Biographer Norman Zierold has written that Garbo's plasticity made it possible for her to relect the fantasies of her screen audiences; in this sense she functioned as a recepticle for the emotions of others." In keeping with the Greta Garbo that was nearly unknown to movie audiences for her personal life offscreen and had lurked in the shadows of movie theaters as a recluse after her retirement as though she could at anytime be sitting right beside any of us during without anyone knowing during a movie house screening of one of her films while as spectators we made identifications with each interpellated nuance, I added, "These emotional structures are created within each particular film, often by subject and spectator positioning, the viewer and the film's other characters in relation to the body of the actress, as when her body within the frame creates space between two characters in front of the camera, isolating them near a specific visual motif, or when Garbo briefly moves into the emotion of solitude." It began, "By contrast, the value of the silent film that Greta Garbo made in Hollywood is sentimental. The were melodramas made after Greta Garbo was discovered in Europe," and, after giving a brief filmography of the films with the description of The Kiss (Kyssen, Feyeder, seven reels, 1929) being "one of her most beautiful films in that it is one of her most melodramatic" it added that "each film can bee seen only for the being reminded of having first seen each of the films and the darkened room where the decades from the long past can flicker into intrigues and adventures." My Silent Swedish Film webpage, which covered from the turn of century to the advent of sound, was 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, my biography of the actress Greta Garbo. On a sheet of revision tonight I added that "whether one person is watching an old Greta Garbo movie on television while the other is reading, waiting for the other to retire for the evening, with each film, and with each screening, Garbo, like Anna-Lena Hemstrom, who portrays an actress who gradually, surrendering to fantasy believes herself to be each of the characters Greta Garbo played on screen in The Perfect Murder (Det Perfekte Mord, (Eva Isaksen) reintroduces herself to us and in each different characterization is foremost a fashion model before us; Greta Garbo is in a close-up". And yet there is now something more mystical to the ghost of Garbo for any, and maybe every reviewer of of Eva Isaksen's suspense film knowing that in Stockholm, near the Calle Flygare theater, there perhaps may be a young actress named Ottiliana Rolandsson who has left a screening of the film Queen Christina with the words "I am Greta Garbo" slowly forming silently on her lips, and in her hands a copy of a play. 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. Harvard Film has a free series of screenings open to the public at the University; if you rebegin arbitrarily at present, in the here and now, the screenings of silent film are still ongoing and continuing; it has in the past has included 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? 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. Both Anna Karenina (J. Gordon Edwards, 1915, five reels), starring Betty Nansen, Mabel Allen and Stella Hammerstein, and The Scarlet Letter (Carl Harbaugh, 1917) starring Mary Martin, are lost, both filmed by Fox Film. When compared to the Fox films starring Theda Bara, Anna Karenina was not particularly a widely publicized, or exploited, film at the time, but it sported a photoplay scripted by Clara S. Beranger. Movie Pictorial Magazine in 1915 in fact compared and contrasted the two actresses in the same article, much like journalists would later do with Garbo and Dietrich, the title reading, "Betty Nansen Theda Bara-The Dsitinguished Scandinavian Actress and the Chic Paraisienne Secured for Feature Films in America" . Moving Picture World reported in 1915 Betty Nansen in Montreal- Famous Danish Actress Visits City to Get Snow Scenes for Anna Karenina Film, the accompanying text to include, "According to the script, a ski meet is held in which the hero competes with a Swedish champion. As there are many followers of the sport locally, and champions to boot, Mr Edwards secured some interesting film." The entire Moving Picture World review from the Spring of 1915 is as follows, "The premier of the first Fox offering with Betty Nansen, the great Danish actress was given on March 30. The picture, Tolstoi's Anna Karenina proved worthy of this audience's closest attention, although by remarks behind this reviewer, it was plain some were losing the quality of Nansen's restrained and remarkably powerful acting. There was some laughter, strange to say, except that perhaps the picture's meaning was over the heads of a few. There were two weak places in the cast, but this did not affect the result of it as a whole. It is a story of passion, but clean and powerful, a picture eminently fit for contemplation of grown human minds." "The film was adverised as, "The story of a woman who dared. A Photoplay that stirs and thrills. Holds a grip that never relaxes." J. Gordon Edwards cast Betty Nansen i a second adaptation of the novels of Tolstoy that year with the film A Woman's Resurrection, which Nordisk Film also filmed that year under the title Opstandelese. To return to Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, as many as 19 films have been listed as lost and as having directed by Urban Gad, the husband of the earliest of the stars of the silver screen, including Die falsche Asta Nielsen, in which Nielsen plays both her double, Bollette, and then herself.
