We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
her debut, and Thomas Graals Bdsta Film, one of the first comedies about filmmaking, in which Sjostrom appeared as Thomas Graal.
Stiller had directed over thirty films before he made his masterwork, Herr Ames Pengar (1919). His maturing skill as a director was fully engaged by the Selma Lagerlof story; or, put in another way, the theme appeared to provide him with the inspiration he needed at a moment in his development when he was sufficiently experienced to give it expression. Since the story, based on a legend, is typical of the material Selma Lagerlof used in her novels, it may be worth detailing. In the reign of Johan III of Sweden, three Scots commanders of the guard, accused of a plot, are imprisoned and their soldiers dispersed. Thev manage to escape and, in disguise, flee across country towards the border. Meanwhile the lord of Solberga, Herr Arne, is at table when his wife confesses to some tragic foreboding. A wandering merchant is present when this tale is told, and later, leaving a tavern nearby, he sees the sky red over Solberga. He raises the alarm, but when the rescuers arrive the house is in a mass of flames, the family are dead, and all the valuables are gone. Only Elsalill, an orphan girl, foster sister of Arne's daughter, survives. Her destiny and fate, seen in a dream, lead her to the three Scotsmen waiting on the shore for the ice to melt before sailing away. The girl is attracted towards one of them, Sir Archie, who recognizes her and suggests that she accompanies him to Scotland. Elsalill later recognizes him as one of the murderers of her family and denounces him, then, overcome by her feelings, she begs him to flee. When the troops arrive Sir Archie goes to meet them with Elsalill, and the girl, realizing that her love is in vain, presses a lance to her body. As Sir Archie tries to flee the lance sinks into the girl, and the Scot, unbeknown, carries off only a corpse in his arms over the ice to the ship, whither a long procession of sorrowing women dressed in black goes to recover the body of Elsalill.
This story with its strong moralistic flavour, its setting in the snow-covered northern landscape, and its use of the supernatural in the dream sequence, is typical of the films Sweden produced with an unmistakable national character. Despite its literary origin, Herr Ames Pengar was essentially visual in expression. Stiller and Gustaf Molander, who collaborated in writing the scenario, appeared to have absorbed the values of the Lagerlof story and translated them imaginatively into film form. The film had dramatic balance. It also had a visual harmony, absent from some of the earlier films where the transition from interior to exterior was too abrupt. The theme was as fully and effectively realized in, for example, the exciting scenes of the escape from the castle and in the well-composed interiors at Solberga as it was in Elsalill's vision of her destiny and in the unforgettable funeral procession at the end of the film with the shrouded figures bearing the dead girl shoulder-high on a stretcher across the snow. Herr Ames Pengar was a complete and integrated work which, more than any other film he was to make, was to secure Stiller s reputation.
Stiller followed it with a film of a very different kind. Erotikon (1920) bore some
8