Thomas Graal's Best Film

1917 ComedyRomance 90 minutes Directed by Mauritz Stiller

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About Thomas Graal's Best Film

Bessie Douglas walks out on her parents when they try to marry her off, and takes a job with Thomas Graal, a fashionable screenwriter who has run out of ideas. He kisses her. She slaps him and leaves. He writes the script he owes the studio out of that kiss and that slap, folding her family into the fantasy. He then tells the company he will play the lead only if Bessie plays it with him. She has not told him the whole truth about herself.

Cast & crew

More about Thomas Graal's Best Film

Mauritz Stiller directed. Gustaf Molander wrote the five-act comedy as Harald B. Harald. Svenska Biografteatern produced it. The censor passed it on 11 August 1917, number 18022, with no age bar. The original length was 1,823 meters. Copies ranged from 1,794 to 1,853 meters. At 18 frames per second the 1,853-meter copy runs about 90 minutes. It opened in Sweden on 13 August 1917.

Themes

  • A secretary who slaps the kiss back
  • A screenplay stolen from a real quarrel
  • Parents who tried to arrange Bessie's marriage
  • Thomas Graal
  • Bessie Douglas
  • screenwriter
  • slap
  • script
  • AB Filmkompaniet
  • Victor Sjöström

Making

Molander builds the script Thomas is writing as a film inside the film: each finished page turns into a scene that mixes what Bessie's parents really did with what Thomas wishes had happened.

Music

Silent, black and white, 35mm.

Preservation

The 1917 release was about 90 minutes. A shorter version now in circulation is missing roughly 31 minutes. The film is not gone.

Notes

  • Victor Sjöström plays Thomas. Karin Molander plays Bessie. Albin Lavén plays her father Alexander Douglas. Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson plays her mother Clotilde.
  • Axel Nilsson plays Johan. Georg Blomstedt plays Beyron, head of AB Filmkompaniet.
  • The Swedish title on the ads was Thomas Graals bästa film: Komedi i 5 akter.
  • A shorter copy in circulation is missing about 31 minutes of the 90-minute release.
  • Stiller's next Graal film, Thomas Graal's Best Child, opens by replaying this one's ending. Lavén died before that sequel and was not in it.

Scenes

  • Thomas kisses Bessie and she slaps him.
  • Pages of his script turn into scenes that put her parents inside his daydream.
  • He tells the studio he will not play the part unless Bessie is hired opposite him.

Influenced

  • Thomas Graal's Best Child (1918)

Also available

  • Internet Archive (silent-thomas-graals-bsta-film)

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