Three Films by Gosta Werner & Thomas Graal's Best Film

In order of screening, Prof. Gosta Werner's films tonight are:

Midwinter Sacrifice,
dealing with the sacrifice of a human being in the Bronze Age, a rite on a cold and snowy winter day to bring back the sun and warm weather.
• (1945, 12 mins, No dialogue or commentary, Print Courtesy of filmmaker)

The Train,
an impressionistic study of a 1000-mile train trip across the Swedish landscape.
• (1947, 21 mins, No dialogue or commentary, Print Courtesy of filmmaker)

To Kill A Child,
a harrowing film based on Stig Dagerman's short story which tells, without any sentimentality, of a child's death in a car accident.
• (1952, 10 mins, English narration, Print Courtesy of filmmaker)

Thomas Graal's Best Film
is an astonishingly sophisticated comedy about love and film made, when American screen comedy was still at the knockabout stage, by Mauritz Stiller, a Russian-born emigre to Sweden, who was later drafted to Hollywood along with his protege Greta Garbo and his close friend Victor Sjostrom. The story: a famous scriptwriter, played by Sjostrom, infatuated with a secretary at the studio, concocts a scenario around her domestic life.
• Directed by Mauritz Stiller. Screenplay by Gustav Molander and Stiller. Photographed by Henrik Jaenzon. With Albin Laven, Victor Sjostrom. (1917, 70 mins, silent, English intertitles, Print Courtesy of Em Gee Films)

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