The Golden Age of Swedish Cinema was in high gear when one of its country's leading directors, Mauritz Stiller, produced what is considered his masterpiece, September 1919's "Sir Arne's Treasure." Stiller had been directing and writing scripts since 1912, and is largely known for being responsible for making Greta Garbo into an international star. His adaptation of the 1903 novel "The Treasure" resulted in the sweet spot for his craft, placing all the internal and external elements of storytelling onto the screen.
Back during that Golden Age, from mid-1910s to mid-1920s, Swedish cinema had been known to incorporate Nature to explain the motivations of its characters' actions. "Sir Arne's Treasure" follows three unfairly imprisoned Scottish mercenary commanders who have escaped their jail cell. In the dead of winter they travel through Sweden's countryside in the late 1500's seeking to return to Scotland. By way of their journey, they hear of a family who harbor a large chest of silver coins. Obsessed by the treasure after experiencng their bone-chilling and starving ordeal, the three proceed to steal the chest of silver and murder the entire family, except for the daughter. A love interest develops between the surviving woman and one of the murderers, setting off a spiritual understanding of the two.
Stiller captures the elemental forces of Nature to steer the plot and explain the impulses of all concerned, including the internal forces overcoming any rational thought. And the overwhelming motive, Love, shines a light on the daughter's actions to save her murderous lover.
"Sir Arne's Treasure" played a huge influence on the composition of directors Fritz Lang and Sergei Eisenstein, the later Russian duplicating almost the exact same scene in his 1944 'Ivan The Terrible' as Stiller constructed in his finale funeral sequence in "Sir Arne's Treasure"--showing a long line of black-clad village mourners contrasted against the pure white snow tredging to the ice-bound boat to pick up the daughter's corpse.
