Watch Erotikon For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Memorable, crazy movie

Admirable film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

EROTIKON is a Swedish silent film that is supposed to be a sexy comedy, but much of it didn't seem all that funny nor did it especially titillate. Now this isn't saying it's a bad film, but it isn't exactly a must-see.The film is about a bored rich wife who runs about with a variety of men and her husband doesn't seem to mind or suspect that she might be cheating on him! At first, you just assume he's a moron. Later, when you see that he actually has strong romantic feelings towards his more domestically-oriented niece, you can see why he is ambivalent.There are lots of mistaken identities and situations in the film and it does have lovely camera work and costumes. As for the story, it all seems so ordinary and lacks spark. Still, as I am a lover of the silents, I did enjoy watching but I do think the film is a tad overrated.FYI--The DVD includes some bonus material that is delivered in such a dull and scholarly way that I found myself falling asleep repeatedly as I tried to watch.

A professor has a bit of an infatuation with his niece; the professor's wife, a cosmopolitan lady of leisure, takes up with a flashy aviator, mainly, it seems, to torment a sculptor who loves her; turn up the heat, stir, and wait for the boil...The DVD release's jacket does a mild disservice to Mauritz Stiller's Erotikon (1920) by stating that its slyly sardonic approach to sexual intrigue inspired Ernst Lubitsch. As the only Lubitsch film I've seen that predates Erotikon is the preposterous and galumphing Eyes of the Mummy, I'm prepared to accept that Lubitsch had a significant epiphany that helped him become the sort of filmmaker who could make The Marriage Circle. But the expectation is thus set that Erotikon will have an effervescent comic pace and a constantly winking eye like a Lubitsch film of the 30s-- and that is not the case. A better touchstone for the film is The Rules of the Game (not least because an aviator plays so prominent a role), a movie which observes, with the sad empathy of a veteran priest with many Saturdays spent listening to confession behind him, the desperate efforts of a group of humans to chase after happiness-- only to make things worse in most cases. Erotikon begins with a fussy middle-aged professor lecturing on bigamous beetles (oddly anticipating the recent movie biography of Dr. Kinsey), and takes a consciously scientific detachment toward its characters as they scurry about, trying to keep mortality at bay by finding some form of erotic excitement in lives which are a bit too settled, under-occupied and, it appears, sexually frustrated. A comedy, yes, and even one that wraps up in high spirits, and yet a comedy that's touched throughout by melancholy, and played with a sort of gravity and a deliberate pace that gives us time to feel the hurt under the surface.Or so it seemed to me when I watched it tonight. Then I watched the "intro" by the film scholar Peter Cowie, and learned that Erotikon is quite the opposite. Unlike Smiles of a Summer Night, another obvious comparison, Erotikon's comedy does not have a moralistic melancholy undertone, says Cowie. What struck me as gravity, like Preston Sturges slowed down to Douglas Sirk if not Carl Dreyer, strikes Cowie as "frothy."How to account for the fact that Cowie sees a completely different Erotikon than I do? Well, for one thing, I suppose he has far more experience of Scandinavian cinema on which to build his preconceptions; next to a diet of Sjostrom, Bergman, Strindberg and Hamsun, Erotikon IS frothy, I'm sure. And I doubt he had seen it, the first few times at least, with the particular score on this DVD, a Celtic dirge that seems to belong to a production of "The Death of Cuchulain" more than it does to a 1920s drawing room comedy; it certainly puts the film in a dourer key than a conventional romantic comedy score would have. Maybe I'll try watching it again with something peppier, and see if it's a different movie.Adding to the uncertainty of tone is the fact that the film contains a wide variety of acting styles. Tora Teje (as the socialite wife) and Lars Hanson (as the sculptor) are highly effective in a theatrical, heightened-naturalism sort of way, while Anders de Wahl as the husband and especially Torsten Hammaren as an aged professor who seems to be the Swedish answer to Mr. Muckle in It's a Gift are caricatures of woolly-headed academia. It's a bit like Deborah Kerr in Bonjour Tristesse being married to Fred MacMurray in The Absent-Minded Professor.Despite this mismatch-- perhaps to be expected in such a trailblazing comedy with no apparent models to follow, other than its stage original-- Erotikon is a striking and interesting film, one of the few silents that seems to leap out of the period, untouched by the customary moralizing Victorian preconceptions of what is proper behavior for its characters (and proper punishment for those who violate it). Erotikon simply observes what these creatures do naturally; applying morals to them would be self-delusion, and Erotikon is a movie largely free of illusions.

Insects are very similar to people in their sexual lives, as the entomologist Herr Leo Charpentier ( Anders de Wohl ) knows; some insects, like some people, are bigamists, others monogamists, and the boldest are even polygamists, not to mention the "Ipstypographus" who has three females! Charpentier's niece Marthe ( Karin Molander ) secretly loves her uncle, and Charpentier's wife Irene ( Tora Teje ) loves Baron Felix ( Vilhem Bryde ), and as well the sculptor Preben Wells, a friend of the whole family ( Lars Hanson ) loves Irene, but that one is an unrequited love... so, that's what "Erotikon", directed by the great Swedish director Herr Mauritz Stiller, is: a film about love and insects. "Erotikon" is a film that can be divided in two different parts: in its first part it is a high comedy with a remarkable pace and very dynamic editing; the film characters live in villas, go to the city by taxi, fly in airplanes and go to the theater; in this last scene the performance of the ballet "Schaname" is used by Stiller as a metaphor or analogy to explain in a subtle way ( as with the sexual life of insects ) that such complicated relationships have always existed, in ancient Persia ( the ballet tells the story of the Shah's favorite who loves prince Torie, another unrequited love with a tragic ending ) as in modern Sweden ( the entwined relationships of the main characters of the film ). In the last part of "Erotikon" the pace is more slow and static ( focused to solve those complicated love affairs ), the film more romantic, but not forgetting the comedy anyway, emphasizing for this German Count the surprising ending, modern and very advantageous for the film heroes' love interests. "Erotikon", filmed in 1920, is another great example of the modernity of the silent Swedish cinema ( in editing, acting, and even the audacity to show non-conventional marital relationships ), Herr Mauritz Stiller being one of its more important exponents. And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must investigate the Ipstypographus' secrets. Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

A scientist falls in love with a young girl who brings life and joy into his old house and marriage, while his wife is having an affair with his best friend. This is a completely delightful romantic comedy - one of the first ones ever? - with an abundance of wit and good acting. Mauritz Stiller is sometimes considered less interesting than his contemporary Swedish director Victor Sjöström, but Stiller had a feel for style and comedy which makes his films in my eyes fresher and more enjoyable than Sjöström's films. Stiller's more somber films have not aged as well as his comedies. Erotikon is perhaps a ditty, but it is certainly a wonderful one. If possible, see it in a cinema with a piano player playing live music - the film truly benefits from it.