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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. The Ingmarssons-the next generation. A father's watch brings ill-fated lovers together after Devil Alcohol tears them apart.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.