Danish Silent Film"Mormonens Offer" (A Victim of the Mormens) starring Valdemer Psilander and Clara Wieth (Clara Pontipoppidan) was written by Alfred Kjerulf and directed by August Blom. It is not only a suspense thriller typical of the Danish genre, but was controversial for its anti-religious message or perhaps propaganda. Danish Silent Film

Silent Film

The Danish Silent Film"Towards the Light" ("Mod Lyset"), writtn and directed by Holger-Madsen for Nordisk Films Kompagni starred Asta Nielsen. That year Holger Madsen also directed the films "Hendes Helt", starring Gunnar Tolnaes, "The Soul of the Violin" ("En Kunstners Gennemlard", starring Marie Dinsen, and "Den Aerolse", starring Valdemar Psilander and Ebba Thomsen. Scandinavian Silent Film

Silent Film

Silent FilmSilent FilmSilent Film

Directing in 1912, Louis Mercatan had filmed stage actresss Sarah Bernhardt for four reels using only long static shots; there are twenty three scenes in the film and of twenty two intertitles, only three are interpolated. Most summarize the dialogue and its consequence to the action untill the exclamation in scene twenty one, “May God forgive you, I never will.” While discussing the advent of sound film and its acceptance by French filmmakers, the periodical Exhibitor's Daily Review abjured its readers that the would be "reminded that Sarah Bernhardt was the first star of the first movie drama ever produced."
A year later, in 1913, D.W. Griffith, having already adopted the practice of making two-reelers, directing the first American four-reel narrative, “Judith of Bethulia”, starring Blanche Sweet.
All five or six reels of the 1915 film "Jeanne Dore", starring Sarah Bernhardt and written and directed by Louis Mercantan are presumed to be lost. It mas included among many of the Bluebird Photoplays during the company's brief existence during the first decade of the twentieth century. Greta Garbo is quoted by Sven Broman as having said, "I know that he courted Sarah Bernhardt and wanted to write plays for her...but Strindberg still managed to get Sarah Bernhardt to do a guest performance in Stockholm in La Dame aux Camelias at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. There are reports of surviving existing copies of the one reel 1909 film "La Tosca" starring Sarah Bernhardt and Eudourdo Max. Sara Bernhardt plays herself, as do Sir Basil Zahrof and Maurice Zahrof in the two reel "Sara Bernhardt a Belle Isle" from 1912. "Mothers of France" (1917) would be the last film to feaure the The Divine Woman, Sarah Bernahrdt.



Silent Film

Silent Film playlist

Silent Film playlist

Silent FilmScott Lord

After having appeared in “The Outlaw and His Wife”, actress Edith Erastoff starred with Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth In “The Flame of Life” (1919), directed by Mauritz Stiller And “Let No Man Put Asunder” (“Hogre Andamal”, 1921) directed by Rune Carlsten.
In Sweden, Victor Sjostrom Continued directing in 1922 with the film “Vem domer”, starring Jenny Hasselqvist, which he co-scripted with Hjalmer Bergman.

Victor Sjostrom had written four hundred letters to Edith Erastoff, his co-star from the film “The Outlaw and His Wife”, their eventually having married during 1922.

Author Forsyth Hardy, in the volume Scandinavian Film written in 1952, explains the film of Victor Sjostrom as having established Sjostrom as an auteur of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film by his work having created a poetic cinema. Hardy writes, “There was a greater freedom of movement, an assured sense of rhythm and a fine feeling for composition. In ‘The Outlaw and His Wife’ Sjostrom used landscape with a skill which was to become part of the Swedish Film tradition. He found a way of filming the tree-lined valleys and wide arched skies of his country so that they became not merely backgrounds but organic elements in the theme in the theme.There was still, however, a lingering tendency to melodrama in the acting....the end of the film especially was marred by melodramatic excess.” About the film, Einar Lauritzen wrote, “But Sjostrom never let the drama of human relations get lost in the grandeur of the scenery.”
"The Outlaw and His Wife" was reviewed in the United States during 1921 under the title "You and I". Motion Picture News concluded, "The pocture is marred by an utterly irrelevant prolougue and epilougue which should be dispensed with immediately. It has no place in advancing the drama and really spoils the good impressions of the picture."

