"The Image Makers see their images emerge out of the story. And then suddenly: darkness."- Per Olov Enquist in Bildmakarna, a fictional account of Victor Sjostrom, Julius Jaenzon, Tora Teje and Selma Lagerlof
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. It was also, while in part a filmography of silent film of the Swedish directors of Svenska Bio and Svenska Filmindustri; Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjostrom, John Brunius and Georg af Klerker, and with them the camerman Julius Jaenzon. The silent film is in fact a deepening of the novel as an art form. 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). 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.
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. 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." The study of silent film is an essential study not only in that the screenplay evolved or emerged from the photoplay, but in that it is imperative to the appreciation of film technique. In my earlier webpage written before the death of Ingmar Bergman I quoted Terry Ramsaye on Silent Film,"Griffith began to work at a syntax for screen narration...While Griffith may not have originated the closeup and like elements of technique, he did establish for them their function." Director Ingmar Bergman had been among those who had spoken on the death of the Swedish actor- American director Victor Sjostrom.
Victor Sjostrom: Swedish Silent Film
'Yes, this is Stiller's room, I know for sure.'
After Greta Garbo took off her glasses to show Ingmar Bergman what she looked like.
One of the smaller theaters, one with 133 seats, at Borgavagen 1, is named after Mauritz Stiller, another one with 14 seats named after Julius Jaenzon, cameraman for Svenska Bio. Biografen Victor, with its 364 seats is a permanent tribute to Victor Sjostrom and the 363 ghosts that at anytime may accompany him to, perhaps in search of a new Strindbergian theater known as filmed theater, step into the past.
During her Photoplay interview, Greta Garbo continued on the film remarking that,' Lars Hanson played my leading man...but there were no love scenes, not even a kiss.' About Lars Hanson, after having seen The Saga of Gosta Berling, Lillian Gish wrote, 'When I saw it I thought that he would be the ideal Dimmesdale.' There is a similar earlier account written before her autobiography where she is quoted as having said that she had been told to go into the projection room to watch The Saga of Gosta Berling specificly to decide whether Lars Hanson would be aquired by the studio to play against her in an adaptation of Hawthorne's novel, "The moment Lars Hanson appeared on the screen, I knew he was the man we wanted." Interestingly, actor Lars Hanson had been briefly mentioned in the United States in Pantomine magazine during March of 1922, in Out of the Make Up Box, On to the Screen, written by Helen Hancock. "Lars Hanson, who is one of the most versatile actors on the screen, and one of the most versatile artistic breakers of the hearts of the Swedish flapper, is an adept in the art of make-up." An appreciation of the film made by Hanson in Sweden was displayed by photos of Hanson not only as himself, but in greasepaint as men much older than himsself, it including stills from Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Andre the Red and The Lodge Man. 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. The photo caption read, "He looks mild- but dare him to do something" It reads, "A star of the legitimate stage, where for a number of years he has has been one of the principal attractions at the Intima Theatre, Stockholm, this virile specimen of manhood is best known for his psychological characterizations." The author then praised Hanson for his doing his own stunts, acting on screen without a stuntman. To highlight this, the magazine The Film Daily later reviewed the performance of Lars Hanson opposite Lillian Gish, "Hanson may lack looks, but is a splendid dramatic actor." During 1929, Photoplay Magazine reviewed the release of The Legend of Gosta Berling, "the only European film appearance of Greta Garbo before she was sold down the river to Hollywood..It need only be said that Hollywood has made The Glamorous One...You won't die in vain even if you miss this one." Greta Garbo was interviewed in Sweden during the filming of Gosta Berling's Saga by for the magazine Filmjournalen (Filmjournal) by Inga Gaate, who had interviewed Mauritz Stiller in 1924, Garbo in the article having praised Stiller for his direction and having referred to him as Moje. Greta Garbo appears on the cover of Filmjournalen 8, bareshouldered, in 1925. Stiller, incidently, had invited Sten Selander, a poet rather than actor, to Rasunda before his having decided upon Lars Hanson for the film. Jenny Hasselquist also appears in the film- Hasselquist was much like modern Swedish actress Marie Liljedahl in that she was a ballerina, her having been introduced to readers in the United States in 1922 through Picture-Play Magazine with a photograph it entitled The Resting Sylph. Sven Broman has quoted Greta Garbo as having said, 'We sat in a lovely drawing room and Selma Lagerlöf thanked me for my work in Gosta Berling's Saga and she praised Mauritz Stiller...She also had very warm and lovely eyes.' While filming Gosta Berling's Saga, Stiller had said, 'Garbo is so shy, you realize, she's