscript, casts and shoots the film; and and where the press afterwards."

Although there have been films directed by Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller that have been rediscovered, restored and preserved during the twenty-first century, the 1916 film "The Fight For His Heart" (Kampen om hans hjarta) directed by Maurtiz Stiller and starring actresses Karin Molander and Anna Diedrich is lost with no surviving copies or fragments. Also directed that year by Stiller and also lost is the film "The Lucky Brooch" (The Lucky Pin/Lyckonalen), photographed by Hugo Edlund and satrring Greta Almroth and Stina Berg. Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom Silent Film

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