Swedish Silent Film:Victor Sjostrom- Lost Film, Found Magazines
Victor Sjostrom
My Silent Swedish Film webpage, which covered from the turn of century to the advent of sound, was, before its having been transferred at the last minute, a Geocities webpage. I still have a love for silent film, which skyrocketed after having looked at The Last Tycoon and The Garden of Eden; Photoplay magazine of 1927 mentions Fitzgerald being in the process of writing an original screenplay for Constance Talmadge, it later reviewing his adapted work, "Fitzgerald's novel, with its unscrupulous hero, violates some pet screen traditions." The silent film is in fact a deepening of the novel as an art form. Waldemar Young was credited for writing the scenario of the film Off Shore Pirate (1921), adapted from the short story written by Scott Fitzgerald. If I was not to be present that evening, I jotted down my having noticed that Harvard Film has a free series of screenings open to the public at the University, which if you rebegin this month, includes The Joyless Street (Die Freudlosse Gasse (G.W. Pabst 1925); my copy of the film I no longer have (my former mentor had a yardsale or something or other). Previous screenings have included Danish film star, Asta Nielsen Tragedy of the Street (Dirnetragodre, Bruno Rahn, 1927). Evidently, The Great Train Robbery (Porter,1903) was still being shown in theaters as late as 1926, added to the feature then playing, whereas it wasn't untill Hamlet (Gade, 1920) that sex symbol Asta Nielsen was introduced to mainstream audiences in the United States. Is it possible that when Greta Garbo visited the home of Basil Rathbone in the masquerade costume of Hamlet, it was a tribute, or nod, to Danish Silent Film star Asta Nielsen? As research, the recent European claim that it is impossible to screen two films by Sam Brakage, The Boy and the Sea and Silent Sand Sense Stars Subotnick and Sender, seems to avoid being mysterious as it teeters on being ludicrous, and the present author sees little probability that they have decomposed-what will not be seen at Harvard University, or at the Universities of Sweden or Denmark, is the 1922 film The Beautiful and the Damned directed by William A. Sieter/SydneyFranklin and starring Marie Prevost, if a film accurately reported as being unavailbable for screening, or or the 1926 film The Great Gatsby directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Lois Wilson- within the world of Lost Films, Found Magazines, there are no existant copies of either film, our knowledge of them and curiousity is left for stills taken during the time period; there are no vaults that exist.For that matter, there little likelihood of a copy of The Villiage Blacksmith (1922, eight reels) directed by John Ford going on sale; there are no copies of it anywhere: similarly The Courtship of Miles Standish (Fredrick M Sullivan, 1923) is lost but two pages of full page advertisements of Charles Ray and Enid Bennett were found by the present author in The Film Daily from the year of its first run. Both Anna Karenina (J. Gordon Edward, 1915, five reels), starring Betty Nansen and Stella Hammerstein, and The Scarlet Letter (Carl Harbaugh, 1917) starring Mary Martin, are lost, both filmed by Fox Film.
The characters portrayed on-screen by Ruth Taylor and Alice White may be familiar to present audiences, but the scenario co-written with John Emerson by the author of the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos, and directed by Malcom St. Clair in 1927 is also among the silent film listed as lost film. One novel, One Increasing Purpose, seems intriguing in that it seems only possible that it is missing, filmed in 1926, it was advertised as being the next great work to have been written by A.S.M Hutchinson after If Winter Comes; as good as the drama may have been, it was filmed in England and seems elusive in being included in lists of lost-missing films. Although only its director, Leslie H. Hiscott, may know the whereabouts of The Missing Rembrant, die hard fans of Arthur Wotner and Ian Fleming can only wonder. And yet there are several films that are now lost that appeared not only on the theater marquee, but in bookstores; Grosset and Dunlap having published Photoplay Editions of films rewritten as novels, in including intertextual photos, the illustrated photoplay edition of the novel London After Midnight, written by Marie Coolidge Rask, was published in 1928. Just as lost films have left behind their accompanying movie posters, as well as full page magazine advertisements that serve very much like movie posters when deciding not if we should see the film but what the film was like when first seen, each hardcover copy of an film adaptation into novel included a dustjacket, art that gives information about missing films: within there being Lost Films, Found Magazines. In regard to the 1918 film Mania (Evyen Illes), not only can it be included in Lost Films, Found Magazines, but it has been restored by the National Film Inatitute (Filmoteka Nardowa), who when announcing its premiere wrote, "its contents pertain to universal truths". The film is notable for its starring Pola Negri and the set design to the film having had been being crafted by Paul Leni. It is imperative that the word film study be surplanted by the word film appreciation: it was in 1946 that author Iris Barry cautioned the readers of Hollywood Quarterly through the article "Why wait for Posterity" as to films quickly becoming lost and the need to preserve the "romantic" Greta Garbo film The Saga of Gosta Berling (Stiller, 1925) by saving the prints from deterioration. After explaining that the original two-color technicolor copies of the Black Pirate that had belonged to Douglas Fairbanks and Harvard University, respectively, were in a vault "at the point of final deterioration", and could only be duplicated in black-and-white form, she qualifies that the criteria for screening film need, as with "the early Seastrom films", only be pleasure. "What, really is the point of dragging old films back to light? First, I believe that it benefits the general esteem and standing of the motion picture industry as a whole; for if the great films of the past are not worth taking seriously and are not worth re-examination, then presumably neither are the great films of today. It would be unthinkable if the only books available to literary men and women should be no more than those published in the past year or so." To echo her by my now finding this during the centennial of the two reeler in the United States and of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller having become contemporaries at Svenska Bio , the biography of actress Greta Garbo penned by the present author on Geocities webpage encompassed the long waiting period before what was to be the last film to be made by Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, which happenned to be during the centennial of the one reel narrative film, "Of the utmost importance is an appreciation of film, film as a visual literature. film as the narrative image, and while any appreciation of film would be incomplete without the films of Ingmar Bergman, every appreciation of film can begin with the films of the silent period, with the watching of the films themselves, their once belonging to a valiant new form of literautre. Silent film directors in both Sweden and the United States quickly developed film technique, including the making of films of greater length during the advent of the feature film, to where viewer interest was increased by the varying shot lengths within a scene structure, films that more than still meet the criterion of having storylines, often adventurous, often melodramatic, that bring that interest to the character when taken scene by scene by the audience."