afraid to show what she feels. She's got no technique you know.', to which the screenwriter to the film, Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius, replied, 'But every aspect of her is beautiful.' By the time Stiller had begun co-writing the script to Gosta Berling's Saga, he and Selma Lagerlöf had begun to disagree in regard to how her novels were to be adapted. Lagerlöf had asked that Stiller be removed from the shooting of the film before the script had been completed, her having as well tried to acquire the rights to the film to vouchsafe its integrity as an adaptation. During the filming Stiller went further; he then included a scene that had not appeared in either the novel or the film's script. Iris Barry briefly reviewed the film in 1926, "In Sweden, the creative impulse has not some much died down as been bled away" and from that context sees a film that, "shows a gloomy and unusual subject, full of sincere passion and conflict and with the fine somber, photographic quality peculiar to the Scandinavian cinema." There is an account of Mauritz Stiller having introduced Greta Garbo to author Selma Lagerlof and an account of Lagerlof having complimented Garbo on her beauty and her "sorrowful eyes." In particular, Sven Broman has quoted Greta Garbo as having said, "We sat in a lovely drawing room and Selma Lagerlof thanked me for my work in Gosta Berling's Saga and she praised Mauritz Stiller...She also had very warm and lovely eyes." Although far from being a playwright or sceenwriter, Selma Lagerlof flourished as a novelist during the silent film era, despite many of her novels having had having remained unfilmed, including the earlier Invisible Links (1894), The Queens of Kungahalla (1899) and The Miracles of the Antichrist (1897). After her contemporary, Swedish poet Gustaf Froding, had died in 1911, a year during which Lagerlof had published Liljecrona's Home (Liljecrona's Hem), Lagerlof went on to publish Korkalen (Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness, one of the most important novels included in the screen adaptations of the silent era as it appeared on the screen in 1920 directed by Swedish director Victor Sjostrom, in 1911, and Trolls and Men (Troll och manniskor. During 1918 she included the novel The Outcast (Bannlyst) and published a second volume to Trolls and Men in 1921. It was during the filming of Lagerloff's The Phantom Carriage that an ostrich farm that had fallen into desuetude in Rasunda was converted into the Svenska Filmindustri studio, and with that named Filmstaden. Lagerlof wrote the autobiographical novel Marbacka in two parts, her concluding the volume in 1930 and publishing The Diary of Selma Lagerlof in 1932.
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 stream 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." A second review from the United States seemed all too similar, "unusual entertainment through a strong dramatic story. A bit gruesome but splendidly acted...Drama bordering on tragedy...It is unusual in theme and from a dramatic standpoint, a thoroughly strong and foreceful theme." The reindeer stampede was hailed for its "genuine thrills" which were "splendidly pictorial" but from that point onward in the plotline, the story was said to "drag slightly." and its interest said to begin to disappear. While the direction of Mauritz Stiller was seen as "unusually good; displays great sense of dramatic values", "Mary Johnson is pleasing though rather lacking in expression." Einar Hanson appeared as Gunnar Hede on the cover of Filmnyheter during 1923; it is an issue in which there is an 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." Forsyth Hardy looks at the entire film, "Herr Arne's Penger was essentially visual in expression. Stiller and Gustav Molander, who collaborated in writing the scenario, appeared to have absorbed the values of the Lagerlof story and translated them imaginatively into film form. The film had dramatic balance. It also had a visual harmony absent from some of the earlier films where the transition from interior to exterior was too abrupt."
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."
While Garbo was finishing the The Temptress, Stiller, having written the script before the script department had reworked its plot, had begun shooting Hotel Imperial (1927, eight reels) for Paramount; she went to the preview of the film. Greta Garbo had said, 'Stiller was getting his bearings and coming into his own. I could see that he was getting his chance.' The conversation between the two actresses related in retrospect by Pola Negri may almost seem eerie, her account beginning with a telephone call from Mauritz Stiller, "May I be permitted to bring along a friend? She does not know many people here yet. Greta Garbo." After dinner Negri gave Garbo advice in creating for herself a unique personna, something individual, her going so far as to say, "Never be aloof or private" with Garbo adding the rejoinder without noting that they were both actresses that had worked abroad that they were in fact both remaining private while in Hollywood and Negri telling garbo that she would soon have to film without Stiller. Negri writes, "She held her head high. A look of intense interest was spreading over that perfectly chiseled face, making it the one thing that one would not have thought possible: even more beautiful."
