The Other Golden Ages on Screen

New series honor Swedish director Mauritz Stiller and the influential Cahiers du Cinema critic-filmmakers.

Los Angeles cineastes should be in celluloid heaven for the next few weeks with the arrival of two major retrospectives highlighting the work of several influential European filmmakers.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive's "The Golden Age of Mauritz Stiller" features 10 films from the long-neglected Swedish silent film director. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's "A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Cahiers du Cinema" emphasizes the early years of the French film magazine as well as more contemporary French directors that the publication has influenced.

Seventy-four years after his death, Stiller is finally getting the renewed attention he deserves. For years, he was best known as the director who made Greta Garbo a star when he cast her in his 1924 "The Atonement of Gosta Berling, Parts I and II." The success of that film bought them both to Hollywood. Garbo flourished; Stiller floundered.

Adding insult to injury, when he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, his name was inscribed as "Maurice Diller." The mistake wasn't corrected until several years later.

From World War I until the mid-'20s, the Swedish film industry flourished, influencing European and American directors in style and subject matter. But Stiller has taken a back seat to the other noted Swedish director of the period, Victor Sjostrom. Unlike Stiller, Sjostrom had several successes in the U.S., including the 1926 MGM film "The Wind," with Lillian Gish.

"I think there is a rediscovery of Stiller happening right now which is partially being promoted by the Swedish Film Institute," UCLA programmer David Pendelton says. "This retrospective was done in London and is traveling around the States."

The series kicks off Saturday at UCLA's James Bridges Theater with three of Stiller's earliest films, 1916's "Love and Journalism" and "The Wings" and 1917's "Thomas Graal's Best Film."

Andreas Ekman, Swedish consul general in Los Angeles, says Stiller and Sjostrom are household names to film fans in Sweden. "There are some films that are part of our heritage like 'Sir Arne's Treasure,' which is an adaptation of a book. Also another one of Stiller's adaptations is the 'Gosta Berling' story, which actually brought Greta Garbo to fame. These adaptations were done in a very dramatic way."

Born in Finland of Russian Jewish heritage, Moshe Stiller fled to Sweden after he was drafted into the czar's army. Changing his name to Mauritz Stiller, he distinguished himself as a stage director and actor. In 1912, he began working in film. His films ranged from delightful comedies like "Thomas Graal's Best Film" and the sequel, "Thomas Graal's Best Child" (1918)--both starring Sjostrom--and 1920's "Erotikon" to such dramas as 1916's "The Wings," which subtly explored homosexuality, and "Sir Arne's Treasure" (1919), a haunting tale about an orphaned girl who unwittingly falls in love with the man who murdered her foster family.

The Swedish Film Institute has restored all films in the retrospective. Because all but the silent "Graal" comedies have Swedish titles, UCLA will have a translator at the screenings; Robert Israel will provide live musical accompaniment.

Pendleton sees Stiller has a precursor to Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who came to fame in the '50s. "They are both people who move back and forth very well between farce and sort of comedy of manners to psychological drama to self-reflecting filmmaking. Sjostrom has long been this figure who is respected because he is part of film history. But looking at these Stiller films, they in some ways seem fresher and more contemporary to us now, particularly because there is much more humor in his work."

Because his films were visually striking and often funny, it's hard to believe he couldn't find a home in Hollywood.

"Some people have conjectured that Stiller didn't work well in the Hollywood hierarchical studio system with big budgets," Pendleton says. "He was somebody who came out of smaller Stockholm theater circles, more like an impresario or entrepreneur.

Stiller died at 45 in 1928. His "Hotel Imperial" is the only film that still exists from his four-year stint in Hollywood.

Since Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Lo Duca and the renowned critic Andre Bazin created Cahiers du Cinema (Book of Cinema) in 1951, it has been one of the most influential film publications. The magazine was an offshoot of Revue du Cinema, published by Jean-Georges Auriol and two Parisian film clubs, Objectif 49 and Cine-Club du Quartier Latin.