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."
Is The Mystery of Room 643 (1914) a lost film?
I've also since returned to the downloading photos of Greta Garbo that were scanned from the original negative and e-mailed to me by an author who was who was an apprentice of Clarence Sinclair Bull. In that they were photos of Greta Garbo that were left over from the publication, please accept that I may have been the author to introduce those particular photos to Sweden from the vault in which they were kept. Vieira quotes Greta Garbo, "As she said,'I had it all my own way and did it in my own fashion.' This is what ended her carreer and what makes her cinematic legacy the exqisite thing that it is." But it is not only that, having resumed writing I recieved a reply from Norman Zierold, whose biography of Greta Garbo was publishes decades before that of the one written by Mark. A Vieria. My question was phrased,"I need a quote from correspondence on the silent film of Greta Garbo. How do you now feel about any of the particular films,i.e. The Divine Woman?" to which he replied, "No comment I can think of. Are you related to literary agent Sterling Lord?" By the way, I took the photo used in this blog for the template background; its tiled and was a kaleidoscope shot from one of my films on You Tube- it is Lena Nyman on the dust-jacket of the hardcover of Vilgot Sjoman's diary of his filming I was Curious Yellow and I was Curious Blue. In brief, the older banner that reads All About Swedish film was sent to me from someone that designs for the Potsdam Museum, which I in turn sent to an artist in California, who added tint to it before I added flash animation. Interestingly, the tinting of photographs dates back to 1932 or before; I have since found that one of the black and white photos scanned from the original negatives taken by Clarence Sinclair Bull and sent to me by author Mark A Vieira came from a negative that was actually tinted, or colorized rather, for publication by Photoplay Magazine. After the reader has seen the portraits of Greta Garbo that are mine, previously swallowed by Yahoo and Flickr, I encourage any attempt to view "Garbo's Garbos", the photographs that belonged to the actress herself. Taken by Clarence Sinclair Bull, Ruth Harriet Louise and George Hurrell, they were scheduled for public view by the Greta Garbo Estate for Christmas 2012, the collection including one particular portrait taken by Ruth Harriet Louise during the filming of The Single Standard ostensibly taken with Greta Garbo posed in front of a Paul Gaugin. I also happened to espy a copy of Photoplay Magazine that had belonged to the actress. Admist the webpage of Juliens Auctions 2012 a description of Greta Garbo's first screen appearance was nestled in between a "Vintage Greta Garbo Portrait" a Valentina Ottoman Silk ovwercoat and a Grey Silk Dress, they being among 800 items. It read, "Garbo's first American film, The Torrent opened in 1926 and her entrancing performance made an international sensation. Here was a woman unlike any previously seen on a film screen."
These two actresses were found with Swedish Silent Film actor Lars Hanson- Sofia Larssen's webpage on "Sweden's leading matinee idol of the silent era", was also a Geocities webpage before it closed. We we invited to "Also take a moment to drool over the many pictures in the gallery." From a guestbook entry on from a similar geocities page she was evidently then living in Sweden. Of particular interest was the Lars Hanson webpage written by Laurel Howard, also a geocities webpage. She writes that The Saga of Gosta Berling/The Atonement of Gosta Berling was meant to be a four hour film, "Because of the editing there are a lot gaps in the plot. It really is an epic film and needs length to show the full character and plot development...I think this film needs to be on the list for some major restoration." She later writes about "Ketta" in "the horzontal love scenes" that brought The Flesh and the Devil to renown and created a continuing fame, or unique stardom, for Greta Garbo. Webpages like these were a catalyst for my page on Greta Garbo in that it part of a series of five pages on Svenska Filmhistoria, which began chronicling the history of Swedish Silent Film from the turn of the century and I was honored to include a screening of one of the most profound and powerful films directed by Victor Sjostrom before his coming to the United States. Of particular mention is Louise Lageterstrom of the Swedish Film Institute's writing on Greta Garbo are more than worth a revisit.