Of Stiller's camerawork in the film, Kenneth MacGowan wrote, 'Hung from an overhead trolley, his camera moved through the lobby and the four rooms on each side of it.' In a brief review of the film R.E. Sherwood complimented Stiller on his use of camera postion and shot structure, but while praising Stiller as a director and the film's "visual qualities", which included "trick lighting" among its camera effects, which according to the author harken back to earlier "photo-acrobatics" from silent film director F.W. Murnau, Sherwood sees a lack of depth or meaning in the film's screenplay or its message as an organic whole in its having moment. Whether or not the United States can be viewed as imperial, as it is as seen by Dianne Negra, she writes about Pola Negri's character in Stiller's film, her almost connecting thematically the difference between Negri's role in the film and earlier vamp roles with the film's ending and its reuniting of Negri and her lover in a plotline similar to that of Sjöstrom's The Divine Woman (En Gudomlig Kvinna). 'The film closes with its most emphatic equation of romance and war as a close up of a kiss between Anna and Almay fades to the images of marching troops.' Mauritz Stiller, when invited to a private screening of Hotel Imperial for Max Reinhardt had said, 'Thank you. But if not for Pola, I could not have made it.' Photoplay Magazine reviewed the film favorably, "Here is a new Pola Negri in a film story at once absorbing and splendidly directed...Actually, "Hotel Imperial" is another variation of the heroine at the mercy of the invading army and beloved by the dashing spy. This has been adroitly retold here, untill it assumes qualities of interest and supspense...Miss Negri at last has a role that is ideal..."Hotel Imperial" places Stiller at the formost of our imported directors." In The Negri Legend, A new view of Pola Negri written by one who really knows her, Helen Carlise of Motion Picture Magazine wrote, "In Hotel Imperial we see a world figure who having sufferred much, having learned much, can with her great gift of artistry portray the soul of a Woman." When reviewed by Film Daily it was deemed that, "Although the vehicle does not offer her anything particularly fine, Pola Negri makes a fairly unimportant role outstanding...There is ready made exploitation in the star's name and the mention of her latest production."
Stiller also directed Pola Negri, and Clive Brook, in Barbed Wire (Ned med vapen 1927, seven reels). Moiton Picture Magazine wrote, "Again in Barbed Wire, Pola Negri proves herself one of our great screen artists. It would seem that Pola is to match the European pictures in which we first knew her, after her appearing in countless poor American productions." When Stiller directed the actress again, with Einar Hanson in The Woman on Trial (En kvinnas bekannelse 1927, six reels), Photoplay reviewed the film as "An unusually fine story and one that offers Pola Negri a chance for penetrating character study. Not for children." During 1927, Film Daily foreshadowed, quietly and not ominously enough, that, "Immediately following The Woman of Trail, Pola Negri is planning a vacation trip to Europe." It had earlier that year reported that "Cortez Opposite Negri, Ricardo Cortez will play opposite Pola Negri in Confession." A month later it reported, "Pola Negri began work yesterday on A Woman on Trial with Mauritz Stiller directing and Ricardo Cortez and Lido Mannetti in the lead roles" That year Paramount advertised Negri as "The Empress of Emotions". Negri was in Paris during the early Spring while Stiller was viewing the rushes and working on the cutting. It was reported that upon her return from Europe that she would make one more picture for Paramount before filming and already decided film slated to be filmed with Rowland V. Lee- it was elaborated that, "Although she is now a princess by virtue of her recent marraige, Pola Negri will not retire from the screen." She had by then wedded Prince Devani. The previous year Pola Negri had starred in the films The Crown of Lies (Buchowetski, five reels) and Good and Naughty (Malcom St. Clair, six reels). In her autobiography, Memoirs of a Star, Pola Negri describes her first meeting with Greta Garbo.'To tell the truth, I was also very curious about the girl...She smiled wistfully, as we shook hands...Through dinner she was resolutely silent...', her then giving an account of their conversation and of her having given Garbo advice. The Street of Sin (Syndens gata 1928, seven reels) starring Fay Wray and Olga Barclanova was begun by Stiller and finished by the director Joseph von Sternberg. It would be Stiller's last attempt to film in the United States before returning to Sweden in late 1927 and presently there are no copies of the film. 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, Photoplay Magazine announced, "Lucy Doraine, of Hungary has been signed by Paramount. She is reported to be the successor to Pola Negri." 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.
