The Saga of Gösta Berling () is a 1924 Swedish romantic drama film directed by Mauritz Stiller and released by AB Svensk FAB Svensk Filmindustri, starring Lars Hanson, Gerda Lundequist and Greta Garbo in her domestic film breakthrough. It is based on Swedish Nobel Prize-winning author Selma Lagerlöf's 1891 debut novel Gösta Berlings saga. The film is also known as Gösta Berling's Saga, The Story of Gösta Berling and The Atonement of Gösta Berling. Plot The story follows several major characters, including Gosta Berling himself and others, especially women, whose lives touch him and that he touches. The film includes several flashbacks and crosscuts to other scenes giving additional information about those characters.. An opening intertitle extols the beauty of Varmland and the (fictional) estate of "Ekeby." A century earlier, the estate was home to a company of twelve "Cavaliers," former soldiers who spend their time idly and often drunkenly as guests of Margaretha Samzelius, wife of a former army major and referred to as the "Majoress." On Christmas Eve, Gosta Berling, a defrocked Lutheran minister, leads evening revels and tricks the company with an appearance of a "devil," played by Sintram, a household servant. Events later that evening lead to a flashback when Berling was still a minister but on the verge of being removed from his parish by the presiding bishop because of his habitual drunkenness. Berling gives such a moving sermon, though, that the parishioners and bishop are ready to forgive him until he begins to denounce their hypocrisy. Driven into exile, he becomes tutor to Ebba Dohna, stepdaughter of the mistress of Borg, an estate near Ekeby. The mother hopes to have Ebba marry Berling so that she will be disinherited for marrying a commoner, allowing the mother's natural son, Hendrik, to become heir to the estate. At that time, Hendrik returns from a trip to Italy with his new wife, Elizabeth. At dinner that night, Berling's past is exposed, devastating Ebba, who is in love with him, but rousing the sympathy of Elizabeth. Berling leaves Borg and is found half-frozen by Margaretha who brings him to Ekeby and makes him one of the Cavaliers. Berling eventually learns of Ebba's death, apparently from grief, and Margaretha tells him of how she had left home under the curse of her mother because of her own love for a man. Later, at a dinner party, Berling is one