Cinema
The Saga of Gösta Berling
Gösta Berlings saga
Mauritz Stiller · 1924
Synopsis
Värmland, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the Ekeby estate, the major's wife keeps a band of “cavaliers”, fallen nobles and adventurers who live on festivities. Among them is Gösta Berling, a pastor defrocked for drunkenness, whose charm and melancholy turn heads and bring misfortune to the women who love him. When Count Henrik Dohna returns from Italy with his young wife Elisabeth, their paths cross, amid balls and sleigh rides.
Context
The film is taken from Selma Lagerlöf's first novel, published in 1891. Photographed by Julius Jaenzon for Svensk Filmindustri, it is one of the most expensive productions of Swedish silent cinema; it was released in two parts in March 1924. For the two young Dohnas, the director asked for two students from the school of the Royal Dramatic Theatre; its director sent him Mona Mårtenson and Greta Gustafsson, seventeen years old, whom the director asked before the release to take a more resonant name: she became Garbo. The film succeeded above all in Germany, and won both of them, in 1925, contracts in Hollywood. The end of the golden age of Swedish cinema is often placed in 1924.
Who it is for
One hundred and eighty-three minutes in two parts, silent, with Swedish intertitles. It takes time: the film follows many characters and several plots at once.
Prizes and reception
The best-known film by its director, which revealed Greta Garbo in her first major role.
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