Among the events of 1924 was a visit by silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to Stockholm, Sweden. The two had that year appeared on the September cover of Motion Picture Magazine in the United States. There are accounts that while in Sweden, Pickford and Fairbanks sailed on the small vessel The Loris with Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller, their departing from Lilla Skuggan, and before arriving in Saltsjobaden, their passing where Charles Magnusson lived at Skarpo.
In the United States, Exceptional Photoplays, in an article titled The Swedish Photoplays distinguished the film of Svenska Bio for their "quality of compostition" and "imaginative presentation" by introducing Mortal Clay, "Costume plays are often unconvincing on the screen because they fail to reproduce period atmosphere, but Mortal Clay (banal in nothing but its name) has succeded in creating for us the spirit of the Twelfth century...The plot is dramaticlly sound and absorbingly interesting. But the real claim to greatness which the picture posseses lies in the splendid composition of its scenes and incomparable lovliness of its lighting effects. There is a certain architectural maganificience in the picture". The magazine noted that Victor Seastrom was both actor and director and commended a "fineness of shading" in his performance. In the United States, during 1923 it was reported that the Sjostrom film Mortal Clay was screened by Little Theaters Inc, "an organization recently formed to boost the artistic standards of motion pictures." (Film Daily) During January of 1922, Victor Sjostrom was already known in the United States as Victor Seastrom. Apparently he was then the object of the desire of the female spectator, which is reflected in the extratextual discourse of Helen Hancock, in Pantomine Magazine, who wrote, "We have kept Victor Seastrom untill the last. Because perhaps Mr. Seastrom might not like to be called a matinee idol- leaving that phrase to younger and perhaps handsomer men. But he is one, just the same...Of the heavy, rugged type, portraying men of strong emotions and virile personalites." She claims he was one of the foremost directors and a pioneer, and then compliments him on being an actor of the legitimate stage. Director Victor Sjostrom had left Sweden for Hollywood in 1922 upon the completion of the film The Hellship. The Film Daily during January of 1923 announced that Sjostrom had signed with Metro: Victor Sjostrom had become Victor Seastrom, "Seastrom under the contract signed is understood to have the right to act in as well as direct his productions." Three months later it announced that Paul Bern was engaged to write continuity for The Master of Man. Oddly, as the studio was using Seastrom's name before filming had completed to advertise that "Godldwyn is doing big things.", the publication added to the extratextural discourse with "Americanizing Sweden by Films, Victor Seastrom, in a recent address stated that Sweden is fast becoming Americanized by American motion pictures." Early in June of 1923, it tersely reported, "Victor Seastrom has started shooting on Master of Man and later that month, if only to allow itself to be more concise, reported, "Edith Erastoff, a popular Swedish dramatic star, and wife of Victor Seastrom is en route to the Pacific Coast to join her husband who is Master of Man for Goldwyn." The film stars Mae Busch. Film Daily had avoided speculation for months before announcing, "Nagel replaces Schildkraut. Conrad nagel will play the leading masculine role in Master of Man, which Victor Seastrom is now making for Goldwyn. Joseph Schildkraut was originally cast for the role." It soon added that "Hobart Bosworth will have an important role" before reporting in September that Sjostrom had finished while Alan Crosland was nearing the completion of his film Three Weeks. Motion Picture Magazine had a similar, but conflicting report during 1923, "Gost Ekman, matinee hero of Stockholm is coming over for the first American picture to be made by Victor Seastrom, the famous Swedish director...He plays in stock during the winter months- in pictures every summer. Seastrom's wife, Edith Erastoff, who usually plays opposite Ekman is coming to Hollywood to be with her husband. He has not stated whether she will go in the movies." During 1924 Carl Sandberg reviewed the film Name the Man (eight reels), his remarking upon Sjostrom's use of lighting, which, whether or not it may have had been a use of realism or naturalism, seemed underplayed to Sandberg and based on the enviornment rather than made more elaborate or as being artificial. "He was an actor, rated as Sweden's best, and his voice leads actors into slow, certain moods." Iris Barry is timely writing in 1924, imparting to the readers of Lets Go to The Movies, "Victor Seastrom, who had made Swedish pictures before Germany had begun its work (and too good to be popular) went last and they had they idiocy to put him to turning