Swedish Silent Film: Love and Jornalism (Karleck Och Journalistik, Mauritz Stille...

Mauritz Stiller directed "Karleck och Journalistick", 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 "The Wings" was 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"

In outlining the initial differences between Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, the former having a propensity toward serious, artistic film, the latter making more comedic satires, Aleksander Kwaitkowski, in his volume Swedish Film Classics looks at the technique used by Mauritz Stiller as the film "Love and Journalism" unfolds, "Stiller's narration is purely visual (only twenty five intertiles in the whole picture), streamlined, lucidly carrying the plot forward."

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 Karen Molander and Anna Diedrich is a Lost Silent Film with no surviving copies or fragments. Also directed that year by Stiller and also lost is the Swedish Silent Film "The Lucky Brooch" (The Lucky Pin/Lyckonalen), photographed by Hugo Edlund and satrring Greta Almroth and Stina Berg.

In regard to Lost Film, Found Magazines according to Peter Cowie, author of the volume Scandinavian Cinema, the film "Love and Journalism" directed by Mauritz Stiller, taken with Stiller's film "The Wings", is one that has "miraculously survived", the bulk of the films made by Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom before 1916 now lost with no surviving copies existing.

Of "Love and Journalism" Peter Cowie, in his volume Swedish Cinema, writes, "Only about a half hour in legnth, it remains sparkling fresh and worldly-wise."

Harriet Bloch, who wrote the screenplay to Stiller's film "Love and Journalism" also during 1916 wrote the photoplay to the film "Old Age and Folly" (Alderdom och darskap) directed by Swedish Silent Film director Edmond Hansen, the cinematographer to the film Carl Gustaf Florin. Starring in the film, a lost silent film with no surviving copies, were Edith Erastoff and Greta Almroth. During the following year Harriet Bloch wrote the photoplay to "The Millionaire Inheritance" (Miljonarvet) directed by Konrad Tollroth and starring Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Greta Almroth, Stina Berg and Hedvig Nenzen. The film is also a lost silent film.

Norman J. Zierold, in his biography entitled Garbo, explains that some of the noteriety that Mauritz Stiller did have, complemented by his "dashing" public image of fur coats and jewlery, may have been well deserved. "In his major efforts, Stiller was an authentic innovator, not unlike D.W Griffith. He was the first European director to use closeups, to employ the shifting camera, to develop new and striking canera angles."

Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom
Silent Film