Whether or not there were pirates off the coast of Boston, the naval battles of the War of 1812 were immortalized, not only in the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, but in the film Old Ironsides (twelve reels), starring Ester Ralston, directed by James Cruze in 1926; it is a film that there has always been a copy of and not in need of restoration, but like The Black Pirate, which employed technicolor, the film is more renowned for its early use of Magnascope than its story of the high seas. Three years before James Cruze had directed Hollywood (eight reels) for Paramount, which featured cameos by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The film has not been seen since it was first reviewed by Robert E. Sherwood, the printed article one of the only ways of our knowing its subject, "James Cruze treated Hollywood as a fantasy rather than a grimly realistic drama...Miss Drown, as Angela, was wistful, appealing and supremely pathetic. Her wide eyes seemed to increase in depth and in softness with each fresh disappointment...She is a tremendous success in this her first picture." Is The Mystery of Room 643 (1914) a lost film?
Swedish Silent Film
Helen Hancock had only months earlier in Pantomine praised Swedish Silent Film star Lars Hanson in the article How About those Viking Ancestors, A little Talk about Swedish Matinee Idols. Like Greta Garbo, Mary Johnson travelled from Sweden to Germany. Mary Johnson had starred with Gosta Ekman in the first film directed by John W. Brunius, Puss and Boots (Masterkattan i stovlar) in 1918 for Film Industri Inc Scandia. The film was co-written by John W. Brunius and Sam Ask and was the first in which actress Ann Carlsten was to appear. The following year Scandia merged with Scandia to team Charles Magnusson with Nils Bouveng to run AB Svensk Filmindustri. Having been an actress for several films directed by George af Klerker, Mary Johnson was also that year to appear in the Swedish silent film Stovstadsfaror, directed by Manne Gothson and photographed by Gustav A. Gustafson. Appearing with Johnson in the film were Agda Helin, Tekl Sjoblom and Lilly Cronwin. Actress Mary Johnson returned to the screen to act for director John W. Brunius and cameraman Hugo Edlund in 1923 for the film Johan Ulfstjerna in which she starred with Anna Olin, Einar Hansson and Berta Hilberg. To add a sense of the film as a vehicle for the actress, author Forsyth Hardy has written, "Brunius could work effectively on a large canvass." Significantly, that same year Johnson starred for silent film director Mauritz Stiller and cameraman Julius Jaenzon in the film Gunnar Hedes Saga, in which she starred with Pauline Brunius, Stina Berg, and Einar Hansson. The film was an adaptation of the novel Herrgarssagen. When reviewed in the United States during 1924 while screened as The Blizzard although the film was reported as an adaptation of "The Story of a Country House", the review featured two stills and the subtitle "Swedish Production is Entertaining."; it ran, "This is highly dramatic and interesting, with several excellant scenes of reindeer swimming across a wide sream and following their leader blindly. The stampede is most realistic and well filmed. The rest of the film is quite ordinary and drags near the end." Einar Hanson appeared as Gunnar Hede on the cover of Filmnyheter during 1923; it is an issue in which there article that reads "Mary Johnson, var Svenska Filmingenue framfor kameran". On reviewing Sir Arne's Treasure/Snows of Destiny in 1922, Exceptional Photoplays wrote, "Mary Johnson, if she has a chance to become known on the American screen, will show us what it is to be lovely without being vapid, with the magic of a child and the magic of a woman- tenderness and sweetness that is not chiefly a product of simpering smiles and fluffy curls."
Motion Picture Magazine during 1923 wrote, "Sigrid Holmquist has come to Lasky's to appear in The Gentlemen of Leisure. She is a Swedish Mary Pickford" Holmquist had appeared under the direction of Lau Lauritzen in 1920 in the film Love and Bear Hunting (Karlek och Bjornjakt) before coming to the United States to appear in the film directed by Joseph Henabery and also during 1923 appeared in an adaptation of the Kipling novel The Light that Failed (George Melford) with Jaqueline Logan. She had also appreared in the 1922 film The Prophet's Paradise directed by Alan Crosland. As many as 19 films have been listed as lost and as having been directed by Peter Urban Gad, the husband of the earliest of silent stars of the silver screen, including Die falsche Asta Nielsen (1915), in which Nielsen plays both her double, Bolette, and herself. By 1922, Danish Silent Film director Peter Urban Gad had finished directing what would be his last silent film produced in Germany, The Ascension of Hannele Mattern (Hanneles Himmelfahrt), actress Margate Schlegel fulfilling the title role. If only to characterize Gad as an artist or intellectual, author Thomas J. Sanders writes, "Most emphatic was the prominent Danish author and director Urban Gad, who in early 1919 identified monumentalism, brutality and sentimentality as America's dominant film traits and advised German producers to focus on internal consistency and substance." Bela Belaz introduces the new subjects and new characters of the "form language" with a discussion of Urban Gad, "Urban Gad, the famous Danish film producer, wrote a book on film as far back as 1918...According to him every film should be place in some specific natural enviornment which must affect the human beings living in it and plays a part in directing their lives and destinies." Belaz, in Theory of Film: character and growth of a new art, looks at "photographed theater", and that including Scandinavian Film, as no longer being only the "photographed play", that nature itself could be included in the cast of players by the "dramatic features through the present action of the immediate effect of nature on the moods and feelings of human beings which sometimes excersise a decisive influence in their fate." Although The Silent Cinema, authored by Liam O'Leary, is a "Pictureback" and includes numerous stills from films that are lost and represents them as though they were available for screening at the time of its 1965 printing, it not only presages internet writing with its combination of filmography and chronology, but astutely alerts us that while becoming an even more vesatile drama actress, Asta Neislen had found new directors with whom to film. During 1922, she appeared in an on screen production of the writing of Stendhal with Vanina (Vanina, order die galgenhochziet), directed by Arthur von Gerlach and photographed by Fredrik Fuglsang.
