Karl Mantzius

A Danish crime film which Carl Theodor Dreyer worked on as a writer.

A series of family entanglements develop around the changing will of Roger Bernhuses de Sars (Karl Mantzius), who wants his heritage to go to his illegitimate daughter Blenda (Greta Almroth). But love and fate also plays their cards. One of the most surprising films of Sjöström, close to Stroheim and some of the silent comedies of Lubitsch. Belonging to the golden age of Swedish film, this comedy offers one of the earliest explorations of the relationship between masters and servants on the screen, later developed by French masters like Renoir and Guitry. After acting in the diptych of Thomas Graal, Sjöström shows that he also dominates the “light genre” as director.

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. (stumfilm.dk)

Compilation film with scenes from different Swedish silent films, many of the films have since been lost and the only surviving fragments can be found in this film.