You mention Swedish films to me, and comedies don't spring to mind. Speak of Mauritz Stiller, Gustav Molander and Victor Sjöström working together and I think of something really deep dish, involving people suffering, stormy weather and thorough misery. Oh, you might get a structural comedy, in which some petty autocrat in a priest's collar learns that other people are humans too, but mostly I expect a lot of snow and anguish, maybe a curse or two. At best, there's a homicidal clown or a series of ex-lovers looking at a corpse. Yet here's Sjöström starring in a comedy written by Molander and directed by Stiller. Well, maybe the unnamed editor had a hand in it.
Karin Molander is a high-spirited girl. When her squire of a father talks about a marriage to a rich count, she'll have none of it, so she runs away to the big city, where she meets writer Sjöström and tells him about her cruel, impoverished life. He's quite willing to believe it, so he offers her a job as his secretary. She accepts, but soon enough he kisses her and she runs back home. So he tells his friend the film producer about it and turns it into a script, while the producer puts a notice in the paper, offering her a job as an actress.
It's a situational comedy, rather than the sort of slapstick that you got in the rest of the world. The gags are limited to the untrained actress performing dramatic roles in a mirror, Sjöström going bumpity-bump down a flight of stairs, and other such moments of hilarity. As a movie farce, it's all right at best. As a Swedish comedy, it's in the top ten.
