Mauritz Stiller Films | Mauritz Stiller Filmography | Mauritz Stiller Biography | Mauritz Stiller Career | Mauritz Stiller Awards

Like the other two distinguished pioneers of the early Swedish cinema, Sj?str?m and Sj?berg, Mauritz Stiller had an essentially theatrical background. But it must be remembered that he was reared in Finland of Russian-Jewish stock, did not emigrate to Sweden until he was twenty-seven, and remained there only fifteen years before going to Hollywood. He responded relatively late to the Swedish cultural tradition, so heavily influenced by the country's extreme northern climate and landscape, and by the fatalistic, puritanical literary and dramatic aura exerted most notably by the Swedish dramatist Strindberg and the Nobel prize-winning novelist Selma Lagerl?f. The latter's works?Herr Arne's Treasure, Gunnar Hede's Saga, and G?sta Berlings Saga?were inspired by tradition and legend, and were all to be adapted by Stiller for the silent screen.

After establishing himself as a talented stage actor, Stiller's work on film began in 1912. He immediately proved to be a meticulous craftsman, with a strong visual instinct and a polished sense of timing and rhythm. His early work showed how much he had learned technically from the considerable number of D.W. Griffith's short narrative films shown in Sweden. For example, The Black Masks, made in 1912, is noted by Forsyth Hardy as having, ?over a hundred scenes, a constantly changing combination of interiors and exteriors, close-ups and panoramic shots.? In 1913 Stiller even made a film based on the activities of Mrs. Pankhurst called Den moderna Suffragetten, reflecting his reputation in the theater for avant-garde subjects.

Stiller also proved adept at comedy, as his films Love and Journalism, Thomas Graal's Best Film?one of the earliest films about filmmaking?and Thomas Graal's First Child reveal, with their skirmishing and coquetry that characterize the relationship of the sexes. Stiller insisted, however, on restraint in acting style; he was an autocratic perfectionist, and Emil Jannings, Germany's leading actor, termed him ?the Stanislavski of the cinema.? The second of these films had a complex structure, full of flashbacks and daydreams; the director Victor Sj?str?m starred in all three, as well as in other of Stiller's films. In some of his earliest efforts, Stiller made appearances himself.

The climax to Stiller's career in the production of elegant and graceful comedies of sex manners was Erotikon; though better known, because of its alluring title, than its predecessors, it is somewhat less accomplished. Elaborately staged and full of sexual by-play?the wife of a preoccupied professor has two lovers in hot pursuit, a young sculptor and an elderly baron?it includes a specially commissioned ballet performed by the opera in Stockholm. These sophisticated silent films rank alongside the early comedies of Lubitsch, whose work in this genre in Germany in fact succeeded them. Lubitsch readily acknowledged his debt to Stiller.

Again like Lubitsch (with whose career Stiller's can best be compared at this stage), Stiller also worked on epic-style, historical subjects. He took over the adaptation of Selma Lagerl?f s novel Sir Arne's Treasure from Sj?str?m, its original director. This was essentially an eighteenth-century story of escape and pursuit?three Scottish mercenaries in the service of King John III are imprisoned for conspiracy. They abscond in the depths of winter, undertaking a desperate journey overland to flee the country. In the process they become increasingly violent and menacing until they come upon Arne's mansion. They steal his treasure, burn his house, and slaughter its inhabitants except for an orphan girl. The orphan Elsalill, who survives the massacre, is a haunted figure half-attracted to the leader of the Scottish renegades. But she eventually betrays him and dies in the final confrontation in which the Scots are recaptured. The long, snake-like column of black-robed women moving over the icy waste in the girl's funeral procession is Stiller's concluding panoramic scene; one of the best-known spectacular shots in early cinema, it still appears in most history books. The film illustrates grandly the response of the early Swedish filmmakers to the menacing magnificence of the northern winter landscape.

After completing Erotikon Stiller moved on to Johan, a dark and satiric study of the triangular relationship of husband, wife, and the visitant, stranger-lover. Set in the desolate expanse of the countryside, the film includes a climax worthy of Griffith as the guilty couple, chased by the husband, ride the rapids in a small boat. Stiller then crowned his career in Sweden with two further adaptations of Lagerl?f s work: Gunnar Hedes Saga and G?sta Berlings Saga. In the former?in every way an outstanding film of its period in its immixture of dream and actuality?the hero, the violinist Nils (Einar Hansson), is inspired to emulate his father, who made a fortune by driving a vast herd of reindeer south from the Arctic circle. Nils's adventure in realizing this dream only leads to severe injury resulting in amnesia; back home in the forests of the south he experiences hallucinations from which the girl who loves him finally liberates him. The film's duality is striking: the realism of the trek with the reindeer, which involved panoramic shots of the great herds and brilliant tracking shots of the catastrophic stampede which leads to Nils's accident, is in marked contrast to the twilit world of his hallucinations.

G?sta Berling's Saga, on the other hand, though famous for its revelation of the star quality of the young drama student, Greta Garbo, and its melodramatic story of the defrocked priest (Lars Hanson) fatally in love with Garbo's Italian girl, is clumsy in structure compared with Gunnar Hede's Saga, and was later destructively cut for export to half its original length of four hours.

Stiller travelled in 1925 to America at the invitation of Louis B. Mayer of MGM on the strength of his reputation as a sophisticated European director, but mostly (it would seem) because he was Garbo's Svengali-like and obsessive mentor. He very soon fell out with Mayer, who endured him because he wanted Garbo as a contract player. All but mesmerized by Stiller, Garbo insisted that he direct her in The Temptress; the inevitable difficulties arose and he was withdrawn from the film.

Stiller's best film in America was made at Paramount. Hotel Imperial, which starred Pola Negri, concerned a wartime love affair between a hotel servant and an Austrian officer and was notable for its spectacular, composite hotel set over which the camera hung suspended from an overhead rail. After finishing a second film with Negri, The Woman on Trial, Stiller never managed to complete another film; the respiratory illness that was undermining his health forced him to part from Garbo and return to Sweden, where he died in 1928 at the age of forty-five.?ROGER MANVELL