New, Restored Print!

Judith F. Rosenberg on Piano

(Herr Arnes pengar). Sir Arne's Treasure was the first and most faithful of Stiller's three adaptations of works by the Nobel–prize–winning Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf. Orphaned girl Elsalill unwittingly falls in love with the man who murdered her foster family and when she discovers his guilt she must choose between loyalty to their memory and the love she feels for him. With the expert help of cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, Stiller experiments with new uses of the camera and a rigid visual aesthetic creating stunning painterly effects and an almost tangible winter light in this frozen Nordic landscape. This new tinted and restored print illuminates the tension between the exquisite attention to textural detail and ghostly immaterial special effects in some of the most spectacular scenes and images in the history of Swedish silent cinema.