Scandinavian Silent Cinema

Pegg, Eva, Baby and Emmy — four self-supporting female office workers — share a flat and try to make their way in the rapidly modernizing but still very patriarchal Stockholm of the early 1900s.Read More »

Quote:
Gustaf Molander was the one who primarily would be asked to continue Sjöström’s and Stiller’s work. He was also the film company’s chief negotiator with Lagerlöf, and someone she did not like. “Molander has just left. He is a remarkably dead and uninteresting character, although he is such a fine person. The matter concerned that which you had just told me about, to ask whether I had any good ideas in stock, which I could pass on to them […] He was not very informed about my novels, I must say […].

Swedish Film: An Introduction And Reader (2014)Read More »

From the Danish Film Institute website:
The titular villain is an infamous international criminal, Mrs Valentin Kempel, known as “The Predator Spider” due to her habit of ensnaring innocent victims in her web. Men are enchanted by her, and she uses this to coerce them into taking part in her criminal activities. When one of her victims takes his own life, the victim’s brother and a detective decide to put an end to the beautiful criminal’s reign of terror. But The Hunting Spider does not give in so easily – and she is not afraid to use unsporting tricks against her new opponents.Read More »

Following some dodgy dealings, stockbroker Saccard is determined to pull himself out of the gutter and regain is reputation. He is of such ill repute that few, not even his own brother, want anything to do with him. Yet against all the odds he manages to establish a bank. Using straw men and secret knowledge of the course of the war, Saccard inflates the bank’s shares to feed his own sordid desire for speculation. Unfortunately, false success rarely endures. The preserved material is a fragment.Read More »

Quote:
Death’s bells toll in tune to the march of war. On top of devastating losses, espionage also cripples General Müller’s army. Young Lieutenant Charley is entrusted with the delivery of Dossier 15, a document of utmost importance to the war effort. After a dangerous journey through enemy territory, Adjutant Bertram betrays him – it turns out that he’s spying for the enemy. Bertram replaces Dossier 15 with a worthless piece of paper which leads to Charley’s arrest. Charley must escape to avoid execution and expose the spy.Read More »

Quote:
Police reporter Erik Brandt is sent off for some rest and recreation after solving a murder under the nose of the police. But his well-earned holiday turns out to be a lot more hectic than planned, when the resort is rocked by as string of brutal murders. An attractive young lady who captures Brandt’s heart might be involved. (stumfilm.dk)Read More »

An upperclass war widow marries again. The new husband is also an officer, and soon he has to go to the next war. At the outbreak, she’s the only one who does not cheer about it. And the terrors of war soon bring almost all of her friends and relatives, among them generals and high government officials to the same conclusion: War does not pay.Read More »

In 16th century Sweden, the lives of three Scottish mercenaries and a vicar’s family intersect after a crime forever alters a small coastal town. As the three try to escape, they find themselves trapped when all ships are frozen in ice.Read More »

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary 1922 silent film Häxan uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious; instead, it’s a witches’ brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.Read More »