In Germany, Marlene Dietrich by 1927 had begun to appear on the the screen in lead roles more often, her having that year starred in the film Cafe Electric (Gustav Ucicky). Not entirely ironically, while more and more films from Europe were becoming introduced to writers in the United States, two films from Germany that were filmed complicitly without subtitles yet still having a clear narrative development and depiction of plotline without expository or dialoge intertitle were being written about in the United States, Backstairs (1926), filmed by the stage director Leopold Jessner, a film about a young girl whose is in love and a mailman who witholds love letters written to her because he himself is in love with her, and Shattered (Lupu Pick,1921), scripted by Carl Mayer. Not only did Photoplay Magazine spy on Hollywood, but in 1929 it reported the release of Mata Hari: The Red Dancer, with Magda Sonja in the title role, the film directed in Germany by Fredrich Feher.
The Street of Sin (1928, seven reels) starring Fay Wray and Olga Barclanova was begun by Stiller and finished by the director Joseph von Sternberg. Kenneth MacGowan writing about the film notes, 'The film was more distinguished for its players-Jannings and Olga Barclanova- than for its script by Joseph Sternberg. Sternberg's work on Stiller's film has been credited as having secured his position as the writer and director ofthe silent films The Last Command (1928) with Evelyn Brent and The Case of Lena Smith (1929) with Esther Ralston. During 1928, actress Olga Barclanova also appeared in the films The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, ten reels), The Dove (Roland West, nine reels), Forgotten Faces (Victor Schertzinger, eight reels), Avalanche (Otto Brower, five reels) and Three Sinners (Rowland V. Lee, eight reels). Three Sinners, with Warner Baxter was the second film to pair Olga Backlanova and Pola Negri, their both having appeared in the film Cloak of Death in 1915. During 1928, Fay Wray appeared in the films Legion of the Condemned (William Wellman, eight reels), The First Kiss (Rowland V. Lee). It was the year she began her lengthy first marriage to playwright screenwriter John Monk Saunders. Legion of the Condemned also that year appeared in bookstore. The Grosset Dunlap Photoplay Edition advertised John Monk Saunders as having been the author of Wings and published the film as a novel rewritten from one narrative form into another by Eustace H Ball, with illustrations from the film. Ball himself was an author, his having written the mystery novel The Scarlet Fox and had previously adapted into novel form the photoplay of the Douglas Fairbanks film The Gaucho. Pola Negri during 1929 had starred in The Secret Hour (eight reels), directed by Rowland V Lee.
An emailed newsletter from Norway reported that Silent Film actress Fay Wray had died early during the month of August, 200 4. The silent film actress and first of the screaming screen feminists of the horror genre had appreared in numerous silent films before having been cast in Eric von Strohiem's The Wedding March (1928), beginning with the films Gasoline Love (1923) and The Coast Patrol (1925).
King Vidor in 1924 paired John Gilbert and Aileen Pringle in two films, Wife of the Centaur, with Kate Lester, and His Hour. Conrad Nagel would that year team with Aileeen Pringle for the film Three Weeks. Nagel would appear on the screen with Eleanor Boardman for the 1924 film Sinners in Silk (Henley) and then the following year for The Only Thing, directed by Jack Conway. Silent Film actress Norma Shearer, in 1924, was starring in Broadway After Dark (Monta Bell, seven reels) with Anna Q. Nilsson, The Snob (Monta Bell, seven reels) with John Gilbert, Empty Hands (Victor Fleming, seven reels), Married Flirts (Robert Vignola, seven reels) with Conrad Nagel and The Wolfman (Edward Mortimer, six reels) with John Gilbert. The next year she starred in Pretty Ladies (Monta Bell, six reels), one of the films that she had been given by being a contract player at the MGM studio, it having afforded her a cameo role. The film was based on a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns and had featured Conrad Nagel. Also that year Shearer appeared in the films Waking Up the Town (James Cruze, six reels), Lady of the Night (Monta Bell, six reels) and His Secretary (seven reels). She continued with Conrad Nagel the following year in The Waning Sex (seven reels) and appeared in Upstage (Monta Bell, seven reels). While Mauritz Stiller was in movie theaters with Hotel Imperial, Photoplay Magazine reviewed Monta Bell's direction of Norma Shearer in Upstage as "delightful. When an interviewer had asked Conrad Nagel if he had been in love with Norma Shearer, Nagel equivocated, 'Every man who knew or worked with her was in love with her. She had an unusual grace and tact, and she was very sensitive to other people's feelings.' Pola Negri appeared in two films directed by Dimitri Buchowetski during 1924, Men, with Robert Frazer and Lily of the Dust.
1922 was a year during which Gustaf Molander's second film, Amatorfilmen, the first film in which actress Elsa Ebbengen-Thorblad was to appear, brought actress Mimi Pollack to Swedish movie audiences. Molander had made the film The King of Boda (Tyrranny of Hate, Bodakungen) in 1920. It was the first film to be photographed by Swedish cinematographer Adrian Bjurman and starred Egil Eide and Wanda Rothgardt. Karin Molander had in 1920 starred in two films by Mauritz Stiller, in When We Are Married (Erotikon) with Lars Hanson, Tora Teje, and Glucken Cederberg, and in Fiskebyn. She also that year appeared in the film Bomben, directed by Rune Carlsten. And yet Karin Molander would only later be mentioned to audiences in the United States, Photoplay Magazine noting in 1926 that she was no longer in Sweden and no longer married to Gustaf Molander, "With Lars Hanson came his wife, Karin Nolander, leading woman in the Royal State Theater of Stockholm and billed as 'Sweden's most beautiful woman' She hasn't appeared on the screen yet, but it shouldn't be long now with so many good Scandinavian directors over here." Pictured together, a 1927 photocaption from Photoplay Magazine read, "When Mr. and Mrs. Lars Hanson worked for Swedish companies, Mrs. Hanson was popular on the European screen as karin Nolander. But now that her husband has made a hit in this country, she has retired and decided to let his gather all the glory for the family." Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine had been secretary to Dante Gabriel Rosetti during the last year of the painter's life, his novels having been adapted to the screen by George Fitzmaurice, who filmed Barbara LaMarr in The Eternal City (1923) and by Hugh Ford, who filmed Katherine McDonald and Katherine Griffith in The Woman Thou Gavest Me (1919.) Cinematographer Charles Van Enger not only photographed the 1924 film Name the Man, directed by Victor Sjöstrom, but also that year photographed the films Lovers' Lane (Phil Rosen, seven reels) with actress Gertrude Olmstead, Three Women (Lubitsch, eight reels) with May McAvoy, Forbidden Paradise (Lubitsch, eight reels) with Pola Negri and Daughters of Pleasure (six reels) and Daring Youth (six reels), both directed by William Beaudine.