jj swedish silent film 1909-1917
Swedish Silent FilmBarry Paris chronicles that it was Kerstin Bernadette that brought Garbo to meet then vetern Swedish Film director Ingmar Bergman, his having requested it in order to have her return to the screen in his film The Silence. In 1965, Raymond Durgnat wrote, "Greta Garbo made her last film in 1941, but nearly twenty five years later there are still rumors of possible new films, and her name can still fill a cinema. Pages later, to his account of her nearly consenting to eloped with John Gilbert and it having happenned that "finally, she hid herself in a ladies lavatory", he added, "Years after his death, Garbo still spoke of him in the present tense: 'Maurice thinks...'.
To those either fascinated by her, or, bluntly, merely eroticlly stimulated by her body, one possible reason for this was alighted upon by the biographer Durgnat, "The obverse of Garbo's divinity was her shyness. There were few close ups of her during Gosta Berling's Saga because of her nervous blink." (He adds that it had continued into her filming with G. W Pabst, who speeded up the camera to adjust for it.) Garbo went to Rasunda to the Svenska Filmindustri studio to meet Stiller for a screen test to be filmed by Julius Jaenzon, whom she happened to meet on a train, a presage to her meeting Ragnar Ring years later. While waiting for the director to arrive, Swedish cinematographer Julius Jaenzon had told Garbo, "You're the loveliest girl I've ever seen walk into the place." She and Mona Martenson were to film The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924, ten reels). Louise Lagterstrom of the Swedish Film Institute introduced the film, and Greta Garbo, in her writing with the title En Fortarande eld, Gosta Berling. During its filming, Greta Garbo and Mona Martenson had stayed in the same hotel room together. The beauty of Mona Martensson is miraculous, a deep beauty that can only be seen as wonderous. In the Story of Greta Garbo, a 1928 interview with Ruth Biery published in Photoplay, Garbo relates of Mortenson's being in Hollywood and of her planning to later return to Sweden. Photoplay, while advertising that the article would appear in their next installment, viewed Garbo as tempermental. In the article, she talks about The Saga of Gosta Berling and of Stiller having given her 'the very best part for my very first picture.' If the reader of 1928 had found where in Photoplay it was continued, "This Star's Interesting Narrative was to include Greta Garbo having said, "I owe everything to Mr. Stiller" The actress related that, for one thing, they both spoke Swedish, as much as she thought that being in the United States and that it was where she could make films. Stiller had imparted to her, 'You must remember two crucial things when you play the role or for that matter any role. First, you must be aware of the period in which the character is living. Second, you must be aware of your self as an actress. If you play the role and forget about your self nothing will come of it.' Appearing separate to the hardcover Garbo biography written by John Bainbridge was his work published in magazine form, which read, "Garbo's Haunted Path To Stardom, A hypnotic Director made over Her very Soul." In it he gives an account of Stiller's first session with Garbo at Rasunda, where he had asked her to act in front of the camera, quoting Stiller as having said, "Have you no feelings? Don you know nothing of sadness and misery? Act, miss, act!" Stiller having instructed that there be closeups shot of Garbo, he is attributed as having afterward imparted, "She is shy." and having added, "She has no technique, so she can't show what she is feeling." 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.' Author Forsythe Hardy writes about Hanson's performance in The Saga of Gosta Berling in his volume Scandinavian Film, published in 1952, "Lars Hanson made a dramatic figure of the clergyman whose rebellious temperment is one of the motivating forces of the story." 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 dijjjsplayed 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 (FiUlmjournal) 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. Author Forsyth Hardy lists a number of spectacular scenes from the film before describing "one of the quieter scenes" where two actresses explore the relationships that can for between two female characters, "The two women stand face to face, their minds full of bitter memories. No word is spoken, not a guesture made. Then the women, one at either side of the great press begin to turn to it. Moments such as this, when the camera was used to express great depths of feeling, showed Stiller's gifts as a director." Greta Garbo when interviewed in Photoplay Magazine described being on the set of her first leading character portrayal-Ruth Biery subtitled her second installment to The Story of Greta Garbo with Miss Garbo makes her film debut and appears like a comet in the Northern Sky."She paused again to remember, 'The first days of work I was so scared that I couldn't work. I was sick in earnest...He (Stiller) told me to practice alone. But I knew he was in some corner watching. I looked all around and could not see him, but I knew hw was there. So I would not practice."While visiting Stockholm in 1938, Garbo had asked to view the film, her having said to William Sorensen, "It was the movie I loved most of all." 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."