Greta Garbo

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom playlist

Danish Silent Film: Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore/Sherlock Holmes pa Marienlyst; Asta Nielsen, Ebba Thompsen, Betty Nansen, Valda Valkyrien and the Nordisk Film Kompagni, Great Northern Film and Carl Th. Dreyer: News Flash- missing Lost Silent Sherlock Holmes Films found and restored!!

Swedish Silent Film

Sherlock Holmes pa Marienlyst/Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore A recent MOOC on Shakespeare in print and performance from King’s College, London and Futurelearn noted that the advent of sound initially ruined Shakespeare on film at the box office due to the nature of the plays and their being adapted. Despite the adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays from stage to screen having been successful, the art form afforded only a fixed camera position with a theatrical backdrop, there resulting a lack of camera mobility. In regard to The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by William Shakespeare being compared to a lost film, there are elements to the characterization that lend themselves to the methods of the armchair detective, no matter how readily: ostensibly that the line "How all occasions do inform against me" appears in the First Quatro of Hamlet but is omitted from the First Folio printed posthumously by the Shakespearean acting company, the Kingsmen, and playwright Ben Jonson- it remains a fragment The pith of its events were designed by Shakespeare from the Danish legend Amlet that seems to not have had a character named Ophelia, nor a ghost- the Ghost first appeared in what is now a lost manuscript mentioned in Lodge's Wif's Miseries, and the allusion is to a ghost that cries like an oyster wife, "Hamlet Revenge" and, earlier than Shakespeare's Hamlet, is attributed to Thomas Kydd. While we wait for a filmmaker to add the play in its entirety despite its length, any production of Hamlet must confront that there are in fact three versions written by William Shakespeare. Notwithstanding, the history of silent film might at any time bring in not only the play as performed on stage, but the indefatigable Sherlock Holmes. It would only cause Conan Doyle to delight that after online discussions with the University of Edinburgh about time travel that of course neglect to connect the idea that assassination attempts on Queen Victoria lead to a theory that King Edward was the real Jack the Ripper, but that time travel is still a perpetual loop, and after online discussions from the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick that Shakespeare had based the play Hamlet on long lost Scandinavian literature, that currently Harvard University Online poses the question ,"Is the Ghost of Hamlet's Father, The King, a lost soul? Is he within historical context in purgatory? " Technically, it would seem that visitations from the deceased were not allowed in Shakespearean England.      Basil Phillip St. John Rathbone, who portrayed the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, had also appeared in silent films- Trouping with Ellen (T. Hayes Hunter, seven reels) in 1924, The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, six reels), starring Mae Murray, in 1925 and The Great Deception (Howard Higgin, six reels) in 1926. Rathbone and his wife had been present at the premiere of Flesh and the Devil. Anna Karenina (1914), filmed by J. Gordon Edwards, had starred Betty Nansen. On learning that Greta Garbo had already had the film Mata Hari in production, Pola Negri deciding between scripts that were in her studio's story department chose A Woman Commands as her first sound film, in which she starred with Basil Rathbone. Of Rathbone she wrote in her autobiography, 'As an actor, I suspected Rathbone might be a little stiff and unromantic for the role, but he made a test that was suprisingly good.' Directed by Paul L.Stein, the film also stars Reginald Owen and Roland Young.      And like Rathbone, another Sherlock Holmes, Clive Brook who appeared in the 1929 film The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Basil Dean) and in the title role of Sherlock Holmes (Howard) in the film of 1930, was appearing in silent films during the early 1920's, including Woman to Woman (Cutts 1923) and Out to Win (Clift, 1923). As part of an interesting study, Clive Brook had appeared in the mysteries Trent's Last Case (1920), directed by Richard Garrick and based on the novel by E.C. Bentley and The Loudwater Mystery (1921), based on the novel by Edgar Jepson, before his appearing with Isobel Elsom in the 1923 film A Debt of Honor directed by Maurice Elvey. One of the most sought after lost, or missing films, listed by the British Film Institute as having been filmed but not surviving today in an existing print is The Mystery of the Red Barn (Maria Marton) dircted by Maurice Elvey in 1913. The following year Elvey was to direct the mysteries The Cup Final Mystery and Her Luck in London. One of the first directors Philip St John Basil Rathbone had appeared in front of the camera for had been Maurice Elvey, who had directed the 1921 film, The Fruitful Vine, adapted for the screen from the novel.      