one of Hall Caine's intensely stupid stories into moving pictures. He did the best he could and played about a bit with the Yankee studio devices." And yet rather than providing a synopsis to the film, Motion Picture Magazine in 1923 relegated the novelization of the film to Peter Andrews. "She half rose as he returned and his bathrobe which she had flung around her slipped down, perhaps farther than it needed to." It was accompanied by a table explaining the cast of the film directed by Victor Seastrom and a capition which read, "told in short story form by permission from the Goldwyn Production of the scenario by Paul Bern." In his volume The Film Till Now, author Paul Rotha resonates a tone that can be likened to other critics his contemporary, "I cannot recall any example of a European director, who, on coming to Hollywood, made film better, or even as good as he did in his own surroundings." After mentioning Murnau, Leni and Lubitsch, the opines, "Sjostrom's Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness is preferable to Name the Man."
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."
As an act of spectatorship, Iris Barry looked at film directors in the United States, "Seastrom, the Swedish director, is a man whom America has ruined. In Sweden, one cannot help feeling the cinema has steered its own sweet course irrespective of a desire to please the people at all costs...There has been much poetry and a great deal of fancy in Swedish films." The Film Daily advised, "Keep your eye on Seastrom. He is liable to do some things that will make him one of the most important directors in this country." Readers in Sweden can affectionately know that it added, "Incidentally, if they can prevail upon him to act in one of of his productions he will also prove suprising." Photoplay magazine featured a magnificient photo Victor Sjostrom during 1923 in which he is holding a megaphone while standing next to his camera and camera crew in a foot of water while on location, shooting a scene from the middle of a stream; it is the same photo that appeared in Screenland Magazine, which, during October of 1923, in addition to that featured cameraman Charles Van in a photograph, his having been on the set of The Master of Man. The title of the article, written by Constance Palmer Littlefield, was New Hope for the American < Photoplay. It described the film Mortal Clay directed in Sweden by Victor Sjostrom as a film that was more artistic than commercial and anticipates the director's next film as there being on the screen "food for comparision", the soon to also be an adaption of the writing of Sir Hall Caine with The Master of Man, directed in the United States by Victor Seastrom. 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.) "But in Victor Seastrom lies hope. Since his coming to us from Sweden, he has been instrumental in organizing the Little Theatre movement of the screen." Screenland Magazine notes that
Joseph Schildkraut was originally been slated for the lead role in the film untill his scenes were reshot with Conrad Nagel. Where the article is continued, to the back pages of the magazine issue, there begins an interview with Victor Sjostrom where he is asked about the size of Svenska Filmindustri, to which there is the account of his having replied, "'Well-," and this strong man actually faltered, choosing his words, so carefully, 'It is quite large." When describing the size of the studios themselves. Victor Sjostrom, the actor, almost deferentially reveals himself, Victor Seastrom, the film director while answering that not all of the studios at Rasunda were as large as Goldwyn's huge Stage Six, "'Maybe as large as this,' he waved his hand inclusively at the courtroom, which is not large as sets go".Cinematographer Charles Van Enger not only photographed the 1924 film Name the Man (Infor hogre ratt), 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. The Film Daily reviewed the film's script. "It has the usual strength of a Hall Caine story is there, and in spots where censors weild wicked shears, there may be some difficulty...It is a gripping drama, of the type of Anna Christie. As with most films, the magazine added its "Box Office Angle" and advice for the film's "Exploitation", it suggesting to rely upon the name recognition of Hall Caine in that it was the first film Victor Sjostrom had made in the United States, but promised the film would make a financially turn a profit and included one of Conrad Nagel's very best performances, "Of strong appeal to women. Love story will hold them to the very end. Unusual treatment of rather old theme." Filmnyheter in 1923 ran the heading "Victor Sjostroms nya film bestamd. Infor Hogre ratt av Hall Caine." It began with, "Ett telegram fran Victor Sjostrom meddlar att for vilken film han forst skall gripa sig an med hos Goldwyn." and ended with, "Som nan ser, en stark och dramatisk handling ihed det etiska innehall Victor Sjostrom alltid sokt for sinafilmer."