It is not entirely marginal that there are also accounts that Nils Asther had met Greta Garbo in 1924, at the Dramatiska Teatern and that he had then proposed marriage to her, which she apparently declined- the autobiography of Nils Aster, Narrens jag (Fool's Way/The Way of the Jester) was published in Swedish, posthumously. If, in 1928, Ruth Biery was writing about Nils Asther in Photoplay Magazine in order to obtain information about Greta Garbo, she does in fact show him in a favorable light and was genuinely interested in the actor, "Nils Asther, like Greta Garbo, was trained in the small studios of Sweden. He was accustomed to accept acting as an art rather than a short cut to wealth, fortune or position." 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. Significantly, 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 Hanson and Berta Hilberg. To lend a sense of the film as a vehicle for the actress, author Forsyth Hardy has written, "Brunius could work effectively on alarge canvas." Significantly, that same year the actress mary 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".
After the Saga of Gosta Berling was shot, Greta Garbo briefly returned to the Royal Dramatic Theater before being brought to Berlin for its premiere- Stiller was also with Greta Garbo for the premiere of The Joyless Street. There was a photograph of Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller in Berlin adorning the writing of Louise Lagterstrom of the Swedish Film Institute- she credits Stiller's discovery of Greta Garbo in its title "Siller's Kreation" In a Berlin hotel room, Stiller had said to Greta Garbo, "That's better. Put your feet on that stool. You're tired. A film star is always tired. It impresses people." Bosley Crowther, in his biography Hollywood Rajah, chronicles that while in Berlin, Mayer had screened a film directed in Sweden by Stiller after Seastrom had recommended that they meet. "It was full of snow and reiindeer...Stiller had someone call the next day and say he would like to show Mayer his latest film Gosta Berling's Saga from a novel by Selma Lagerlof. They met at a screening room." Stiller, "a tall, lanterned-jaw man who could not speak English" (Crowther) was asked during the film who Greta Garbo, "a lovely, slender, spiritual-looking blonde", was. Apparently Stiller megaphoned in Swedish, "Look at the picture! Look at the direction!" The next day the three had dinner.
Paul Rotha described Greta Garbo in the film The Joyless Street in his volume The Film Till Now, "But Greta Garbo, by reason of the sympathetic understanding of Pabst, brought a quality of lovliness into her playing as the professor's elder daughter. Her frail beauty, cold as an ice flower warmed by the sun stood secure in the starving city of Vienna, untouched by the vice and lust that dwelt in the dark little street." Garbo was to have made a second film for Pabst but declined. Before travelling to Turkey to film Odalisque from Smolna, Greta Garbo returned to Stockholm, appearing on the Swedish stage in the play The Invisible Man, written by Lagerkvist. Stiller had written the script to the film The Odalisque of Smolny and had brought Jaenzon, Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius and Garbo to Turkey only to have the film be left unmade. In the film, Greta Garbo was to portray a harem girl; there were rehearsals held of a exterior where Garbo was to meet her lover. There is a reference to the film made by Greta Garbo in a 1928 interview for Photoplay Magazine,
''We never started on that picture. The company went broke. Mr. Stiller had to go back to Germany to see about the money which was not coming. I was alone in Constantinople. Oh, yes, Einar Hansen,' she paused, 'the Swedish boy who was killed here in Hollywood not so long ago- was there too. He was to play with me in the picture. But I did not see him often.'' In Denmark, Einar Hanson had appeared in the films The Bilberries (Takt, Ture Og Tosser, Lau Lauritzen, 1924) and Mists of the Past (Fra Piazza del Popolo Anders W. Sandberg, 1925), the latter having starred Karina Bell.