Motography, the motion picture trade journal, reviewed the Sherlock Holmes of 1916, "Much of the photography is very good. A number of bog scenes standout prominently, in which the suspense is cleverly managed. But as a whole, seven reels seems too lengthy. The play drags in the first part and some of the story is vague. The acting is in keeping with the melodramatic situations. Gillette shows himself a clever screen actor in the title role." Motion Picture World noted that William Gillette was over sixty years of age at the time of its review and at the time of the release of the film. It reviewed "the Photoplay adaptation of his famous play in seven parts" in which he used members of Essanay and of his own stage company, "theater goers will never tire of looking at his characterization of Conan Doyle's Greta detective.. And leave in comparatively permanent form, his Sherlock Holmes for the delight of future generations. Mr. Gillette acts like an old-timer before the camera...The seeming lapses into sleepiness of manner and action suddenly resolve into a display of imperiousness and overwhelming mentality and wit." Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Berthelet, 1916) starring William Gillette, for nearly a century a silent film that if found in magazines has been reported as a lost film in regard to being seen on the movie projection screen, according to Photoplay magazine although not remade was the basis for the film Sherlock Holmes (nine reels) of 1922, starring John Barrymore, John Barrymore not only in the title role but also in a dual role as Moriarty. Photoplay magazine claimed that it was Barrymore's acting ability that was worth seeing, not so much the character itself being portrayed, but added that followers of the Arthur Conan Doyles stories were recommended to see the film, "You should see this film if you are a devotee of John the Barrymore...Albert Parker, the director, has not been afraid to follow his imaginative impulses, with interesting results." As the stories of Edgar Wallace were beginning to appear serialized in The Stand Magazine, alongside  a Sherlock Holmes rejuvenated by its creator after the death of illustrator Sidney Paget, a Sherlock Holmes created by John Barrymore appeared in The Strand Magazine in the interview The Youth of Sherlock Holmes, conducted by Hayden Church during 1922. A photocaption read, "A well known incident from 'A Scandal in Bohemia', the first of the famous Sherlock Holmes stories. John Barrymore's wonderful makeup as the old clergyman is seen to better advantage in the small photograph." Jounalist Hayden church divulged to The Strand, "It was in a bedroom of the Ritz that I discovered Mr. Barrymore, who arrayed in flowered silk pajamas was at that very moment engaged in making up as the great Sherlock." The article explained that there was a prolouge to the film that provided biographical information on the fictional character and his youth that had been left out in the cannon. In the interview, Barrymore explains that the film was shot on location not in Baker Street or Gower Street, but in Torrington Square, for authenticity. "Our film will bring out the romantic side of Holmes...'At the beginning of the hour,'Holmes in our script, 'I met love and it passed me  by. At the end of the hour, I met mysterious evil'" Film Daily magazine during 1922 described the film favorably with the provision, "It is too long and it is not easy to follow the story. In an effort to clarify matters numerous long titles and used that often confuse more than try to explain. The result is a 'talks' picture and if you happen in after the first half reel you are about lost because it's not the kind of story that you can pick up readily." The magazine described the lighting as "sometimes too dark on interiors" and the exteriors as "views of England and Switzerland; splendid". The scenario is listed as having been written by Earle Brown and Marion Fairfax, the cameraman as having been being J. Roy Hunt. In the film, Holmes is seen smoking a pipe in his armchair at 221 B Baker Street with a human skull on the end table where the Conan Doyle often kept his Stradivarius violin, his being seen reading a letter, the later shown in an intercut insert shot. Watson, now married, enters as Holmes reads a newspaper account of his having solved the Darton Mystery, the newspaper also shown in insert shot. There is a globe visible in the far corner of the room, a teapot diagnally in the foreground, and yet, the bust, remaining unidentified, but presumably Roman, can only be espied as a shadow, the light seeming to fall from a window that is blocked by its silhouette. The Persian slipper