King Vidor in 1924 paired John Gilbert and Aileen Pringle in two films, Wife of the Centaur with Kate Lester, and His Hour. Norwegian film director Tancred Ibsen, while briefly in Hollywood, worked on the set design to the Vidor film His Hour. Monta Bell that year directed John Gilbert in The Snob (seven reels).
In Sweden, Karin Boye was publishing her second volume of poetry, Hidden Lands, her continuing in 1927 with the volume The Hearths. She had published her first work, Clouds two years earlier, a year when Swedish poet Birger Sjoberg had published Frida's Songs.
In 1925, Edmund Goulding began directing with Sun-Up Sally (six reels), starring Conrad Nagel and Irene and Sally (six reels), starring Constance Bennett, following the two films with Paris (six reels). Notably, Clarence Brown in 1925 directed Rudolph Valentino in the film The Eagle, which is of interest not only for its introduction of the pull-back shot, a tracking shot moving away from its subject similar to the present day zoom-out, but it was also one of the first films for which Adrain had designed the costumes, the other that year having had been being Her Sister From Paris.
Basil Rathbone, who co-starred with Greta Garbo, under the direction of Clarence Brown, in the sound version of Anna Karenina, wrote of his aquaintance with her in his autobiography, In and Out of Character. "I first met Miss Garbo in 1928 when Ouida and I were invited to lunch with Jack Gilbert one Sunday." Rathbone and his wife had been present at the premiere of the film Flesh and the Devil. Of his starring in film with her, he wrote, "And so upon the morning previously arranged I called upon Miss Garbo. The house, a small one, was as silent as the grave. There was no indication it might be occupied." Rathbone had also appeared in silent films- Trouping with Ellen (T. Hayes Hunter, seven reels) in 1924, The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, six reels), starring Mae Murray, in 1925 and The Great Deception (Howard Higgin, six reels) in 1926. Rathbone and his wife had been present at the premiere of Flesh and the Devil. Anna Karenina (1914), filmed by J. Gordon Edwards, had starred Betty Nansen. On learning that Greta Garbo had already had the film Mata Hari in production, Pola Negri deciding between scripts that were in her studio's story department chose A Woman Commands as her first sound film, in which she starred with Basil Rathbone. Of Rathbone she wrote in her autobiography, 'As an actor, I suspected Rathbone might be a little stiff and unromantic for the role, but he made a test that was suprisingly good.' Directed by Paul L.Stein, the films also stars Reginald Owen and Roland Young. Ronald Colman had begun as a screen actor in England as well with the films The Live Wire (Dewhurst, 1917), The Toilers (1919), Sheba (Hepworth, 1919), Snow in the Desert (1919) and The Black Spider (1920). Like Basil Rathbone, William Powell had also appeared in silent films, among those being Romola (Henry King, 1924 twelve reels) with Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and The Beautiful City (Kenneth Webb, 1925) with Dorothy Gish. William Powel also appeared with Fay Wray and Richard Arlen in the 1929 silent Four Feathers directed by Merrian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.
And like Rathbone, another Sherlock Holmes, Clive Brook who appeared in the 1929 film The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Basil Dean) and in the title role of Sherlock Holmes (Howard) in the film of 1930, was appearing in silent films during the early 1920's, including Woman to Woman (Cutts 1923) and Out to Win (Clift, 1923). As part of an interesting study, Clive Brook had appeared in the mysteries Trent's Last Case (1920), directed by Richard Garrick and based on the novel by E.C. Bentley and The Loudwater Mystery (1921), based on the novel by Edgar Jepson, before his appearing with Isobel Elsom in the 1923 film A Debt of Honor directed by Maurice Elvey. One of the most sought after lost, or missing films, listed by the British Film Institute as having been filmed but not surviving today in an existing print is The Mystery of the Red Barn (Maria Marton) dircted by Maurice Elvey in 1913. The following year Elvey was to direct the mysteries The Cup Final Mystery and Her Luck in London. One of the first directors Philip St John Basil Rathbone had appeared in front of the camera for had been Maurice Elvey, who had directed the 1921 film, The Fruitful Vine, adapted for the screen from the novel. To complement the films made in the United States, Sherlock Holmes of 1916 starring William Gillette and Sherlock Holmes (nine reels) of 1922, starring John Barrymore, John Barrymore not only in the title role but also in a dual role as Moriarty: Maurice Elvey in 1921 directed actor Eille Norwood in the first 15 of 45 shorts in which he would star as Sherlock Holmes. In addition to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which would include The Empty House, The Solitary Cyclist, The Man With The Twisted Lip, A Case of Identity, The Copper Beeches, The Beryl Coronet, The Priory School, The Yellow Face and The Dying Detective, Elvey that year directed Norwood in The Sign of the Four and in the silent Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of the Baskervilles. After his having directed Matheson Long in the Stoll Film Company's 1919 production of the film Mr. Wu, Maurice Elvey had been earlier teamed with Eille Norwood in 1920 for two silent films before their having entered into the Sherlock Holmes series, The Hundreth Chance, adapted from the novel, and The Tavern Knight, also adapted from the novel. George Ridgewell would direct Eille Norwood in 30 short films in which he would star as the consulting detective, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1922) and The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1923), among them being The Boscome Valley Mystery (1922), The Six Napoleons (1922), The Golden Pince-Nez (1922), The Reigate Squires (1922), The Musgrave Ritual (1922), Black Peter, The Norwood Builder, The Red Circle, The Stockbrokers Clerk, The Abbey Grange, The Engineer's Thumb (1923), The Dancing Men (1923), The Mystery of Thor Bridge (1923) and The Cardboard Box . George Ridgewell during 1922 also directed the mystery The Crimson Circle with Clifton Boyne. In regard to Maurice Elvey, there still lies the possibility that modern detective of lost film could find any conceivable treasure; in 1926 the director filmed several films in a series entitled Haunted Houses and Castles of Great Britain. Like Holmes, counterpart Nyland Smith, portrayed Fred Paul, was extended into a second series of films, the British studio and director A. E. Coleby, after having completed The Mystery of Dr. Fu Man Chu (1923), which when completed ran to fifteen individual short stories, having added The Further Mysteries of Dr. Fu Man Chu to make the number of adventures twenty two. During 1924, the studio added a series of silent adventures entitled Thrilling Stories from the Strand Magazine.