When interviewed in 1924, Stiller had said, 'You have to leave room for people's imagination. The film camera registers everything with such merciless clarity. We really have to leave something for the audience to interpret.' Irregardless of how accurate one clue about the film left behind by Photoplay magazine in 1930 may be its title, the magazine claiming that it would be rereleased in the United States under the title "When Lights are Red", "Garbo's supporting cast consists of Einar Hansen, the young actor who met with an accidental death in Hollywood several years ago and Werner Krauss. Garbo was exotic in those days, too, but not the calm, poises woman of the world she is today." Ake Sundberg quotes Greta Garbo as having said, "I saw Hanson seldom. He was so ashamed of his ragged beard that he hardly dared show himself." The actor was sporting the beard for the requirements of the script. In That Gustafsson Girl, written for Photoplay Magazine by Sundberg in 1930, Mauritz Stiller is attributed as having been the first European director to shoot in close-up, to shift the camera and to find "new, striking angles" "Constantinople had fascinated the Swedish girl, who had never been away from the cold countries." There would be a letter from Greta Garbo to Vera Schmiterlow sent from Constantinople. Stiller had, "written much of the story himself" and that there was a rewrite of the script required is seen as having contributed to the films having been left uncompleted. Forsyth Hardy gives an account of the film then bearing the title Konstantinopel. Accompanying the history of the film not having had been being made is the atmosphere, or innuendo, that circulated among journalists, particularly those from other European cities that had travelled to Stockholm, their heaving linked Stiller and Garbo romanticlly, to a point where there was "the rumor that Garbo married Mauritz Stiller, the Swedish motion picture director, back in 1924 when they were both working on a picture in Constantinople...Garbo, said the whispers, is a widow." One could interpret that these were encouraged by Greta Garbo having been a recluse. As late as 1933, after the Garbo image had been established, Axel Ingwerson published an article in Photoplay entitled, "Did Garbo Marry Stiller?" with the subtitle, "Is there any b asis in fact for this strange rumor." Ingwerson continued and while describing Stiller included, "The original story was that Garbo had married Stiller in Constantinople under a mutual pledge of secrecy. That Garbo, furthermore, would have kept the marriage a secret forever if she hadn't found it necessary to put forward her claim to Stiller's estate."
Bengt Forslund notes that the filming of an adaptation of Anna Karenina had at first been thought of for actress Lillian Gish, who in Sweden, Greta Garbo had seen in the film The White Sister. In her autobiography, Gish wrote, 'I often saw the young Garbo on the lot. She was then the protege of the Swedish director Mauritz Stiller. Stiller often left her on my set. He would take her to lunch and then bring her back, and Garbo would sit there watching.' When refilmed, her Hollywood screen test would be filmed by Stiller and, purportedly spliced into the rushes of The Torrent, seen by director Monta Bell, who then insisted the script of the film be given to Garbo. Garbo's second screentest had been photographed by Henrik Sartov, who later explained that the earlier test had lacked proper lighting and that a lens he had devised had allowed him to articulate depth while filming her. Cameraman William Daniels had photographed the earlier test. Lillian Gish relates a conversation between her and Sartov about Garbo where Gish asked him if he could photograph a screentest of Garbo, "Garbo's temperment reflected the rain and gloom of the long dark Scandinavian winters. At first Garbo was reluctant to accept the role in the film, although it was a large role that had been considered for Norma Shearer, Stiller having advised, 'It can lead to a better parts later.' to which she replied, 'How can I take direction from someone I don't know.' Monta Bell had directed Norma Shearer in the film After Midnight (1921). The subtitle to one section of The Story of Greta Garbo As told by her to Ruth Biery, published in Photo-play during 1929, reads "Tempermental or misunderstood". In it Greta Garbo relates the events that led up to her having left the studio for less than a week, "Then it was for months here before I was to work with Mr. Stiller. When it couldn't be arranged, they put me in The Torrent with Mr. Monta Bell directing...It was very hard work but i did not mind that. I was at the studio every morning at seven o'clock and worked until six every evening." She goes further while explaining that there was a language barrier that would later contribute to Mauritz Stiller also being taken off her next picture, "Mr. Stiller is an artist. he does not understand about the American factories. He has always made his own pictures in Europe where he is the master. In our country it is always the small studio." The production stills of Greta Garbo during the filming of The Torrent were photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise; Robert Dance and Bruce Robertson, in their volume Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography, note