Even though Greta Garbo made this movie at the start of her career (when she was still Greta Gustafson) it is considered one her most successful and pleasing romances. Instantly Hollywood beckoned and in one fell swoop signed director (Mauritz Stiller), both stars (Lars Hanson and Greta Garbo) as well as another top ranked Swedish director Victor Seastrom - and the cream of Sweden's small industry was gone. "The Saga of Gosta Berling" was a big epic movie full of passions and larger than life characters. It was based on the hugely successful book by Sweden's most famed and prolific author - Selma Lagerlof - and it was also the reason for the film's greatest drawback. Because almost everyone in Sweden had read the novel not a lot of explanation of character and motive was needed and it was almost cut to half it's running length for the U.S. market. Now fortunately it has been restored to the way it played in the Swedish cinemas.
Unlike Germany, the Swedish acting style was very flamboyant, writers and actors were very demonstrative in their neurotic self doubts. Swedish drama was usually larger than life - no minor problems or intimate discussions but duels, suicides, plagues, fires and most of it is here in Gosta Berling.
Gosta Berling (Lars Hanson) is a defrocked priest who is a self sacrificing idealist, torn between destroying himself and helping others. He is one of the knights of Ekeby, a group of drunken rabble rousers who have literally gone to the devil!!! Gosta Berling has been defrocked not because he drinks but because he exposed the hypocrisy of the small village where liquor was their God!!! He is hired to tutor Ebba (Mona Martensson), daughter of an impoverished Countess who has secretly hired Gosta ("the handsome Gosta") hoping he will marry Ebba and take her off the family's hands. Ebba is due to inherit the family estate unless she dies or marries a commoner, if so, the estate goes to her brother Henrik - hence the eagerness to marry her to commoner Gosta!!! Religious Ebba though is trying to convince Gosta to become a preacher as she is dazzled by his fiery speeches.
Meanwhile Henrik returns from Italy with his new wife Elisabeth (Greta Garbo). At a party given to the newlyweds Elisabeth learns that Ebba's fiancé is Gosta Berling, the same man who tutored her and was her friend when she was a young girl. When Ebba overhears of the plot to swindle her out of her inheritance she denounces Gosta as being privy to the secret. Gosta feels he is lost, doomed - and thus becomes one of the drunken knights of Ekeby but with Gosta now gone Ebba dies of a broken heart. Pulled from his suicidal thoughts by Margaretha Celsing, the most influential woman in the village, she tells him her embittered tale and Gosta realises that life is there to be lived.
Marianne, the petted daughter of Melchoir Sinclair, is made an outcast by her parents because of her infatuation with Gosta and Margaretha is also turned out on the streets when her husband's secret regarding her old lover is exposed. When Gosta finds Marianne he takes her back to Ekeby, which has been left to the drunken knights by the embittered husband. They proceed to run the once prosperous estate into the ground. Meanwhile Margaretha, mad with vengeance, is planning an uprising with the peasants to take over the estate and burn it to the ground.
This movie, like "Gone With the Wind" is larger than life. Elisabeth, who has come to regret marrying the pompous Henrik is surprised when Henrik comes to her with papers to sign - apparently they have not been legally married. Reluctantly she is about to sign when Henrik's mother mentions that it was noticed that she ran after Gosta in the snow and didn't return till morning. That is one of the movie's most spectacular scenes - Gosta and Elisabeth fleeing on a sleigh across a frozen lake while being pursued by wolves!!!
In such a tumultuous, incident packed movie it is incredible that Greta Garbo shines through. She is not the sultry vamp of Hollywood but still beautiful and serene - there aren't even that many closeups of that incredible face. But the magic is already there and whenever she is off the screen she is missed.
Unlike Germany, the Swedish acting style was very flamboyant, writers and actors were very demonstrative in their neurotic self doubts. Swedish drama was usually larger than life - no minor problems or intimate discussions but duels, suicides, plagues, fires and most of it is here in Gosta Berling.
Gosta Berling (Lars Hanson) is a defrocked priest who is a self sacrificing idealist, torn between destroying himself and helping others. He is one of the knights of Ekeby, a group of drunken rabble rousers who have literally gone to the devil!!! Gosta Berling has been defrocked not because he drinks but because he exposed the hypocrisy of the small village where liquor was their God!!! He is hired to tutor Ebba (Mona Martensson), daughter of an impoverished Countess who has secretly hired Gosta ("the handsome Gosta") hoping he will marry Ebba and take her off the family's hands. Ebba is due to inherit the family estate unless she dies or marries a commoner, if so, the estate goes to her brother Henrik - hence the eagerness to marry her to commoner Gosta!!! Religious Ebba though is trying to convince Gosta to become a preacher as she is dazzled by his fiery speeches.
Meanwhile Henrik returns from Italy with his new wife Elisabeth (Greta Garbo). At a party given to the newlyweds Elisabeth learns that Ebba's fiancé is Gosta Berling, the same man who tutored her and was her friend when she was a young girl. When Ebba overhears of the plot to swindle her out of her inheritance she denounces Gosta as being privy to the secret. Gosta feels he is lost, doomed - and thus becomes one of the drunken knights of Ekeby but with Gosta now gone Ebba dies of a broken heart. Pulled from his suicidal thoughts by Margaretha Celsing, the most influential woman in the village, she tells him her embittered tale and Gosta realises that life is there to be lived.
Marianne, the petted daughter of Melchoir Sinclair, is made an outcast by her parents because of her infatuation with Gosta and Margaretha is also turned out on the streets when her husband's secret regarding her old lover is exposed. When Gosta finds Marianne he takes her back to Ekeby, which has been left to the drunken knights by the embittered husband. They proceed to run the once prosperous estate into the ground. Meanwhile Margaretha, mad with vengeance, is planning an uprising with the peasants to take over the estate and burn it to the ground.
This movie, like "Gone With the Wind" is larger than life. Elisabeth, who has come to regret marrying the pompous Henrik is surprised when Henrik comes to her with papers to sign - apparently they have not been legally married. Reluctantly she is about to sign when Henrik's mother mentions that it was noticed that she ran after Gosta in the snow and didn't return till morning. That is one of the movie's most spectacular scenes - Gosta and Elisabeth fleeing on a sleigh across a frozen lake while being pursued by wolves!!!
In such a tumultuous, incident packed movie it is incredible that Greta Garbo shines through. She is not the sultry vamp of Hollywood but still beautiful and serene - there aren't even that many closeups of that incredible face. But the magic is already there and whenever she is off the screen she is missed.