Victor Sjöström

1/16/04 to 2/29/04

Love’s Crucible, February 19

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Past
Films
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Past Films

The Phantom Chariot
Friday, January 16 7:00 pm
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Introduced by Christopher Oscarson. An alcoholic's life is changed through love and an encounter with the Grim Reaper in this film of uncanny beauty and inventiveness. "Among the masterpieces of supernatural filmmaking."-Filmex '75
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Wild Strawberries
Friday, January 16 9:25 pm
Ingmar Bergman's tribute to Sjöström and The Phantom Chariot. As an elderly professor recollecting his life's failures, "Sjöström gives one of the greatest performances of cinema."-NFT London. With documentary short Ingmar Bergman Shooting Wild Strawberries and Directing Victor Sjöström.
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Ingeborg Holm
Sunday, January 18 5:30 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. A widow in the Poor House is deprived of her children in this classic drama, one of Sweden's first social protest films. Preceded by The Gardener.
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Terje Vigen
Thursday, January 22 7:30 pm
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, this adaptation of Ibsen's nationalistic poem is distinguished by stunning land- and seascape photography. The hero is fabulously played by Sjöström. Preceded by The Sea Vultures.
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The Outlaw and His Wife
Sunday, January 25 5:30 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. A thief, a young widow, and their love outside the law: "Without a doubt the most beautiful film in the world!" declared French avant-gardist Louis Delluc. Preceded by a restored, tinted print of the recently rediscovered Kiss of Death.
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The Girl from the Marsh Croft
Thursday, January 29 7:30 pm
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A young peasant girl's illegitimate pregnancy sends shockwaves through her small community. The first of several adaptations of Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf's work, and one of the first films to address Sweden's rural underclass.
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The Sons of Ingmar, Parts 1 and 2
Sunday, February 1 5:30 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. So popular that half of Stockholm saw it in its opening run, this drama of love and atonement depicted a disappearing 19th-century folk culture.
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His Grace's Will
Saturday, February 7 7:00 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. A baron decides to rewrite his will, much to the chagrin of his overly anxious heirs. The only surviving comedy directed by Sjöström, and one of Sweden's first.
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The Monastery of Sendomir
Saturday, February 7 8:30 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. Maids with secret messages, handsome knights, jealous lovers, and murder: a medieval tale of infidelity and rage in a monastery. "A symphony of menacing light and shade."-Sight and Sound
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Karin, Daughter of Ingmar
Sunday, February 8 5:30 pm
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. The Ingmarssons-the next generation. A father's watch brings ill-fated lovers together after Devil Alcohol tears them apart.
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Masterman
Thursday, February 12 7:30 pm
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A stingy old pawnbroker falls in love with one of his pawned "objects"-a beautiful young woman-in what historian Tom Gunning calls "one of the neglected masterworks of world cinema."
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He Who Gets Slapped
Sunday, February 15 4:00 pm
Jon Mirsalis on Piano. In Hollywood, Sjöström's most avant-garde and enigmatic project ever: the wondrous Lon Chaney is a spurned scientist who takes on the persona of an absurdist circus clown.
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Fire on Board
Sunday, February 15 5:40 pm
Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Sjöström's last Swedish film is a seafaring adventure thriller, with an "American-style" ending that Swedish critics did not fail to notice.
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Love's Crucible
Thursday, February 19 7:00 pm
Joel Adlen on Piano. A feverish Renaissance Florence–set melodrama of a sculptor and his unfaithful younger wife. "Creates a baroque visual texture that might well have served as a prototype for von Sternberg."-Monthly Film Bulletin. Followed by Sjöström's first Hollywood film, Name the Man.
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The Wind
Sunday, February 22 4:30 pm
Jon Mirsalis on Keyboard. Naïve Virginia belle Lillian Gish relocates to windswept Texas in one of silent cinema's final masterpieces. Followed by a fragment of The Divine Woman, with Garbo, and Confessions of a Queen.
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The Scarlet Letter
Sunday, February 29 2:00 pm
Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Hawthorne's classic novel, brought to life by Sjöström and Lillian Gish. Gish's operatic performance here makes her films with Griffith seem like mere overtures.
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Under the Red Robe
Sunday, February 29 4:15 pm
Sjöström's swan song follows a soldier of fortune during a Huguenot uprising. A fascinating blend of silent-film poetics and studio artifice, photographed by James Wong Howe.
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Victor Sjöström

1/16/04 to 2/29/04

Victor Sjöström (1879–1960) was an up-and-coming stage actor and director in Sweden's provincial theaters when, in 1912, he was offered a contract as chief director for Charles Magnusson's emerging film company. He had absolutely no experience with film-but the bet on Sjöström paid off. Within the next decade, Magnusson's Swedish Biograph Company (with Sjöström, fellow director Mauritz Stiller, and cinematographers Henrik and Julius Jaenzon) made films praised internationally for their creative location shooting, meticulous photographic quality, and distinctive naturalist aesthetic. Sjöström's sensitive portrayals of human psychology, subtle acting style, and use of landscape caught the attention of the postwar French avant-garde and of Hollywood, where he directed films (under the name Victor Seastrom) between 1923 and 1930. Representing a side of modernism not centered on the urban experience, Sjöström's contributions as director and actor form the backbone of a Swedish film tradition that would inspire later filmmakers such as Gustaf Molander, Alf Sjöberg, Jan Troell, Colin Nutley, and, of course, Ingmar Bergman. Though much of Sjöström's early film work and a portion of his Hollywood production have been lost, many of his most acclaimed films-including his cinematic adaptions of texts by Henrik Ibsen and Selma Lagerlöf-have been preserved and recently restored by the Swedish Film Institute (Svenska Filminstitutet).

Christopher Oscarson

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Victor Sjöström: Northern Light in a New Light has been organized by the Pacific Film Archive in collaboration with Svenska Filminstitutet, Stockholm, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. We are grateful to Jon Wengstrom, curator, Svenska Filminstitutet, for his invaluable advice and extraordinary assistance. We also thank Jytte Jensen, film curator, The Museum of Modern Art, co-curator of this series. In addition to The Museum of Modern Art, the series will tour to the Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto, and the Cinémathèque Québecoise, Montreal.

This touring series would not have been possible without the generous support of The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation; the Consulate General of Sweden, New York; and the Embassy of Sweden, Ottawa. We especially wish to thank Barbro Osher, president, The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation; Amelie Heinsjö, press counselor and head of section, Information and Public Affairs, and Elisabeth Halvarsson-Stapen, cultural affairs officer, Consulate General of Sweden, New York; and Magnus Schönning, first secretary for press and cultural affairs, Embassy of Sweden, Ottawa.

We thank Svenska Filminstitutet, Cinémathèque Royale, Brussels, and the Library of Congress for their loans of rare prints and the preservation and restoration of Sjöström films. Our special thanks to Svensk Filmindustri, world rights holder for Sjöström's Swedish films, for their cooperation.

Original program notes have been written for our series by Christopher Oscarson and Arne Lunde, both of the Department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley. Christopher Oscarson is a graduate student, currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation about the construction and use of natural imagery in early Swedish cinema. Arne Lunde is a postdoctoral Faculty Fellow. He recently completed his Ph.D. dissertation, “Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Whiteness and Ethnic Assimilation in Classical Hollywood Cinema.”

Translations of intertitles have been provided by Christopher Oscarson, Jytte Jensen, Mark Sandberg, and Svenska Filminstitutet.