The Word
A pioneer in cinema history and a founding figure of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström excelled both as a filmmaker and an actor, directing masterpieces in his native Scandinavia as well as in Hollywood. This three-month program presents a selection of his greatest silent films, all accompanied by live piano, along with some of his most significant contributions to Swedish cinema as an actor.
The first film adaptation of Kaj Munk's 1925 play of the same name, The Word pits a widowed man against his three sons. They disagree about their religious beliefs and this leads to inner conflicts for each of them. Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer directed a second adaptation in 1955.
Gustaf Molander
Gustaf Molander was a Swedish actor and film director. His parents were director Harald Molander, Sr. and singer and actress** Lydia Molander**. Gustaf wrote several screenplays for Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, and was helped by the latter to get employment as a director for Svensk Filmindustri, where he worked for 30 years. All in all, he directed 62 films. He often worked with Gösta Ekman, and his films include Intermezzo (1936), which became Ingrid Bergman's breakthrough and paved her way to America, where she starred in the 1939 Hollywood remake of the film. In 1943, he directed The Word (Ordet), the first film version of the play of the same name written by the Protestant pastor Kaj Munk, not to be confused with the second and more famous version of the film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. In 1948, Molander made what should have been his last film, Eva, but almost twenty years later, in 1967, he agreed to participate as a director of an episode in the collective film Stimulantia only to return to work with Ingrid Bergman 30 years later.
Presented in collaboration with