Denmark had had its own early silent cinema with the Nordisk Film Kompagni, founded in 1906, and Swedish film historian Forsyth Hardy can be quoted as having written, "The Danes claim to have made the first dramatic film, in 1903." Most of its early narrative films having had been being directed by Viggo Larsen, they were for the most part "thrillers, tragedies and love stories" (Astrid Soderberg Widding) or "the social melodarama and dime novel that made a hit from 1910 onwards (Bengt Forslund). Mysteries like Pat Corner (Masterdetektiven) and Nat Pinkerton, The Anarchists Plot (Det Mislykkede attentat), both in which the director appeared on screen with Elith Pio, had appeared in Denmark not as early as 1909 but earlier, the Danish photographer Axel Graatjaer Sorensen having begun filming for Larsen in 1906 and having had continued solely for Larsen untill 1911, when he then began photographing first for Danish silent film director August Blom and then for danish silent film director Urban Gad under the name Axel Graatjkjae. Viggo Larsen by 1910, was in Germany, where he directed and starred with Wanda Treumann in Arsene Lupin Against Sherlock Holmes (Arsene Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes). In 1911 he directed the more successful Sherlock Holmes contra Professor Moriarty. In Denmark, Larsen had played Holmes to Holger-Madsen's raffles in both Sherlock Holmes Risks His Life (Sherlock Holmes i livsfare,1908) and Sherlock Holmes Two, both films photographed by Axel Sorensen. Einar Zangenberg played the armchair detective in Larsen's Sherlock Holmes Three and in Hotel Thieves (Hotelmystierne) in 1911, after which Zangerberg stepped behind the camera as director in 1912 to bring the photography of Poul Eibye to the screen in the films Kvindhjerter and Efter Dodsspriset, both with Edith Psilander, The Last Hurdle (Den Sidste Hurdle, in which he appeared on screen with Edith Psilander, and The Marconi-Operater (The Marconi Telegrafisten. Viggo Larsen would also direct the Sherlock Holmes films The Singer's Diamond (Sangerindens daiamanter (1908), starring Holger Madsen, The Gray Lady (Den Graa Dame, 1909) and Cab Number 519 (Drokes 519), in which Larsen would play the consulting detective with co-star August Blom. The Baker Street Journal mentions that the Nordisk Film The Gray Lady is often held to be the first film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles despite that it "does not feature a hound at all, but rather a phantom lady used for much the same purpose." Before becoming one of the finest, and most prolific, of Danish silent film directors, August Blom also starred as an actor with Viggo Larsen in front of the camera of Axel Sorensen in the film A Father's Grief (Fadern (1909), directed by Larsen. Ole Olsen in 1910 produced Sherlock Holmes in the Claws of the Confidence Men (Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkler) for Nordisk Films Kompagni, in which Otto Langoni starred as Holmes with the actress Ellen Kornbech. Langoni appeared as Holmes in the 1911 films Den Sorte A Haand (Mordet id Bakerstreet with the actress Ingeborg Rasmussen and in The Bogus Governess Den forklaedete Barnepige, both listed by the Danish Film Institute as being photographed by an unknown director-a pastiche titled Den Sorte Haand was filmed by William Augustinus. Alvin Nuess would portray Sherlock Holmes in the films The One Million Dollar Bond (Millionobilgationen in 1911 and in The Hound of the Baskervilles (Rudolf Meinert) in 1914. The Baker Street Journal attributes the photography of The Hound of The Baskervilles to Karl Fruend; it also adds a sequel that was sped off under the title The Isolated House (Das einsarne Haus).
The one reel film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Held for Ransom directed in the United States by Stuart Blackton in 1905 and drawn from The Sign of Four, is thought to be a lost film. Harry Benham would later play Sherlock Holmes in in the two reeler Sherlock Holmes Solves the Sign of the Four, written and directed in the United States by Lloyd Lonergan. The film listed by the Library of Congress as being from 1912 and titled The Stolen Papers, while being listed as being from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur C. Doyle and having no director was in all probability directed by George Treville, with he himself starring in the role of Holmes.
During 1914, The Great Northern Special Feature Film Company advertised, "The Must Baffling Mystery Ever Filmed", By Whose Hand? which promised "Interest and Thrills from Beginning to End". The Great Northern Film Company released "Preferred Feature Attractions". Nordisk Film decidedly advertised the film The Stolen Treaty in 1913, and Great Northern that year distributed the silent film The Stolen Secret (three reels). That year it also announced the film The White Ghost (Den Hivide Dame, 1913) directed by Holger-Madsen and starring Rita Sacchetto. The cameraman to the film had been Maurius Clausen, who with Holger Madsen was particularly noted for continuing the lighting effects that were singular to early Danish Silent Film. Although Ingvald Oes, the director of Great Northern was quoted as having said that three fourths of the films shown in Scandinavia were were filmed in the United States, despite whether his film had been widely seen in the United States as a Great Northern Film Company silent film, Forest Holger Madsen not only directed The White Ghost that year, but also directed the films The Mechanical Saw and During the Plauge for Nordisk Film. It was a year that Danish audiences were present while Vilhelm Gluckstadt brought the film Den Sorte Variete, starring Gudrun Houlberg to the screen. Author Ron Mottram recently published the article The Great Northern Film Company: Nordisk Film in the American Motion Picture Market, out lining the transactions between Ole Olsen and Oes, president of Great Northern, that transpired between 1908-1917. Olsen had originally agreed to send more than one hundred silent films to the United States. Olsen took the position of managing director of Nordisk in 1911, a year during whcih Denmark had become the first country to make multi-reel films, bringing the running-time up to three quarters of an hour. It was for Nordisk Films Kompani that year that August Blom had directed Asta Neilsen in the film The Ballet Dancer (Balletdanserinden).
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The actress also during 1911 appeared with Valdemar Psilander in The Black Dream (Dem Sorte Drom), thought to be remarkable for the the use of silhouette, by Asta Neilsen's husband, Peter Urban Gad, the film's director.