Photoplay returned to Seastrom in 1925, "When Victor Seastrom presented his verion of Hall Caine's Name the Man, we were dissappointed. he failed to rise much above the level of a fourth rate novel." They reversed their postion with He Who Gets Slapped, rating it superb and claiming it would lift Sjostrom to "the top rank of directors". While in the United States, Victor Sjostrom, under the name Victor Seastrom, was to direct the first feature released by Metro Goldwyn mayer, He Who Gets Slapped (Hans som for orfilarne, 1924 seven reels), starring Jack Gilbert, Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney. Photoplay wrote, "All this is unfolded in a series of beautiful camera pictures, technically faultless. It is told celarly and directly in pantomine, as is the right function of the photoplay. True, there are subtitles, but in the main they are philosophic (and well written) comments on the action. " Motion Picture Magazine wrote, "The director has never permitted the irony of the play to touch the mark of bitterness and the result is a touching, warm and at moments, tender narrative." Of Chaney's performance, it added, "The picture is a clean-cut score for Lon Chaney, who climbed to fame as a "master of make-up" and is now justifying his place in the sun of popularity with a display of an amazing skill in the delineation of character." Pictures and Picturegoer Magazine reported in early 1924, "Goldwyn will not allow the title of Victor Seastrom's new film to be made public. It is a film version of a popular novel." Months later it added, "Victor Seastrom is working for Goldwyn now...His next film will be called The Tree in the Garden and his leading lady is Norma Shearer." It then crescendoed, "After all his big talk, Victor Seastrom is now making He Who Gets Slapped."
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.
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.'" During 1925, Victor Sjostrom, brought Lewis Stone and Alice Terry to the screen in the film Confessions of a Queen (Kungar i landsflykt). Photoplay wrote, According to all reports Alice Terry has knocked them dizzy with The Great Divide...It will be interesting to observe this brilliant woman under the director of Victor Seastrom." With Sjostrom was a cinematographer that became widely used on the back lots of the silent films of the decade to turn flicker into fantasy, Percy Hilburn, his having worked with several directors, notably Reginald Barker, George Melford, Fred Niblo and Monta Bell. Picturegoer Magazine reviewed the film, "Confessions of a Queen is a Ruritanian theme, with a long suffering Queen- Alice Terry, and a dissolute King- Lewis Stone; and here the acting of the principals lifts Seastrom's production shoulder-high above the ordinary." Sjostrom's film was written by Agnes Christine Johnson, adapted from The Painted Laugh a novel by Alphonse Daudet. Picturegoer magazine saw Sjostrom's contribution to film as being exemplary as a literate director, "You may have noticed that Seastrom has changed the titles- this however is not an example of vandalism; he changed the stories too, and, if I may say so, with all deference to the authors, has changed them for the better...Yes they have box office appeal, but they are still and sober, artistic and sombre." To the present author, it seems that this is in part due to Sjostrom having been an actor during the time of August Strindberg and in part a nod to his having worked with Selma Lagerlof, harkening back to when the reverse was true for Mauritz Stiller and his break with Lagerlof over how faithfully her writings should have beeen adapted.
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.
In Finland, the film The Northeners/The Bothnians (Pohjalaisis) was recently screened for the first time since its first run release in 1925. Directed by Jalmari Landensue, the film was photographed by a camerman that would film on several occaisions for the directors Konrad Tallroth, Erkki Karu and Teuro Puro. In Germany, Scandinavian film director Svens Gade positioned actress Asta Nielsen in front of the lens in Hamlet (1920). Directing in the United States in 1925, his films included Fifth Avenue Models adapted from the novel The Best in Life by Muriel Coxen, Siege and Peacock Feathers (seven reels) with Jacqueline Logan; in 1926 they were to include Watch Your Wife (seven reels), Into Her Kingdom (seven reels) with Corinne Griffith and Einar Hanson and The Blonde Saint (seven reels), adapted from the novel Isle of Life by Stephen Whitman and starring Lewis Stone and Ann Rork. Gade would later become a scenario writer rather than director, one instance being Symphony for Universal, directed by F. Harmon Weight.