is on the mantle, ready for when Holmes' is in need of filling his pipe. It is there that Holmes attributes to Moriarty over fourth as of then unsolved mysteries. The film quickly concludes, first by Holmes disguising himself as Moriarty, then as he is removing the greasepaint he apprehended Moriarty, who in turn is in disguise, at that moment his announcing that he is embarking upon his honeymoon. While deciding whether Stoll and Ellie Norwoord could film the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Arthur Conan Doyle's remonstrance not to use the name Sherlock Holmes as it more properly belonged to William Gillette, Film Daily printed during 1922, "The author said he saw the film version in which John Barrymore appeared and stated that there was one act which was not authorized, nor in accordance worth his plots. 'That was the act in which Sherlock Homes goes to college', said Doyle." It added, without intimating that today an owner of a ouigi board would be more favored to acquire an interview with Doyle than a trade magazines from the twenties, "Doyle said that Gillette wired him for permission to make changes in the original theme in order to 'work in a romance' and that Gillette cabled,'May I marry Holmes?' Doyle replied,'Marry him, murder him or do anything you like with him.'" Sherlock Holmes as a film shot at the Essanay Studios in 1916 was lost, presumed nonexistent, found as a copy of a French print and restored in 2014. Edward Fielding essays as Doctor Watson in a scenario written by H.S.Sheldon. Actress Majorie Kay stars in references to "the woman". A nitrate dupe negative was found in the Cinemateque Francaise with French intertitles and color annotations which having had been being restored for its premiere in the United States, will be seen for the first time during May of 2015 at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The film, and the film version starring John Barrymore in which Roland Young appears as Dr. John H. Watson have not been seen in what appears to be more than three quarters of a century- the director of the 1922 film, Albert Parker assisted William K. Everson and Kevin Brownlow in restoring the Barrymore version during 2001. Two two reel film adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes short stories directed by George Treville are still presumed to be lost. "Silver Blaze", in which Treville played the consulting detective, and "The Speckled Band", both filmed during 1912, are films of which there are no surviving copies. Whatever the likelihood of finding a copy might be, the whereabouts of four other Sherlock Holmes films directed by and starring George Treville are still unknown, it being uncertain whether they survive. They include "The Reigate Squares", "The Mystery of Boscome Vale", "The Beryl Cornonet" and "The Stolen Papers", all from 1912. The remaining films, "The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Copper Beeches" can presently be viewed free of charge on my You Tube page. In regard to Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore, actor Jens Fredrick Sigfrid Dorph-Petersen brought an unauthorized four act version of the play Sherlock Holmes written by William Gillette to the Folkteatret for Christmas in 1901, sixteen years before Gillette himself had adapted the stage performance for the cinema. The play was performed in Stockholm, Sweden with actor Emil Bergendorff onstage as Sherlock Holmes during April of 1902. That same year, the play was staged in Kristiana, Norway with actor Ingolf Schanche as Gillette's Sherlock Holmes.      Maurice Elvey in 1921 directed actor Eille Norwood in the first 15 of 45 shorts in which he would star as Sherlock Holmes to begin with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Published in The Strand Magazine by  Hayden Church was his perception, "Almost simultaneously we have had a Sherlock Holmes in the person of Mr. Ellie Norwood, who, in "movie versions" of some of the most renown of the Adventures has revealed a genius of disguise worthy to rank with that possessed by Holmes himself."       Motion Picture News gave advanced notice of fifteen completed subjects, each two reels in length to begin release during January, 1922. "All the advantages in casts, appointments and elaborate direction types in the various stage enterprises of the Stoll concern were brought to the picturization of the Doyle tales, a feature said to be specially notable in this connection being the erection for Stoll in London a studio built after the most modern American manner, appointed with the latest doings in American lighting and other advances made in this country to bring screen adaptation to their finest interpretations of life itself. The exteriors from the Sherlock series are said to have been taken for the most part at the actual scenes employed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in recounting the Holmes adventures, these involving at times magnificent estates."       