STILLER FRAGMENT
Narratore: Gösta Werner; Prod.: Svenska Filminstitutet; 35mm. L.: 458 m. D.: 17’.
Film Notes
The film contains fragments of Mannekängen (1913, 53 meters), Gränsfolken (1913, 62 meters), Hans bröllopsnatt (1915, 33 meters) and De landsflyktige (1921, 121 meters), and behind- the-scenes material from the shooting of Stormfågeln (1913) and Balettprimadonnan (1916). The film also includes all existing newsreel footage of Mauritz Stiller himself.
In 1969 Gösta Werner, the dean of Swedish film scholars and the author of several books on Stiller, assembled all existing fragments of otherwise lost Stiller films into this beautiful, seventeen-minute short. A very personal film (the director himself is the narrator), it also includes all surviving footage of Stiller himself – in the studio behind the camera, at the backlot of Svensk Filmindustri cuddling his pet dog, and at a sporting field waiting to embark on an airship! Of the fragments included, the longest is from the 1921 epic De landsflyktige starring Lars Hanson and Jenny Hasselquist as two émigrés from the Russian aristocracy in France. The film was unanimously hailed as Stiller’s masterpiece by contemporary Swedish critics. Stiller, himself a Russian citizen since his birth in Helsinki, applied for Swedish citizenship during the shooting.
Jon Wengström