Gösta Berling (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Gosta Berling |
| Original title | Gosta Berling's saga |
| Country of production | Sweden |
| original language | Swedish |
| Publishing year | 1924 |
| length | 184 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mauritz Stiller |
| script | Mauritz Stiller, Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius |
| production | Svensk Filmindustri |
| camera | Julius Jaenzon |
| occupation | |
| |
Gösta Berling (OT: Gösta Berlings Saga ) is a Swedish film adaptation of the extensive novel Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf with Lars Hanson in the title role and Greta Garbo , who appears here for the first time under the name "Garbo". The film, directed by Mauritz Stiller , premiered in two parts on March 10 and 17, 1924 in Stockholm. Gösta Berling ended Mauritz Stiller's Swedish creative period, who went to Hollywood via Berlin with his protégée Greta Garbo . Only parts of the original version, which originally lasted almost four hours, still exist. The lengths of the versions differ depending on the state of preservation of the copies.
action
The film is basically based on the literary model by Selma Lagerlöf. The focus is on the young pastor Gösta Berling, who went through a crisis of meaning in the Swedish province around 1820. Emotionally unstable, Gösta Berling is completely a slave to his desires at the beginning of the action and surrenders to drunkenness and women's stories. After an uproar, he leaves the parish office at night and in the fog, only to move across the country as a good-for-nothing. With a bunch of other wanderers he comes to Ekeby, the castle of the wealthy Major Samzelius and his wife. There he met the innocent Countess Elisabeth Dohna, who helped Gösta to gain inner strength and solid character. Before the two of them can begin a future together, they still have to endure a number of adventures, such as the fire at Ekeby Castle, which was started by the mad Major Samzelius.
background
Greta Garbo had an early desire to become an actress. In order to support her family financially, however, she initially took a job as a saleswoman in the upscale Stockholm department store PUB . She worked in several commercials and the slapstick comedy Luffar-Petter before she began training at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. By chance she met the well-known director Mauritz Stiller , who had contributed significantly to the artistic heyday of Swedish film during the late 1910s. Stiller's Forte were elegantly staged relationship comedies like Erotikon , but he had the greatest commercial success with opulent literary adaptations. These included two works by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf , Mr. Arnes Schatz from 1919 and Gunnar Hedge's Saga from 1923. In late spring 1923, Greta Gustafson was given the opportunity, together with her colleague Mona Mårtenson, to attend a casting for the upcoming film version of Gösta Berling to participate. Stiller discovered an acting quality in the then only seventeen-year-old girl which prompted him to give her the important role of Countess Elisabeth. Shortly after the extensive filming began, Stiller also induced the young woman to adopt the stage name Greta Garbo. There are different versions of how the choice was made, the simplest being that the name Garbo is a further development of the original proposal by Mona Gabor , which was based on the sound of a former prince of Transylvania. The actress officially took the name Greta Garbo on November 9, 1923.
The shooting, which lasted almost a year, was an ordeal for the completely inexperienced actress. Stiller, who as a director was both a perfectionist and an autocratic ruler, forced Greta Garbo to unconditionally obey his instructions. Through endless repetitions of individual scenes and targeted verbal attacks, he steered Greta Garbo in the direction he had intended from the start. Garbo gave himself completely into the hands of her mentor and finally accepted the sometimes violent insults without complaint if, in Stiller's opinion, she had not given the best performance. This close connection to the instructions of the mentor shows not inconsiderable parallels to the relationship between Marlene Dietrich and her discoverer Josef von Sternberg .
The film itself is considered to be the last great masterpiece of Swedish silent film. Two scenes in particular demonstrate Stiller's ability to implement dramatic events in an artistically sophisticated way.
The spectacular fire at Ekeby Castle was the most expensive sequence at the time that was ever shot in Sweden. Stiller used the entire technical repertoire such as rapid editing sequences and lighting effects to bring the drama of the plot onto the screen. Another, well-known shot showed Elisabeth Dohna fleeing a pack of wolves with her horse-drawn sleigh in frenzied flight across a frozen lake. However, Stiller used specially trained shepherds for the sequence, which he hung weights on their tails so that they showed the typical posture of wolves in the ' longshots '.
Because of the considerable length of almost four hours (14 roles), the film premiered in two parts for the first time in Swedish film history in early March 1924 in Stockholm. The program was surprisingly prophetic about the further professional development of Greta Garbo and the relationship between actress and director:
“Stiller has [cast] two roles with young students from our Royal Drama Academy - Mona Mårtenson and Greta Garbo. What are these young charming girls more than clay in the hands of the master sculptor? Isn't the clay worth as much as the hands that form it? Infinitely more! In a few years, Greta Garbo will become famous and admired all over the world. Because she has the gift of beauty - a rare personal and peculiar beauty. "
In Germany, where the film was distributed in August 1924, Gösta Berling was a great commercial success. Stiller and Garbo received lucrative film offers, but in the end only Garbo had the opportunity to take on a role in Die joyllose Gasse , directed by GW Pabst .
Reviews
"Melodramatic silent film with remarkable optical effects and impressive image dynamics"
Web links
- Gosta Berling in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Analysis and screenshots
Literature and sources used
- Karen Swenson: A life Apart. Scribner, New York NY 1994, ISBN 0-684-80725-4 .
- Barry Paris: Garbo. The biography (= Ullstein 35720). To get an app. extended edition. Ullstein, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-548-35720-2 .
- Robert Payne : The Great Garbo. Reprinted edition. Cooper Square Press, New York NY 2002, ISBN 0-8154-1223-1 .
- Mark A. Vieira: Greta Garbo. A Cinematic Legacy. Harry N. Abrams, New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-8109-5897-X .
Footnotes
- ↑ Barry Paris: Garbo. 1997, p. 88.
- ^ Gosta Berling. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 1, 2017 .