Secret of the Monastery (1920)
Directed by Victor Sjöström

Film Review

The year before he directed the film for which he is now best known, The Phantom Carriage (1921), Victor Sjöström delivered this haunting adaptation of a short story by Franz Grillparzer.  The Monastery of Sendomir (a.k.a. Klostret i Sendomir) differs markedly from the other films that Sjöström made around this time, being confined mostly to claustrophobic interior spaces, with virtually all of the action taking place in what seems to be a perpetual night.  This endows the film with a very different mood from the director's pastoral works of the time - A Man There Was (1917), The Lass from the Stormy Croft (1917), Eyvind of the Hills (1918) - naturalistic melodramas played out against the most beautiful rural landscapes of Scandinavia.  By contrast, The Monastery of Sendomir is a brooding affair, its oppressive feel owing as much to its confined setting as to the fact that almost all of the story is told in flashback.  Time and space appear compressed, reduced to a tiny portion of fabric on which the lives of the ill-fated protagonists are inscribed, and we are left with a palpable sense of the brevity and injustice of mortal existence.

More than anything, it is the style of acting that most bears the signature of its author.  By the time he made this film, Victor Sjöström was Sweden's most revered filmmaker, in fact one of the greatest of all European film directors, and this was owed to the blistering authenticity he brought to his films.  Throughout the silent era, most directors encouraged their actors to act in an expressionistic manner, making up for the absence of dialogue through excessive physical gestures and exaggerated facial expressions.   Sjöström was one of a minority of filmmakers who went in the other direction from the theatrical tradition and insisted on a more naturalistic approach to acting, instead using cinematic devices (lighting, camera angles and close-ups) to emphasise the inner states of his protagonists.  His cinematographer Henrik Jaenzon and lead actors Tore Svennberg and Tora Teje serve him well in this regard - it is impossible not to feel for both of the main characters as their lives are slowly torn apart by their human failings.

The harrowing scene towards the end of the flashback sequence in which the enraged Starschensky drives his unfaithful wife to commit matricide to save her own life is one of the cruellest and most poignant in Sjöström's entire oeuvre.  In a maelstrom of recrimination and fear compassion's last candle is snuffed out and the ultimate crime becomes a terrifying possibility.  It is the moral of this bleak fable that the light of hope shines brightest in the darkest of places.  This, the gloomiest of Sjöström's films, ends with the cheering thought that no crime is so bad that its perpetrator is destined for eternal damnation, but whilst a path to redemption may well exist, it is sure to be long and burdensome.

Film Synopsis

In the 17th century, two weary travellers arrive at a remote monastery and are invited to spend the night there.  They are curious about the origins of the monastery, so, reluctantly, the kindly old monk who shows them to their room recounts the tragic tale that led to founding of the religious establishment.  Some years ago, there was a wealthy count, Starschensky, who lived in a grand castle with his beloved wife Elga and infant son.  The count had everything he could want to be happy but one day he begins to suspect that his wife has been unfaithful to him.  His suspicions are confirmed when his steward informs him that he has seen a stranger lurking in the vicinity of the watch tower after dark.  It transpires that the stranger is Elga's cousin Oginsky, to whom she was once engaged.  Convinced that Oginsky is his son's real father, the count extracts a confession from his rival and then confronts his wife with revelation that he has uncovered her dark secret.  To save her life, Elga has no choice but to murder her illegitimate child...