Starring Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundequist and Greta Garbo
Produced by Svensk Filmindustri
Gösta Berling, a priest in a small town, is hitting the bottle. Hard. A bishop hears of his antics and is dispatched to investigate. Gösta delivers an impassioned and fiery sermon to the congregation, but follows it up with an outburst against the believers. He is defrocked and cast out.
Alone, Gösta wanders the land until he is taken in by a countess at an estate called Borg. The former priest begins tutoring the countess' step-daughter Ebba and the two begin to fall in love... which of course was all part of the countess' plan. If Ebba marries a commoner, she forfeits her inheritance and the Borg estate will go to the countess' son Henrik and his new wife Elisabeth.
The countess' plot comes to light at a banquet hosted at a neighboring estate known as Ekeby. The owners of Ekeby, a major and his wife, throw lavish affairs where their "knights" serve as entertainment. The knights are in fact more like court jesters and entertainers. Ebba is shocked by her step-mother's plan and a heartbroken Gösta leaves Borg to join the knights at Ekeby.
Can Gösta find love? And what other secrets will be revealed over the course of this tale?
The Saga of Gösta Berling, like many silent dramas, is a melodrama. The danger in melodrama is it either works or it doesn't, there is never a middle ground. Either the actors and story draw you in enough to buy the flourishes, or it's all too over the top and calculated to ever be satisfying.
Gösta Berling works. Better than that, it shines.
The Saga of Gösta Berling is first and foremost a tale of flawed and fallen humans, all seeking redemption. And their penance can only come through connecting with another soul. If Gösta can find love, he will no longer be the defrocked man of God. Elisabeth is married, but isolated as she comes to realize her husband is someone she doesn't recognize. For some it is too late: the major's wife gave up her love for a poor man to marry into wealth and her existence is a private hell she hides from in banquets and plays.
There is a lot to love here, but I have to start with the virtuoso directing of Mauritz Stiller. He uses the frozen landscape of Sweden as the backdrop and it fits his story perfectly. The film's camerawork complements its themes and does so in a series of beautiful moments.
Stiller also nails the pacing. The film has a cadence that just pulled me through the trials and tribulations of these characters. Just when things are slowing down, we see the next secret revealed and were right back in the middle of the action. And when all of the character twists and turns threaten to overwhelm, we get a couple of action set pieces in the final third.
The movie opens with a scene from the middle of the tale. The knights are enjoying their usual merriment in their barracks when Gösta calls for the 13th knight to appear. Suddenly, a creature emerges from the fireplace and explains he can't stay long; he's here to pick up the soul of a knight. The men look around nervously, before Gösta reveals it's a prank by removing the co-conspirator's mask.
The scene is the perfect set up for the rest of the movie. Beyond showing us that the knights are a jovial lot, the scene sets the stakes immediately: Gösta's soul is at stake. He's broken and needs to be reassembled or he will find himself in hell. It's a theme repeated again and again throughout the movie.
The actors here are all good, but not great. Lars Hanson plays Berling with a Sweeney Todd haircut and wide eyes. All of the actors engage in some grand gestures and over-the-top moments, but there's a lot of subtlety to the players' work here as well. Greta Garbo was discovered by Hollywood thanks to this film and its easy to see why. She's tremendous.
That's not to say the whole movie works. At one point, Ekeby is burnt to the ground. There's a lot of tension as the fire is set and the knights begin trying to escape. Then it keeps going on. And on. Gösta escapes by a different route then everyone else, but the movie never provides a great sense of location. I have no idea where he is in the house or what he is doing.
The film also reaches a moment of character overload. The Sinclairs are shown as minor characters who run in the same social circles as the residents of Borg and Ekeby. Halfway through the film, they take on a larger role, then shrink right back into the background very quickly. They all have very superficial motivation, made all the more obvious by the detailed back stories and arcs the rest of the main cast get.
In the scope of a three hour epic, these are minor quibbles. One of the joys of exploring each year of film in a haphazard and random way is you make discoveries. The Saga of Gösta Berling was not on my radar before. Now, I'll never forget it.
**** out of *****
Memorable line: "You won't escape by turning yourself into a beautiful corpse. Don't you know that most people are dead already?"
NOTE: The film is based on the novel of the same name by Selma Langerlöf. The book was loved in Sweden (it's considered the Swedish Gone with the Wind) and critical reception of the movie there at the time was not great. People thought the book was better. I guess some things never change.
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