The story of a sensitive young musician whose effort to restore his family’s fortune has disastrous consequences, GUNNAR HEDES SAGA (THE BLIZZARD) blends Lagerlöf’s themes of nature and dreams with Stiller’s own ideas of how to tell a story on film. In an appreciation of Stiller that Sjöström wrote for Bengt Idestam-Alquist’s 1952 book, Swedish Cinema: The Stiller and Sjöström Period, the director noted that “Stiller was so modern that he made whatever changes in the story that he thought would be of best effect, regardless of what the author had written.” According to Sjöström, Stiller saw some documentary footage about reindeer in Lapland at the studio’s lab and decided to change the novel’s climactic sheepherding scene to reindeer herding, using that footage. Lagerlöf was furious, but the film was a popular and critical success, and its impact has not diminished. In 1977, Richard Combs wrote, “It is one of those rare works in which every detail and gesture functions perfectly on both a literal and symbolic level, so that the scenes do not so much open out as downwards … suggesting that the film is constantly plumbing the connections and uses of dreams.”
Margarita Landazuri, San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2011