that Greta Garbo was in Ruth Harriet Louise's studio within months of having filmed, but also note that before photographing Greta Garbo, Louise had created her "first published Hollywood image", that of Vilma Banky from the film Dark Angel in the September 1925 issue of Photoplay. Ruth Harriet Louise also published an early portrait of Greta Garbo in Motion Picture Classic magazine. During 1927 Photoplay added to the dynamic of extra-textual discourse and the spectator's relation to fantasy by making photographer Ruth Harriet Louise into either a real person or a celebrity, and or both, "Ruth Harriet Louise just couldn't keep away from the camera even at her own wedding...Ruth dashed behind the cameras to make certain that the lighting effects were just as she would have them...Now we wonder if Mr. Jacobson, a scenario writer at Universal followed the lead of his only-woman-photographer mate and wrote the newspaper accounts of the wedding." It was on the set of The Torrent that author Sven-Hugo Borg was introduced to Stiller, who in turn then informed Garbo that he was her assigned translator while under Monta Bell's direction. In The Private Life of Greta Garbo by her most intimate friend, Borg relates that bell had turned to him and had said of her, "What a voice! If we could only use it. Of the film he notes, "Of course she was constantly with Stiller, spending every possible moment with him; but thought that when the camera's eye was flashed upon her, the picture would decide her fate began, he would not be there terrified her." Borg continued as the interpreter of Greta Garbo until 1929. Photoplay Magazine looked at the film during 1926, "Monte Bell stands well in the foreground of those directors who can take a simple story and so fill it with true touches that the characters emerge real human beings and the resulting film becomes a small masterpiece....Greta Garbo, the new Swedish importation is very lovely." National Board of Review magazine during 1926 typified the film with, "The story preserves a European atmosphere in which parents still have the least say about their children's marriages." Eugene V Brewster began the watching of Greta Garbo on the part of Motion Picture Classic magazine with his own view, "At Metro-Goldwyn Studion they showed me a few reels of Greta Garbo's unfinished picture. This striking, young Swedish actress will doubtless appeal to many, but somehow i couldn't see the great coming star in her that the company expects." Fredrick James Smith continued for Motion Picture Classic with Greta Garbo Arrives, The newcomer is a somber-eyed Norsewoman, one Greta Garbo, who seems to have more possibilites than anyone since Pola negri of Passion...She isn't afraid to act. That she was able to stand out of an inferiror story, poorly directed, is all the more to her credit...The Ibanez story is full of claptrap, including the dam that bursts without having anything to do with the story. Monta Bell has tossed it into film form without any apparent interest." It was quickly followed by the article "The Northern Star, The Screen's Newest Meteor is a moody daughter of Sweden", written by Alice L. Tildesley. It was very soon after that Greta Garbo began a love letter with her movie going audiences that would be nearly contained to her appearances in front of the camera only- Photoplay author Myrtle West that year published an article on Greta Garbo that year entitled That Stockholm Venus, and although it can almost be reduced to paragraphs confirming the need of an interpreter on the part of Greta Garbo when she had first reached Hollywood, and while it connects her with Anna Q. Nilsson and Greta Nissen in her being unfamiliar to Hollywood, it begins with, "Greta was very worried. A frown corrugated her brow." and concludes, "A face that you would remember long after the body had crumbled away.". It attempts to describe her first impression on Hollywood, "Greta has no desire to join the vacous circle of teas, dinners and dances into which this favored newcomer is invited. Besides, she has little time for men...or love. This by her own admission." The picture of Greta Garbo in a chair seated next to a lion, Garbo photographed outdoors on what at first looks like a bench and the lion posing with his front feet elevated on a log, as it was published in Motion Picture Magazine during 1926, was printed without her name; the photo-caption reads, "for the best title to this picture." It was followed pages later with "Why Girls leave Sweden, "Presenting to you Miss Greta Garbo- a lady who is said to have all the qualifications of a star." Journalist Rilla Page Palmborg followed that with the article, The Mysterious Stranger, which began with "She is a mystery to those of her own profession!" The photograph accompanying the article was taken by Ruth Harriet Louise. " 'Ever since I can remember I must be an actress,' she explained in suprisingly good English, when I asked her to telll us about herself." Louise Lagterstrom of the Swedish Film Institute adorned her writing on the arrival of Greta Garbo in Hollywood, Mot Hollywood, with a photo taken in 1924 by Arnold Grethes, almost reiterating that Garbo was photographed extensively, often posing as a photo-model for publicity stills, before her living in self-imposed exile.
