During the fifteen year period between 1925 and 1940, Sweden's cinema was written off by critics as a veritable Dark Age. While films were being turned out with prolific haste, the box-office success as opposed to quality was the touchstone. Domestic comedies were in demand yet few indigenous directors attempted to use the cinema for genuine artistic purposes or for much else than earning quick profits.
One director, however, did pursue a competent career throughout Sweden cinema's otherwise anticlimactic period and well throughout the 1960's; Gustaf Molander (1888-1973). Molander began his career as a stage actor in Stockholm in the year 1911 and down the road, worked as a screenwriter, and notably the early Swedish classic Terje Vigen (A Man There Was, 1917). His first significant film as a director was En Natt (One Night,1931), a melodrama that concerned two siblings who join opposite sides at the outbreak of the Finnish Revolution. The sound and lighting were eons ahead of the game in Intermezzo (1936) the ambitious director acclimated to the prevailing mood of the time, conveying an intense and melancholy love story against the backdrop of European cities and resorts. The film famously introduced Ingrid Bergman to the outside world (she later remade this very film in Hollywood), and her performance as the young piano instructor entranced by a well-known (and well-married) violin virtuoso has a freshness and a spontaneity that challenge the kitsch of the period.
Mober's Rid i natt! (1942) |
A laudable screen version of Vilhelm Moberg's Rid i natt! (Ride Tonight, 1942)! was also made by Molander. It was set during the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, the film would denounce the feudal dominance exercised over the local commoners by a group of robber barons in Sweden. Both Moberg and Molander stressed the parallels with Nazi Germany and the war that was threatening to preposterously engulf the traditionally neutral Sweden. The occupation of Norway would provide the backdrop for Molander's Det Brinner ene ld (Three Burned A Flame,1943) and 1943's staggering Ordet (The Word). The latter film directed by Carl Theodore Dreyer and was based on the Danish play by Kaj Munk (tragically this playwright would later be executed by the Nazis).
Preben Lerdoff Rye has a messiah complex in the Kierkegaardian masterwork Ordet (1955) |
The turning point in the fortunes of the Swedish cinema would present itself in 1942 when Carl Anders Dymling was appointed the head of Svensk Filmindustri, the country's equivalent of MGM studios. One of Dymling's first acts was to name a much seasoned Victor Sjostrom, then well into his sixties, as production supervisor. And now at last - talent was able to assert itself. Theater dynamo Alf Sjoberg won attention with 1942's Himlaspelet (The Heavenly Play), a morality play that was written by screenwriter Rune Lindstrom, and Hets (Torment,1944) was based on an original screenplay by the young Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), and introduced a bright new star in Mai Zetterling. For the following decade, Bergman and Sjoberg would be the guiding lights of Swedish cinema, although Sjoberg was the senior by nearly fifteen years.
The Woman Without A Face, well partly. |
The Swedish film of the 1940's was marked by an undeveloped kind of guilt in the face of the war in Europe. Sweden's neutrality worried the intellectuals and artists of the period, especially when both Denmark and Norway were invaded and occupied by the Nazis. The collective feelings of anxiety emerged in the visual style of many films to come - in which the characters seemed oppressed by their environs and menaced by an incomprehensible fate.
The inimitable Inga Tiblad is getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E - thank goodness Molander and Bergman weren't! |
Molander's Kvinna utan ansikte (A Woman's Face 1938) scripted by Stina Bergman, exposed the world in an unforgiving light, as a young man strays from his marriage into a karmic doomed liaison. Franskild (Divorced,1951) also directed by Molander and written by Bergman, included a heart-tugging performance by Inga Tidblad as the forsaken wife for whom the lure of suicide is strong.
He otter be in pictures - Molander was in fine feral with The Great Adventure (1953) |
Arne Sucksdorff (1917-2001) was in the meantime following his personal line of exploration through film. Both his ethnographic and animal documentary series remain classics of their respective genres, they are indubitably Swedish in their preoccupation with the passage of the seasons and in their meticulous technique. His most acclaimed achievement is his feature film Det stora adventyret (The Great Adventure, 1953), but En Sommarsaga (A Summer Tale, 1941), Trut! (The Gull,1944) Gryming (Dawn,1944) Manniskor i Stad (People of the City 1947) and En klaven varld ( A Divided World, 1948) are all worthy of note.
A most pensive Miss Julie |
Bergman's reputation even in Sweden, would not reach the heights until the mid-Fifties, Sjoberg with masterpieces like Bara en mor (Only a Mother,1949) and Froken Julie (Miss Julie,1951), was regarded as preeminent in his field and for a short period between 1951 and 1955, it appeared as though Arne Mattson (1919-1995) would rival his accomplishment. Mattson was deeply influenced by Hitchock's canon and also drew upon the inspiration of Sjostrom in his depiction of Swedish bucolic life. Hon dansade en sommar (One Summer of Happiness,1951) stirred controversy when it was released Its story of young love in the countryside wasn't exactly new, but its candid expression surely supplied a piquancy to its form. One Summer of Happiness although not exactly a magnum opus moment for the director, would stand one of his most heartrending. 1953's The Bread of Love unfolded in the snowbound forests of Finland during the Russo-Finnish war of 1939 and focused with relentless accuracy on the behavior of a small patrol of men trapped in a minefield by their Soviet nemesis. Mattsson deployed an elaborate time structure with highly elegant camera movement, which would crescendo into its own frenzied state and it was suspenseful buildups such as these that would prove to be the hallmark of his work.
An iconic Icelandic tale in Salka valka (1954) |
Mattsson's Salka Valka (1954) was drawn from a novel by the celebrated Icelandic author Halldor Laxness (1902-1998). Its poignant story recounts the days of a mother and her young child who came to a fishing community only to survive on a combination of their wits and energy.
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) |
Apart from director Ingmar Bergman, whose work attracted universal acclaim, ironically failed to break any such box-office records in his native country, none of the established directors made significant progress during the decade. After 1955 no worthwhile film reflected the true state of life in Sweden at the time. Escapism was once again the order of the day.
The more things change the more they remain the same Jan Troell's Everlasting (2008) |
As the Fifties drew to a close, conditions in the domestic industry worsened and the Swedish cinema would be saved only by the foundation in 1963 of the Swedish Film Institute which encouraged a new generation of filmmakers, among them Bo Wilderberg, Jan Troell and Vilgot Sjoman (I Am Curious Yellow), who would respectively pursue distinctive careers in the cinema.