ONE of the most intriguing programs in the UCLA Film and Television Archive's International Preservation series is tonight's presentation of three early Scandinavian silents.
In 1910, Denmark's cinema arguably was the most sophisticated in the world, in no small measure because of Asta Nielsen, an actress with amazing naturalness and an equally impressive intensity. Urban Gad's "The Abyss" (1910) ends up as melodramatic as many a lesser silent but is a vignette beautifully told, about a young woman (Nielsen) who abruptly dumps her fiance, a vicar's son, for a handsome traveling circus cowboy she has just laid eyes on. Disaster unsurprisingly awaits, as her new guy has a roving eye. But her showbiz life with him is so vital and her passion for him so great that, well, maybe it was all worth it. Nielsen and her lover perform a tango that is astonishingly erotic and boldly suggestive, especially for 1910.
Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom emerged as two of Sweden's greatest pioneer directors, and Stiller's "The Avenger" (1915) and Sjostrom's "Kiss of Death" (1916) offer glimpses of what was soon to come -- although Sjostrom had already directed "Ingeborg Holm" (1913), which film critic Andrew Sarris suspects may be the movies' first masterpiece.
"The Avenger," about a pregnant Jewish woman's rejection by her Gentile lover and its consequences to the next generation, is strongly steeped in the coincidental and the didactic. It is far removed from the sophisticated fare that would make Stiller a rival to Lubitsch -- yet the story must have been exceptionally close to his heart.
"Kiss of Death" is a clever if farfetched mystery that turns upon one man's exact likeness to another. That allows the husky Sjostrom, who played the elderly professor in Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" 40 years later, to take on dual roles. It is a light divertissement among the director's generally serious fare, which included "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Wind."
Fish and footsteps
The ninth annual DocuWeek Theatrical Documentary Showcase will present 12 features and three shorts Friday through next Thursday at the ArcLight, with each film screened daily on a rotating schedule.
Of special note is Hubert Sauper's "Darwin's Nightmare," which tells how the Nile perch, introduced into Tanzania's Lake Victoria in the 1960s, has rendered all other species there virtually extinct. The perch has become a profitable export but has left devastation.