The screenplays to the first two films in which Greta Garbo had appeared, The Torrent and The Temptress (nine reels) both had been adaptations of the novels of Vincente Blasco Ibanez, their having been titled Among the Orange Trees and The Earth Belongs to Everyone, respectively. The novels written by Vincente Blasco Ibanez also include The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse filmed after Blood and Sand, in 1921, Enemies of Women (Crosland), starring Alma Rubens and Marie Nostrum, filmed in 1926 . When interviewed by Motion Picture Classic magazine, Vincente Belasco Ibanez was quoted as having said, "The future of the camera is limitless. Now it is not going ahead very fast. There is no standard in the cinema. Who do the artists not get together and set up standards?" Photoplay reviewed the film, "While this Vincente Belasco Ibanez story is crammed full of melodramatic action- much of it preposterous-Greta Garbo makes the proceedings not only believable, but compelling...Such a role strains at the probabilities, but Miss Garbo makes Elena highly effective. She is beautiful, she flashes and scintillates with singular appeal...The Temptress is all Greta Garbo. Nothing else matters." Ruth Biery in 1932 intimated that Stiller was removed from The Temptress because of an objection made by Antonio Moreno, the director having insisted that the actor wear a pompadour to compensate for Garbo's having had been being the taller of the two. Bosley Crowther's account of it in his biography of Mayer depicts Stiller as possibly unfamiliar with the studios in the United States, "Stiller was allowed to start this one, but proved too finicky and slow, one of those 'difficult' directors that were now being got out of the studio." The advertisements in magazines that were part of Metro Goldwyn Mayer publicity for that time period did in fact, like the earlier "Eminent Authors Series", present to readers a growing collection of foreign directors imported by the studio. Before the release of the film, Motion Picture Magazine featured a photograph of Mauritz Stiller and Greta Garbo on the film's set, captioned with, "The dancing scenes of Greta Garbo and Antonio Moreno in The Temptress, which Mauritz Stiller is directing in this photograph, were filmed by a camera attached to a moving platform which followed them about the floor." If this were Stiller's only contribution to, or influence upon classical narrative and the temporal-spatial relationships of camera to subject in film, it would be notable, excepting that Stiller had previously filmed in Sweden and built the traditions of film making there as one of its pioneers under Charles Magnusson. The magazine also published a photograph of Greta Garbo "vamping" before the film's release, capitoned, "Judging from the oval photograph above, The Temptress is well named. Although Greta Garbo has only been on the American screen for a short time, she enjoys quite a vogue." It then reviewed the film, "It must be admitted that The Temptress is a bore...Greta Garbo as the unhappy Temptress has a role which requires precisely nothing."
Charles Affron particularly looks to the entrances that Greta Garbo makes during the opening scenes of her silent film and notes that silent film director Fred Niblo, after taking the helm upon Stiller's leaving the filming of The Temptress, studies Garbo's beauty, her ethereality, by adding a second screen entrance of his own where Garbo, clasping flowers, is exiting a carriage- he then illustrates its use in Niblo's later film The Mysterious Lady (Den Mystika kvinna, 1928, nine reels) where Garbo, in the middle of watching an opera is seen by Conrad Nagel as he is making his entrance and then by the camera in a profile close shot. In the sequence, the camera is authorial in accordance with the action of the scene; Garbo's look is momentarily uninterrupted as Nagel, almost an interloper, is introduced into the scene by his entering the frame and by the camera nearing her as she is near motionlessly surveying the proscenium, the theater in the film a public sphere of address that envelopes its characters to where Garbo, and her act of watching becomes the subject of the cinematic address and the object of both Nagel's and the audience's interest. Affron writes that it may have been Stiller's keeping Garbo on the screen and in front of the camera that had been among the reasons for his being replaced on the set of The Temptress.