Ebba Thomsen was brought to the screen by director Robert Dinesen for two films during 1913, Under the Lighthouse Beam (Under Blinkfyrets Straaler/Out on the Deep) and Dovstymmelegatet. Betty Nansen, before leaving Denmark to film in the United States, made two films advertised heavily in the United States as being from The Great Northern Film Company during 1913, A Paradise Lost (Bristet Lykke, August Blom) and Princess Elena (The Princesses' Dilema, Holger Madesen, her being introduced in the latter with "featuring the distinguished tragedienne Miss Betty Nansen in the title role.
" If only a footnote, Vitagraph in 1917 had brought the novel Arsen Lupin (Paul Scardon, five reels) to the screen with Earle Williams as the titular character; a year earlier George Loan Tucker had filmed a British rendering of the drama; far from being a footnote is the fact that there no existing print of what seems to be the first feature filming of Doyle's armchair detective, A Study in Scarlet, directed by George Pearson in 1914 being among one of the most sought after films listed as missing by the British Film Institute. W. Scott Darling, a favorite of the present author, was certainly writing mystery scripts in Hollywood during 1920, his scenario to 813 (Scott Sidney-Charles Christie), based on an Arsene Lupin story written by Maurice Leblanc, was reviewed under the title Mystery Novel Loses interest In Screen Adaptation. It purportedly lost "some of its excitement and suspense in the pictorization...There is a morbid element to the tale which becomes unneccesarily vivid in the picture form." Apparently, "Lupin falls in love with Delores Castlebank, widow of the murdered man." At the bottom of the page, the magazine offerred a "box office analysis for the exhibitor" with "The Name of Arsene Lupin and A Promise of Mystery, Your Best Bets" and prompted, "If you want a catchline, this will do: Added, subtracted, divided, the mysterious numbers gave the answer 813. What does it mean?" Perplexing to the readers of the present author is that. although there is no reason to qualify the film as being "lost" the fact that the title of the film is a number, 813 makes it missing from catalogues of film that are not lost as well as those that are.
Were I a projectionist in Denmark, due to the scarcity of early film available today and how seminal early Danish silent film may be to the study of the origins of the mystery and detective film, I would enthusiasticly arrange a screening of the silent film Dr Nicholson and the Blue Diamond (Dr. Nicholson og den blaa Diamant, starring Edith Psilander, recently donated by the Danish Film Institute for public internet screening. What seems remarkable about the film is its running time, which is an hour. Among the early danish narrative films of Viggo Larsen were The Black Mask (Den Sorte Maske (1906), Revenge (1906), Anarkistens svigermor (1907), with actress Margrethe Jespersen, The Lion Hunt (Lovejaten (1906), The Bankruptcy (Falliten, 1907), and, The Magic Bed (Tryllesaekken (1907); it is thought that Viggo Larsen was quite possibly the first director to cut from one long shot of a scene to its reverse angle, a long shot of the scene from an opposite angle during the film The Robber's Sweetie (Rovens Brod, 1907), starring Clara Nebelong.
Interstingly, Julius Jaenzon had filmed The Dangers of a Fisherman's Life, An Ocean Drama (Fiskarliv ets farer et Drama paa havet as an early Norwegian silent film under the direction of Hugo Hermansen. Salsvinnapolttajet (The Moonshiners, directed in Finland during 1907 by Teuro Puro and Louis Sparre, is presently considered a lost film. The photographer is listed as having been Frans Engstrom. Interestingly enough, author Marguerite Engberg writes that photoplay dramatists were instructed to limit the use of inter-titles and thereby depict narrative as visual whenever possible. To parallel this, a steady number of guides on creative writing that can be found in the category of Photodrama or photodramatist appeared in the United State between 1912 and 1920, whether or not many seem more lurid than the films themselves- to arbitrarily look at them, to find a sense of meaning as to what early photo-drama plot was, there is Photodrama: the philosophy of its principles, the nature of its plot, its dramatic construction, from 1914, written by Henry Albert Phillips. It contains a chapter on Visualization: "Visualized action takes first and foremost place in the photoplay; all other matters are harmonious trappings and devices or illusion that decorate creaking machines with esthetic realities. Inserted matter, unless artisticlly used, becomes theatric instead of dramatic. The volume continues on to examine subjects like how characterization in the short story and photoplay differ and how there is a necessity within plot to create an "obstacle", the author striving to "analyze photo-drama, to embody it as a new and complete for of drama-literary art." The Danish Marguerite Engberg author sees a shift in Danish filmmaking during 1910 to a more sensational film with the work of August Blom (The Temptations of the Great City, Ved Faengslets Port, 1911;The Price of Beauty, Den Farliiege Alder, 1911), a shift that brought the subject of the camera from historical costume films to the more exciting modern period. With multi-reel films of longer running length, Fotorama, Kosmorama and Nordisk Film Kompagni added to film the erotic melodrama. Engberg notes that not only did early Danish cinema popularize the detective and mystery, it also addressed sex, "The woman of the erotic melodrama is as a rule an active partner in the lover story. It is often she who makes the decisions, she who is the sexually active one." She credits as August Blom creating the vamp with his The Vampire Dancer (Vampyrrdanserinden (1911) and she does in fact claim that chronologically, Vampyren (The Vampire, 1912), directed by Mauritz Stiller was a direct result of its influence.
