![]() ![]() Gösta’s first love is a pupil he is hired to tutor, Ebba (Mona Mårtenson), who carries around her prayer book, talks a lot about the wonders of Creation, and falls in love with him. Time and again, they rescue him from his latest piece of folly. Women are the best things in Gösta’s life. “Go drink yourself into oblivion.” Nothing could be further from the truth. “Women will be the death of you, Gösta,” he is informed in one intertitle. Gösta, the sole handsome face in the group, breaks the hearts of several beautiful young women. Failures in life who have nowhere else to go, they have attached themselves to a great estate, Ekeby, ostensibly protecting it but capable of ransacking it if the opportunity arises. After his defrocking and some other setbacks, he joins a group of carousing Napoleonic War veterans, the “Cavaliers,” the kind of men who drink straight from the bottle and never stand on the floor if a table is available. Gösta is far from the only character to become a pariah. Another theme is that of being cast out from society. Alcohol fuels Gösta’s downfall and many other calamities in the script, although other sins (lust, pride, sloth …) get a workout as well. The film plays rather like an epic about alcoholism. Gösta, shivering in a thin coat, stops to pick up an injured bird, holds it against himself to warm up, and shuffles on.Īn attempt at comprehensive plot summary could send a person into a Gösta-like spiral, but on screen the sprawling network of characters is as vivid as any in Dickens. Stiller films Hanson as a dark speck on the cold forest road, slowly coming forward until his white face becomes the sole pinpoint of life. His goose thus self-cooked, he sets out on the road. Gösta’s preaching is so enthralling that his congregation is ready to forgive him for his latest drunken escapade, but then, spurred by idealism and a bridge-burning compulsion that gets him in trouble throughout, Gösta swings into a rousing condemnation of the parishioners’ own chronic boozing. ![]() As the story unfolds, the title’s ex-pastor, played by Lars Hanson, has been defrocked. Mayer, who saw the film on a trip to Berlin where it was playing to packed houses, sit bolt upright and demand to meet her.īut from a distance of almost a hundred years, it’s evident that Garbo-only eighteen years old and so beautiful it is said her close-ups made audiences gasp-is just one of many impressive things about Gösta Berling. It isn’t hard to tell what made MGM’s Louis B. No one who sees Gösta Berling will walk away unimpressed by her. Gösta Berling was Greta Garbo’s big break, her first substantial film role, and Stiller was her mentor, the man who styled her “Garbo” to replace the “Gustafson” she was born with, which wasn’t exactly a name to quicken the pulse or dominate a marquee. Yet virtually every time the movie is mentioned it’s for one thing-GarboGarboGarboGarboGarbo. ![]() It engrosses, moving swiftly despite the long runtime. Its major set pieces include a breathtaking chase across the frozen surface of a lake and a fire scene to rival Gone With the Wind’s burning of Atlanta. The movie is based on the debut novel by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel prize in literature. Shot in the historical Swedish province of Värmland over a period of six months, to accommodate the change of seasons, Gösta Berling makes outstanding use of the area’s dense forest scenery and frozen lakes. He was (along with Victor Sjöström) the most prominent director in Sweden on the strength of films such as Sir Arne’s Treasure (1919) and Erotikon (1920). Originally released in two parts that ran almost four hours, Gösta Berling was Stiller’s last film as an auteur in control of all aspects of production. But The Saga of Gösta Berling (Gösta Berlings saga) shows that what happened to director Mauritz Stiller was a special kind of depressing. With so many tragedies to choose from, it’s hard to stand out. Not only are there countless stories of great talents destroyed by Hollywood, but you could, if you were in a gloomy frame of mind, make a case that this is an overarching theme of the place.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |