Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

du cinéma muet, ce curieux mélange
de didactisme, de reconstitution
et d’images érotiques où le diable,
interprété par Christensen lui-même,
intervient au besoin, en a longtemps
fait un objet de scandale. Avec le recul
le film apparaît comme une œuvre
exceptionnellement originale et
novatrice.
Préparé sous la direction de Jon
Wengström, conservateur film du
Swedish Film Institute, ce coffret
constitue un travail exemplaire
de conservation, préservation et
restauration de haut niveau. Les
procédés de couleur originaux sont
respectés et chaque film a fait l’objet
d’une partition musicale nouvelle
de Matti Bye. Tous les films ont
des intertitres suédois et français;
plusieurs proposent même des titres
en français, allemand, espagnol, italien
et portugais. Enfin chaque film est
accompagné d’un livret de très belle
tenue comprenant des essais, des notes
biographiques et des détails sur sa
restauration.
Ce précieux coffret est d’ores et déjà un
objet de collection : à quand une suite?
Terje Vigen, Victor Sjöström, 1917.
Film history has perhaps been less kind to Mauritz Stiller, who gets the
lion’s share of the SFI’s box set with three of his peak-career films: Herr Arnes
Pengar (Sir Arne’s Treasure, 1919), Erotikon (1920) and Gösta Berlings Saga
(1924). Stiller is remembered principally as Greta Garbo’s Svengali, lured
into taking her to Hollywood and then cruelly neglected and rejected.
Again, it has taken the act of physical rehabilitation of his films to show
his mature versatility and to restore him to the Pantheon of accomplished,
innovative and influential film-makers of the silent era where he properly
belongs. Proof is in this trio of chefs d’oeuvre, which range from his two
energetic adaptations of epic stories by Selma Lagerlöf, both of which
glory in winter landscapes, to the stately, sophisticated comedy of manners
and infidelity among the upper classes, Erotikon, a genre with which
Stiller is more commonly associated, his sharp and amused view of “sexual
interchange” in high society being compared favourably with Bergman’s
social comedies, such as Sommarnattens Leende (Smiles of a Summer Night,
1955). But it is clear from the juxtaposition of these three films that Stiller
was at his best out of doors, amongst the Nordic landscape, showing
Man coming to terms with Nature, his own and that of his surroundings;
by comparison, his drawing-room films, though beautifully and ironically
observed, appear indulgent and slow. It is equally apparent that Herr Arnes
Pengar, a stirring spectacle about greedy Scottish mercenaries in wintry
16th-century Sweden, is his supreme achievement and a film deserving of
wider recognition. Nevertheless, Garbo inevitably gets some prominence
in this collection in relation to her breakthrough film, Gösta Berlings Saga,
and a flurry of fascinating extras shows her, pretty, plump, gauche and
outgoing, in what is left of an early feature, Luffar-Petter (Peter the Tramp,
1922), and some Stockholm commercials – and later, now a Hollywood star
and global celebrity, looking nervous and introverted on board ship in a
1929 newsreel.
What, then, of the sixth title in this collection of
Swedish classics, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan
(Witchcraft Through the Ages, 1922), which seems
to sit awkwardly alongside the more venerated
work of Sjöström and Stiller? In fact, it is in
retrospect the most original and innovative of
all the Swedish films made in this period. Older
cinéphiles will remember it as a faithful repertory
warhorse on the arthouse circuit in the 1960s
and 70s, when its quasi-documentary style still
looked startlingly novel and its Satanic theme
quite shocking, but a film largely neglected since
– which makes it all the riper for re-appraisal.
The only film of Danish director Christensen to
become widely known outside Scandinavia, it is
an odd mixture of didactic lectures, suggestive
dramatic recreations and erotic imagery, punctuated with scenes of nudity
and torture, purporting to explain medieval perceptions of witchcraft, with
Christensen himself playing the devil. Unsurprisingly, the film was cut by
the censors and condemned by the Catholic church, and it failed at the boxoffice.
It remains unique in silent cinema, and a singular testament to the
artistic freedom (and generous budgets) which Swedish cinema enjoyed
during its “golden years” and which spawned so many masterpieces.
80 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009