In his biographical filmography, David Bordwell traces an early period where both A. W. Sandberg and Carl Th. Dreyer were journalists before enlisting with Nordisk Films Kompagni, the former in 1913, the latter part-time also in 1913 untill 1915, when Dreyer had apparently worked as though in a script departmartment and had contriubtued no fewer than seventeen scripts within two years, that, whether literary adaptations or not, had been either shelved unfilmed untill possibly reinterpreted by the director or filmed under a change of title. They include from 1915: The False Finger (De Falske Fingre), The Count of Oslo (Greven af Oslo), The Man in the Moon (Manden i manen), Adventure Ship (Eventyrskribet), The Dead Passenger (Den Dod Passager), The Secret Gifts (De hemmelighedsfude gaver), The Strandrobbers of Grimsby (Strandroverne it Grimby, The Rats (Rotterne); and from 1916: The arm of the Law (Lovensarm), The Golden Plague (Den gulde pest), Stolen Happiness (Stjalen lykke), The Money or the Life (Penger eller livet), Dance of Death (Dodedanseren), The Financier, The Man Who Destroyed a Town (Manden der lagde byen ode). And yet as a scriptwriter, Dreyer not only wrote intertitles and continuity, but worked on narrative in regard to its structure with the editors during the cutting. Danish silent film director Carl Th Dreyer was to direct every screenplay he was to direct. Tom Milner, who begins his volume on Dreyer with an account of his having seen the director at a screening of Getrude, quotes him as having said, "I know that I am not a poet. I know that I am not a great playwright. That is why I prefer to collaborate with a true poet and with a true playwright." Dryer in 1913 wrote the screenplays to The Baloon Explosion (Balloneskplosionen, Kay van de Ala Kuhle) starring Emilie Sannom, The Secret of the Old Cabinet (Chatollets hemmilighed, Hjalmar Davidsen) starring Ella Sprange and photographed by Louis Larsen, Hans og Grethe (Sofus Wolder) and The War Correspondent (Krigskorrespondent, William Gluckstadt) starring Grethe Ditlevsen, Ellen Tegner and Emilie Sannom. In 1914, Dreyer contributed the script to Down With Your Weapons (Ned Med Vaabne, Holger Madsen), photographed by Marius Clausen.
Roman Novarro, who had starred with Greta Garbo in the film Mata Hari under the direction of George Fitzmaurice, in 1924 appeared in two films directed by Fred Niblo, Thy Name is Woman and The Red Lily. In 1925 the actor appeared in the films The Midshipman (Christy Cabanne, eight reels) and The Lovers Oath (six reels). Novarro is quoted as having said, 'It wasn't enough for her to satisfy the director. Often -despite his OK- she asked for a scene to be retaken because she didn't think she had done her best.' Between the films The Primitive Lover (Sidney Franklin, seven reels, 1922) and The Lady (1925), Frances Marion had written the screenplays to The French Doll (1923), Song of Love (Chester Franklin, eight reels, 1924), based on the novel Dust of Desire and starring Norma Talmadge Secrets (Frank Borzage, eight reels, 1924) and Tarnish (George Fitzmaurice, seven reels, 1924). Technicolor and artificial lighting were used in tandem for the first time in 1924 by director George Fitzmaurice to bring Irene Rich, Alma Rubens, Betty Bouton and Constance Bennett to the screen in the film Cytherea (eight reels). Screenland magazine noted that the scripts filmed by Fitzmaurice were often submitted by his wife, and that Ouida Bergere, more frequently remembered, or referred to, as the lover of Basil Rathbone, "was a successful actress before she began to write for pictures." The present author almost found it of more personal interest that there was an author named Faith Service that wrote for Motion Picture Classics more than anything. During 1920 it featured a portrait of the film director George Fitzmaurice and his relationship to the screenwriter, but also included a fictionalized version of the script to the silent film On With the Dance, its scenario written by Ouida Bergere. Faith Service regularly appeared in the magazine as an author that adapted the photoplay into the short story, with the subtitle "fictionalized by permission" or "told in story form, her having typed out the plots to the films Victory Miss Hobbs, Remodeling a Husband and The World and His Wife and She Loves and Lies, it being to the present author fascinating that the stills to films that now may be lost appear next to their transposition into a differeton art form. That year Gladys Hall fictionalized the scenario to the film Way Down East, condensing its charactizations into a handful of pages, the spectator of 1920 reading what would soon be on the screen in front of them, perhaps while viewing the star as a commodity within the extra-textual discourse of the fan magazine but with the familiar art form of the magazine short story installment. About the director Fitzmaurice, the Motion Picture Classics published, "For Fitzmaurice owes his remarkable ability to attain beautiful pictures- admirable in light, shade and grouping- to his early training as a painter, Maurice Tourneur owes his skill in the same field to the same source......En passme it is interesting to note the commraderie of Fitzmaurice and his wife, known to the scenario world as Ouida Bergere. 'We work together on every production,' explains the director." Faith Service was also distinguished as having been published in Photoplay magazine. Is the Mystery of Room 643 a Lost Film? There are many photoplays that during their first theater run were adapted from screen images into third person narrative, original screenplays that were published as magazine fiction after rewritten by magazine staff writers that, with stills from each film, have been preserved in regard to their storyline, characterization and that still exist as they did on celluloid and silver nitrate. The Essanay Film The Return of Richard Neal (1915), starring Nell Craig, and earlier chapters with Francis X. Bushman staring as in "adventures of the private investigator" are not listed as lost, but presently some lists they are not found to be existant. The film appears in story form , with several film stills,in Picture Stories Magazine. It has caught the attention of the present author that Edna Mayo may be an actress with which modern audiences could have been be more familiar with; her Essanay film Stars, Their Courses Change (1915, three reels) seems to be unlisted as being missing while having had appeared in Motion Picture World Magazine- in light of there having been the documentary The Unknown Chaplin, both films would appear to currently be lost. There is every indication that the film Ponjola, starring Anna Q. Nilsson is missing from compendiums on lost film, although it appeared in full page magazine advertisements it seemingly to have been left unlisted. It also appeared in a Photoplay Edition published by Grosset and Dunlap the year of its release, the dustjacket of the 1923 novel rewritten from the screen by Cyntheia Stockley reading, "Illustrated with scenes from the photoplay. A First National Picture". Of course not every film made by the Stoll Film Corporation is lost and missing, but as it seems like a smaller studio, two films from 1923 appear to be unlisted, The Tidal Wave (Hill) and Bars of Iron (Thorston). Any film featured in Picture Stories Magazine during 1914-1915 could be later found to be a lost film. His Last Chance was featured as a work of fiction as novelized in Picture Stories Magazine and does not presently appear to be included in list of films that have been lost; the magazine cover advertises the periodical as being the "Illustrated Films Monthly". The title reads "Adapted from the IMP drama by Rosa Beaulaire", but neglects to name the actors and actresses in the stills and the name of the director of the film. The same issue includes the photoplay On the Verge of War in short story form with only "Adapted from the 101 Bison Film by Owen Garth. The Riddle of The Green Umbrella on the other hand credits Alice Joyce as a girl detective "from the two reel Kalem detective story" who is solving the murder of a professor; the film is not listed as being lost and is absent from lists of films that are decidedly not lost. The Triumph of Venus, advertised in the pages of Photoplay during 1918 is another film that seems yet to be put on lists of missing silent films. What I did happen to find in the pages of Photoplay Magazine was the six page novelization of the chapter-play, or serial, The Eagle's Eye directed by George Lessey and Wellington Player in 1918. With the novelization of the photoplay are published stills from the film, stills that show frames from a silver screen flicker that no longer survives. The lost silent film starred actress Marguerite Snow.
