The Other Golden Ages on Screen

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.

Chris Horak, a UCLA film professor and curator of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, believes Cahiers “may be the most influential film magazine in the history of films that there is because, first of all, a number of younger critics who initially started publishing in Cahiers became very famous filmmakers like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. When they started writing in Cahiers, they were writing already with the idea they would become filmmakers.”

The festival, which is based on a longer series presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, showcases the films of Godard (“Breathless”), Truffaut (“Day for Night”), Chabrol (“Les Bonnes Femmes”), Rohmer (“My Night at Maud’s”), Rivette (“Celine and Julie Go Boating”), as well as work by the directors they championed: Jean-Pierre Melville (“Le Doulos”), Jean Renoir (“The Golden Coach”), Jean Cocteau (“Orpheus”) and Robert Bresson (“Pickpocket”).

The festival concludes with two films from the 1990s: Andre Techine’s “Wild Reeds” and Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep.” Both directors have been influenced by Cahiers.

The young Turks who originally wrote for Cahiers were particularly interested in American cinema, and came up with the “auteur” theory of filmmaking. “The auteur theory stated the director was the most important creative force in this communal process of filmmaking,” Horak says. “Films of value should not be judged by their script or their literary contents but in fact by their visual style.”

The critics singled out American filmmakers who worked in such genres as westerns and film noirs “that have consistent styles despite the fact that they get lots of different scripts,” Horak says. “They named as their primary evidence people like John Ford and Howard Hawks and Hitchcock too.”

They came down particularly hard on French filmmakers involved in “cinema of quality”--movies that emphasized the script.

“Formerly, directors who had been held in high esteem like Julien Duvivier or Rene Clair were suddenly out, and other directors who had been neglected by the critics like Jean Renoir were in,” Horak adds. “Of course, most importantly, they said there needs to be room for new directors, and they meant themselves.”

In part, the Cahiers writers could study so many American films because France was deluged with U.S. work after the country was liberated from the Germans.

“All of a sudden, they were able to put large amounts of films into the market, films that long ago had made their money in other countries,” Horak says. “So the critics were able to see four years of production in one fell sweep, so they were able to see trends other American critics had not seen because you had seen them day to day.”

The magazine changed focus in 1968, says Marsha Kinder, chairman of critical studios at the USC School of Cinema-Television. “There is a movement away from that auteur theory and a movement toward politicizing cinema,” she says. During this time, for example, Godard became a Maoist and proclaimed in Cahiers that the 1957 Doris Day musical “The Pajama Game” was the perfect Marxist musical.

“The idea was that you really needed to engage with ideology, and all cinema was political,” Kinder says, “even the most delightful musical cartoons.”

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Revisiting European Influences

“The Golden Age of Mauritz Stiller”

Saturday at 7:30 p.m.: “Love and Journalism,” “The Wings” and “Thomas Graal’s Best Film”

April 28 at 7 p.m.: “Sir Arne’s Treasure” and “Johan”

April 30 at 7:30 p.m.: “Gunnar Hede’s Saga” and “Song of the Scarlet Flower”

May 4 at 7:30 p.m.: “Erotikon” and “Thomas Graal’s Best Child”

May 5 at 7 p.m. “The Atonement of Gosta Berling, Parts I and II”

“A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Cahiers du Cinema”

(Screenings begin at 7:30 p.m.)

Friday: “Breathless” and “Le Doulos”

Saturday: “The Golden Coach” and “Day for Night”

May 3: “Orpheus” and “Les Bonne Femmes.”

May 4: “Pickpocket” and “My Night at Maud’s”

May 10: “Celine and Julie Go Boating”

May 11: “Wild Reeds” and “Irma Vep”

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“The Golden Age of Mauritz Stiller,” Saturday-May 5, James A. Bridges Theater, UCLA, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue. Admission: $7, general; $5, students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Assn. members (ID required). For information, call (310) 206-FILM or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu.

“A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Cahiers du Cinema,” Friday-May 11, Leo. S. Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Admission: $7, adults; $5, seniors, students and AFI members. For tickets, call (877) 522-6225 or go to www.lacma.org.

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Susan King is a Times staff writer.