Erotikon (1920)
Directed by Mauritz Stiller

Film Review

If Mauritz Stiller is remembered today it is most probably for his 1924 epic period melodrama The Saga of Gosta Berling, the film that earned Greta Garbo her ticket to Hollywood and set her on the road to stardom.  This film was towards the end of Stiller's career; previously he had carved out a reputation for himself as one of Sweden's most accomplished filmmakers, something to which his hauntingly lyrical masterpiece Sir Arne's Treasure (1919) testifies.  We shall never know the full extent of Stiller's genius, let alone his versatility as a filmmaker, as 31 of the 45 films he directed have been lost forever.  If Erotikon, one of the director's rare excursions into comedy, appears distinctly un-Stiller-esque to us, it is because we have so little to compare it with.

Adapted from a play entitled A kék róka by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Herczeg, Erotikon is a satisfying modern blend of social satire and romantic comedy.  It was among Stiller's most expensive films to make, coming at a time when his employers at Svensk Filmindustri had opted to scale back their output and make fewer, more opulent films aimed at both the domestic and international markets.  Most of the budget appears to have been swallowed up by a lavish set-piece consisting of a 1001 Nights-style ballet, with scores of attractive females barely draped in the skimpiest of outfits (the film certainly lives up to its title).  This play-within-a-play of course humorously mirrors the film's main intrigue, a love quadrangle involving an entomology professor, his wife, a sculptor and an aviator, who, viewed objectively like insects under a microscope, come to resemble subjects in a weird kind of nature study.  When the professor, instructing his class on the mating habits of beetles, remarks that "two females will suffice, but one is never enough", he might as well be referring to both sexes of his own species.  As it turns out, whilst his wife is carrying on an affair with two men behind his back, this learned academic is happily flirting with his own niece, his excuse being that his wife doesn't give him enough 'mutton casserole'.

Erotikon was among Stiller's most commercially successful films and was widely distributed abroad, so its influence on other filmmakers of the period (from Lubitsch to Chaplin) cannot be understated.  For a time when most comedies involved boisterous slapstick, the film is remarkably sophisticated and no doubt influenced the 'new wave' of silent comedies that came in the 1920s, spearheaded by those of the great Ernst Lubitsch.  With its subtle innuendo, well-observed social critique and occasional dalliance with full-on eroticism, Erotikon could almost be mistaken for a Lubitsch comedy and most probably had a great impact on the German filmmaker when he saw it.  A forerunner of the smart American romantic comedy, it is the kind of film in which Stiller would have excelled in Hollywood, had he been given the chance instead of being unceremoniously dumped by his bosses at the first opportunity.  Even though the film has little of the overwhelming visual poetry of Stiller's period masterpieces, it nonetheless possesses a quality of greatness, and it functions equally well as a pointedly observant study in human frailty and as a cheekily acerbic commentary on middle class manners circa 1920.  As erotic Swedish comedies go, this one is in a class of its own.

Film Synopsis

Professor Leo Charpentier is an eminent entomologist who is far more interested in the mating habits of insects that in his wife's conjugal needs.  So, naturally, his wife Irene looks elsewhere to resolve her romantic deficit.  Not content with making her husband's sculptor friend, Preben Wells, her lover, she begins having an affair with a third man, the dashing aviator Baron Felix.  Preben is the first one to realise that Irene is cheating on him; when Leo is not absorbed in his study of beetles he is happy being distracted by his young niece.  So angry is he with Irene's betrayal that Preben informs Leo of his wife's latest amorous adventure.  The only honourable thing is for Leo and the Baron to settle their differences in a duel...