During 1925 actress Vilma Banky was filming for George Fitzmaurice rather than Victor Sjostrom, who featured her in his first sound film, A Lady To Love, that being before her Hungarian accent purportedly had contributed to an unacceptance on the part of movie going audiences. The Great Goldwyn, an early biography on producer Sam Goldwyn written by Alva Johnston, gives an account of her having been brought to the United States States, "He discovered Miss Banky when he saw her picture in a photograph shop in Budapest. This was a feit, because when the photograph was sent to Hollywood, the Goldwyn executives could see no possibilites in her. She arrived in Hollywood herself a few days after her photograph. Miss Banky was bewildered on her arrival in Hollywood. 'I thought I was being tricked,' she told an interpreter, 'I didn't believe the man was Goldwyn untill he gave me two thousand dollars.'"
In Sweden, Par Lagerkvist that year published the novel Guest of Reality (Gas hos verkligheten). It is an account of the events of his childhood an his claim of his reluctance to accept religous ideals. In Sweden, Olaf Molander directed Lady of the Camellias (Damen med kameliorna, 1925), starring Ivan Hedqvist and Hilda Borgström and photographed by Gustav A. Gustafson. Forsyth Hardy writes, "The film derived some distinction from the delicately composed interiors and from the touching performance Tora Teje gave in response to Molander's skilled direction." In 1926 Molanderfollowed with Married Life (Giftas), starring Hilda Borgström and Margit Manstad, also photographed by Gustav A. Gustafson and in 1927 with Only a Dancing Girl, which he wrote and directed. Gustaf Molander in 1925 directed the film Constable Paulus' Easter Bomb (Polis Paulis' Easter Bomb). William Larsson that year directed the films Broderna Ostermans huskors and For hemmet och flickan, with Jenny Tschernichin and Elsa Widborg in what would be the first film in which she was to appear. John W. Brunius in 1925 directed the film Charles XII (Karl XII), photographed by Hugo Edlund and starring Gösta Ekman, Pauline Brunius and Mona Martenson. Its screenplay was written by Hjalmar Bergman and Ivar Johansson. Many of the scenes of Brunius' film were shot on the actual historical locations and battlesites, it having had been being one of the most expensive films to have been made in Sweden up untill that time. Gosta Ekman had earlier been seen as leading man in the United States, as a "romantic type" In Pantomine magazine it was surveyed that, "he plays the impudent, but loveable adventurer to life and his slender blonde figure lends itself most admirably to graceful interpretations of this kind." Photoplay magazine saw Ekman in a similar way, describing him in 1923 as "the Swedish shiek" (the Swedish Valentino) and predicted his soon aquiring famem in the United States, as it did that year with Sigrid Holmqvist. Photoplay reported, "Arriving with him from Stockholm was Edith Erastoff, the wife of Victor Seastrom, the Swedish director who is now working for Goldwyn. Miss Erastoff played opposite Mr. Ekman at the Stockholm Theater....'A beautiful boy,' says director Seastrom, 'Too beautiful- but he is a great actor and never hesitates to conceal his good looks for a character part which demands make-up.'" The magazine that year speculated that "in all probability" Ekman woulod appear on screen in a version of "Three Weeks", concievably opposite actress Theda Bara. In Sweden, in 1925 Ragnar Ring directed the film Tre Kroner (1925), following the next year with the film Butikskultur. Ett kopmanshus i skargarden starring Anna Wallin and Anna Carlsten was written and directed by Hjalmer Peters, its photographer Hellwig Rimmen.
Danish film director Carl Th. Dreyer in 1925 filmed Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife (Master of the House, Den Skal Aere Din Hustru), which the director co-wrote with Sven Rindholm. Photographed by Goerge Schneevoigt, the films stars Astrid Holm, Karin Nellemose and Mathilde Nielsen. In his book Transcendental Style in Film, the director Paul Schrader (Autofocus) characetrizes Dreyer's early film by their use of mise-en-scene, likening them, in their use of interiors and 'revelatory guesture', in particular to the Intimate Theater of Strindberg. Dreyer, in a foreward to a collection of four of his screenplays, writes, 'I am convinced that presenlty a tragic poet of the cinema will appear, whose problem will be to find, within the structure of the cinema's framework, the form and style appropriate to tragedy.' During the film Master of the House, Dreyer stylisticly uses the iris shot while cutting between close and medium interior shots, including and iris shot filmed over the shoulder of a character exiting through a doorway and an iris shot of her entering again later in the scene, and , more notably, the director during the middle of a scene uses iris shots while cutting between a close up and a medium closeshot; during the latter a second character, that of the protagonist's wife in the film, can been seen entering the frame of the shot from the right of the irised screen and then reentering during the length of the shot. Husband and wife are both shown in intercut iris closeups during a dialouge sequence within the middle of a prolonged interior scene, the exceptional beauty of the actress held by the camera as her eyes silently wait for her husband to speak. In his biography of Greta Garbo, Raymond Durgnat quotes "the austerest of all film directors", Carl Dreyer, although the quote seems superfluous or decorative to the essay, as having said, "Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land no one can never tire of exploring." The context was that Garbo, being a film star, was an object of art.
Early Danish sound film director Alice O'Fredricks appeared as an actress in two Danish silent films in 1925, Sunshine Valley (Solskinsdalen) with Karen Winther, directed for Nordisk Film by Emanuel Gregers, and Lights from Circus Life (Sidelights of the Sawdust Ring/Det Store Hjerte) with Ebba Thomsen, Margarethe Schegel and Mathilde Nielsen, directed by August Blom. She had appeared a year earlier with Clara Pontoppidan in a film produced by Edda Film, Hadda Padda, directed by Gudmundar Kamban and also starring Ingeborg Sigurjonsson. Gudmundur Kamban in 1926 for Nordisk Film directed Gunnar Tolnaes, Hanna Ralph and Agnete Kamban int the film Det Sovende Hus