It was in 1926 that Lillian Gish, while filming La Boheme (King Vidor, nine reels) with John Gilbert, had met Victor Sjöström. Lillian Gish was quoted by an early biographer as having said that it was on the set of La Boheme that she began working with Frances Marion on the continuity behind The Scarlet Letter. Photoplay Magazine in 1926 added a photocaption to a still from Victor Sjostrom's film, for they had trouble getting Lillian to put torrid temperature into her La Boheme scenes. Here is Lillian sending hot looks to Lars Hanson. Motion Picture Magazine included the character Pearl from the film adaptation with a portrait of Lillian Gish taken by Ruth Harriet Louise entitled "Lillian's Protoge". Quoted by Liberty Magazine during 1927, Lillian Gish said, "King Vidor directed La Boheme, and one of the best cameramen in my experience, Hendrik Sartov, lent his aid...We finished it on a Saturday, and without waiting for my weeks holiday, we began The Scarlet Letter on Monday."
There is an account of Victor Sjostrom's shooting the exterior scenes to the film The Scarlet Letter in which during the film he climbed down from a platform after Swedish silent film director Mauritz Stiller had announce that he was there, Stiller then saying, "This is Garbo." Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller had met in Stockholm the day before the shooting of the 1912 film The Gardner/The Broken Spring Rose was to begin at the studio in Lindingo, Bengt Forslund later chronicling that "Sjostrom didn't know Stiller befroe they became associated at Svenska Bio, but he was aware of his reputation." Photoplay reviewed the 1926 film, "Hawthorne's classic and somber study of the New England conscience has just been somberly translated to the screen. Lillian Gish wears the red letter of sin with her stock virginal sweetness failing to grasp the force of Hester Prynne's will power and intelligence...The camerawork has been perfectly handled but the puritans have been seen with a slightly Swedish eye by director Victor Seastrom. They are dour rather than high minded fanatics....Take your handkerchiefs and the older children". Decades before Lillian Gish published her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, she had layered some its preliminary by laying out its chronicle during conversations to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, author of Life and Lillian Gish. Paine quotes her discussing her having been on the set with Victor Sjostrom, "He got the spirit of the story exactly, and was hinself a fine actor, the finest that ever directed me. I never worked with anyone I liked better than Seastrom. He was Scandinavian- thorough and prompt. If Mr. Seastrom said we would start at eight, or half past, the camera was ready at that time, and so were we." Gish connects this to an illness in her family while filming The Scarlett Letter, "At the studio, Seastrom said that by working day and night we could do the remaining two weeks on the picture in the three days I had left...We didn't waste a moment and during those three days there was very little sleep for anyone." Sidney Sutherland, author of the several installments of Lillian Gish, The Incomparable Being: The Story of Great Tragedienne that appeared in Liberty Magazine during 1927 quoted the silent film actress, "We finished The Scarlet Letter on schedule. eight weeks having been allotted to it by Mr. Thalberg, but we found we would require about two weeks for certain retakes and changes. Just as we began this added work, I recieved word from London my mother was dying...That would give me just to finish up the fourteen days necessary for the retakes. I told Mr Thalberg and Victor Seastrom, my director, and we worked forty eight hours, without more than two hours sleep. Interiors were made all night and outdoor scenes every moment of sunlight." The Film Daily magazine reviewed the work of actress Lillian Gish, "Another very credible performance. At times Miss Gish reaches real heights." It reviewed the film favorably, "Metro Goldwyn Mayer and Victor Seastrom are to be congratulated for their courage in telling this dramatic without any extraneous and unnecessary flourishes", but also advice as to its "Exploitation". "No ballyhoo for this. It isn't that type of a picture. The import of the letter A which Lillian Gish carries like a cross might be used to arouse interest." It was a set where "Lillian Gish is gelatinzining the famous Scarlet Letter" as seen by Photoplay of that year. Motion Picture Classic published stills of Lillian Gish taken by Milton Brown. It reviewed the film with "Miss Gish's Hester should be an interesting addtion to her gallery of suffering heroines."