Author Mark A. Vieira was asked by Turner Classic Movies to provide audio narrative commentary to the film The Temptress for its The Garbo Silents collection, his on occaision quoting the actress during the film as well as his quoting from her correspondence. The Temptress begins with a blue-tinted exterior shot, Fred Niblo then cutting what seems to be an opera house during which there are lights from the cieling that sway back and forth across a costume dance. During the next scene Garbo in an evening gown that is folded like a robe enters a drawing room where there is a visitor that has been invited to dinner. During the dinner, there is an pullback shot over a table that is elaborately included in the scene, it having been designed almost as though the scene from a pre-code film in the plunging necklines of its tight clinging evening gowns in contrast most of the films scenes that seem bookended between the beginning and end of the film. After a series of exterior shots filmed by assistant director H. Bruce Humberstone, Lionel Barrymore is introduced in the film, Greta Garbo shortly thereafter reintroduced as the camera cuts away from her before it is finished panning up, it cutting back after an interpolated shot to finish panning from her waist upward, the camera slowly reflecting upon the unexpectedness of her being reunited with the other characters. Director Fred Niblo had apparently also taken over behind the camera for Lynn Shores during the shooting of The Devil Dancer (1927, eight reels), actress Gilda Gray having had been being on the set.
In a scene where Garbo is shown in an extreme close up sitting with Lionel Barrymore, author Mark A. Vieira chooses to discuss that whereas previously close ups had often been used in silent film as being concerned with a different plane of action as other shots filmed from other camera distances, Niblo seems to include closeups into the characterization through a use of lighting and diffusion while filming. Irregardless of this, later in the film there is extreme close up of Garbo that is abruptly cut almost on a reverse angle right before her and her lover are about to kiss. The character movement of the two nearing each other is held, if only briefly, Garbo near stunning as the camera only briefly contains her within the frame. There in the film is a scene with a rainstorm and flood that, and although it was more than quite concievably added to the plotline for its excitement, is almost a haunting acknowledgement of the camerawork of either Mauritz Stiller or Victor Sjostrom in Sweden and the role of nature in Swedish silent film, in this instance an acknowledgement punctuated by Greta Garbo, who is seen right before the rain during a night exterior in the mountains, alone with her lover in a series of close shots, her then being only briefly seen in profile during the thunder and lightning and then again in one of the most beautiful evening gowns of the film, her shoulders bare as she is reading a letter.
The Exceptional Photoplays department of National Board of Review magazine credited by William Daniels and Gaetano Gaudio as having been the photographers of the film The Temptress, "The Temptress brings Greta Garbo to the attention of American audiences as an actress of note and unusual beauty...She is not half a minute on the screen before you know her for an artist, pliable and lovely. This big starring vehicle gives her the ample opportunity to prove her versatility...The first Paris sequence is the equal in tonal quality and feeling of anything that has been done in films. It is true with strong character drawing. Miss garbo makes Elena a breathing person."
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." In a letter to Lars Saxon, Greta Garbo wrote, 'Stiller's going to start working with Pola Negri. I'm still very lonely, not that I mind, except occaisionally.'
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."
Stiller also directed Pola Negri, and Clive Brook, in Barbed Wire (1927, seven reels). When Stiller directed the actress again, with Einar Hanson in The Woman on Trial (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." 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 (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. Author Paul Rotha reviewed "that most extraordinary of movies" shortly after the release of the film, "No expense was spared on its making. The script was well-balanceed;the continuity was good; the setting natural. yet for some obscure reason it was one of the worst films ever done. It defied analysis." 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 of the 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. Pola Negri during 1929 had starred in The Secret Hour (eight reels), directed by Rowland V Lee.
In 1927 alone, Einar Hanson appeared in the films The Lady in Ermine (seven reels, James Flood), The Masked Woman (six reels) with Anna Q. Nilsson, and Fashions for Women (seven reels, Arzner) with Esther Ralston. Gladys Unger, who later worked on the scenario to The Divine Woman, had written the screenplay to the film Fashions for Women. Photoplay Magazine reported, "Here is a tragedy- and a mystery. Einar Hansen was found fatally injured, pinned beneath his car on the ocean road. Earlier in the evening, he had given a dinner party for Greta Garbo, Mauritz Stiller and Dr. and Mrs. Gustav Borkman...Hansen was unmarried. He is survived by his parents, who live in Stockholm."
Glimpses of the Garbo of 1924, a year when in the United States Viola Dana and Jetta Goudal were starring together in the film Open All Night (six reels), can be seen in the letters between her and Swedish actress Mimi Pollock authenticated by author Tin Andersen Axell, letters on which his newest book is based. Leaving us again with something mysterious, the letters written by Pollack to Greta Garbo have been unseen by the public and are thought to be currently included in the collection of Scott Riesfield.
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.
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.
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 s