In 1935, the magazine International Photographer quoted cameraman Bert Longworth, ""Only by the correct usage of lights can photography be raised to the standard of art.'" The magazine continued, "His first job in motion pictures was with Universal. Among the pictures he shot the stills on were The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. After three years he transferred to M.G.M. Studio where he was the first man to take portraits of Greta Garbo and covered her two early hits Flesh and the Devil and The Temptress." An issue of Film Fun during 1922 also pointed out the same need for lighting to be essential to film-making, "Lighting is one of the most important elements in the making of a good picture... In Sweden, they have only four months during the year in which the sun shines and during that time they work eighteen hours a day. The Swedish pictures have a peculiar luminousity which we do not seem able to obtain in this country and it is probably due to the intense brightness of the sun." Included in the article are stills from the Swedish Silent films Synovia of Sundown Hill, The Dawn of Love and A Gay Knight.
Silent Film: Lost Film, Found Magazines
Mauritz Stiller, after having met camerman Julius Jaenzon, had begun directing for Svenska Bio in 1912, one film that he directed that year for Svenska Biografteatern having been The Black Masks (Den Svarta Maskerna), a circus movie in regard to its subject. It has been note that the films is exceptionally edited, its numerous, various scenes, " a constantly changing combination of interiors and exteriors, closeups and panoramic shots." (Forsyth Hardy) It has also been reproted that the film starring Victor Sjostrom and Lili Bech is lost. It has been described as a melodrama dealing with espionage with an exciting action sequence as its climax. There were 478 silent films made in Sweden; of them only 192 still exist, although there are copies of fragments from a number of them. Added to that, countless Danish silent films produced by Ole Olsen for Nordisk Films Kompagni are "presumably lost": the Danish Film Institute notes that approximately 1600 silent short and feature films were made whereas only 250 films presently exist, Not the only webpage concerned with the preservation of Silent Film, the lost films webpage from Berlin show clips and stills from fifty silent film that it claims are "unknown or unidentified". Bengt Forslund penned a brief paragraph about the silent film The Divine Woman (En Gudomlig Kvinna, 1928), directed by Victor Sjostrom under the name Victor Seastrom, "This was written 35 years ago and even at that stage all prints seem to have vanished. There is not much hope of finding one today since Garbo's films have been the subject of more research than those of most other stars.". Lon Chaney is quoted as having said, "I told Garbo that mystery served me well and it would do as much for her." Forslund reflected upon the exisiting early silent film of the Swedish director, "Even more regrettable is that out of the 31 films directed by Sjostrom during this period, only three have survived, and out of the other 8 films in which he acted, not a single one remains." It was Norma Shearer who was to star opposite Lon Chaney in the other M.G.M directed by Victor Sjostrom under the name Seastrom of which there are no existant copies, that film being Tower of Lies (1924, seven reels). Photoplay Magazine reviewed the film in a way that doesn't discourage the viewer but only makes us want to screen the film more, "If the director had been as concerned with telling the story as he was with thinking up symbolic scenes, this would have been a great picture. As it is, Victor Seastrom was so busy being artistic, he forgot to be human. The emotions are those of the theater, not of life, in spite of the fact that both Lon Chaney and Nora Shearer might have made them real." During 1925, Lon Chaney, in an article entitled My Own Story and published by Movie Magazine, while pointing to the themes of "self-sacrifice and renunciation" in his films wrote, "The picture I have just completed, Tower of Lies, is the story of a father's enduring love and sacrifice, even to death, for his wayward daughter. I do not know that it is my favorite of all roles that I have portrayed, but certainly it is one of them and I consider Victor Seastrom, who directed it, the greatest director in the motion picture profession." Also in 1925, The Reel Journal, a sister publication to the magazine New England Film News, reviewed the films of Lon Chaney with the article "Lon Chaney Turns to Less Grotesque Roles". The article initially began by noting that, in regard to depiction of thematic character, "Lon Chaney, who has attracted stardom by playing roles of a weird and grotesque character, is turning to portrayals depending on more deeply human qualities for their interest.", the professionalism as a make-up artist on the part of Lon Chaney is not without having been noticed, "In his first Metro-Goldwyn Mayer picture, Victor Seastrom's production of Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped...Chaney donned two make-ups, one as a European scientist, and the other as a clown. It was said by critics of the latter that this portrayal was the first circus clown interpretation to express the humanity which lies behind the painted