The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes would  include The Empty House, which was reviewed by Film Daily Magazine, "This time the criminal takes a pot shot at the famous detective and for a moment you thinOk all is lost. The suspense is great...While no women enter into the story it is well up to the standard of the series and holds the attention throghout." Elvey would also direct Norwood in the film The Man With The Twisted Lip, "Instead of opening in the usual manner of these stories in Holmes's office with a visitor describing the case in question, The Man With the Twisted Lip opens in an opium den with the well known detective is nowhere in evidence. However after a little while, you will begin to see him through his disguise. How the case is unravelled with a most unexpected kick at the end makes very good entertainment."The Beryl Coronet was reviewed with, "How Sherlock Holmes, the great detective, very well played by Ellie Norwood, unravels the mystery makes very good entertainment. The suspense is well held and though you are comparatively sure of the villian, the way in which the case is slowly drawn around him by the detective holds the interest closely.". Of The Priory School it was esteemed by Film Daily that "Ellie Norwood who plays the part of the famous detective has a most pleasing personality and gives an enjoyable performance.". To Film Daily, "The Resident Patient follows closely the Conan Doyle story of the same name." Also included in the series were A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red Headed League, The Yellow Face, The Copper Beeches, The Solitary Cyclist, "The Empty House" and The Dying Detective. In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines, the Motion Picture Copyright Collection of the Library of Conress has accessible copies of the intertitles of five two reel films included in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes made by Stoll Pictures Productions during 1922, each accompanied by a plot synopsis of their scenario, which prooves to be indispensible in that I only have copies of two of the five films to which there are entries, "The Dying Detective" and "The Devil's Foot". The intertitles to the presumabed to be lost film "A Case of Identity" open the film with an establishing expository title giving us the location of the scene: "Sherlock Holmes' in Baker St. London, W." All the other fourty five intertitles in the film are examples of dialogue, other than one title reffering to a time shift of when the scene takes place. Fifty six of fiffty eight intertiles to the adventure "The Yellow Face" are dialougue intertitles that lead up to the conclusion where Holmes confides, "You see, my dear Watson, my deductions are sometimes wrong, observe the owner of the chewing tobacco." The first intertitle of the film is expository, reading "Baker Street, London" and part two is introduced with the expository title "The visit to the lane of uncanny happennings." The photoplay of the film is similarly, ostensibly a theatrical play. "Baker Street, in dear foggy old London" is the intertitle that opens the lost film "A Scandal in Bohemia". Seperate from the two reel adventures, Maurice Elvey that year directed Norwood in the feature films The Sign of the Four and in the silent Sherlock Holmes filmThe Hound of the Baskervilles. Only a synopsis was submitted for copyright description, the intertitles of the film not having been sent by the film's producer. The synopsis of Maurice Elvey's film that was sent is enigmatic, and may have been just a synopsis that was intended as a press release that may have gone to both the copyright office and any of the existing fan magazines as well. It reads, "It was Sherlock Holmes' assignment to the cast of ferreting out the truth about this strange animal that lends great interest to the story." It seems odd that it was followed with, "It would be manifestly unfair to reveal the rest of the plot as the element of mystery which the story maintains throughout depends upon certain details which must therefore be concealed." But why concel them during copyright description? Of Maurice Elvey's direction of The Hound of the Baskervilles Film Daily wrote that there was an exingency of "telling the story rather than in production values; some good effects." It continued, "Ellie Norwood looks the part of Holmes but has little to do" and noted that he was "not given much prominence as Holmes...Betty Cambell is a poor choice of leading lady." Photoplay Magazine in 1922 reviewed the work of Ellie Norwood as "the real Sherlock Holmes", declaring, "There is no sticky love interest to be upheld-this is the cool detective of the test tubes and the many clues- who walks, step by step, toward a solution." Exhibitor's Trade Review described the work of Ellie Norwood, "Ellie Norwood, famous English actor, portrays the role of ShePrlock Holmes the detective in all of the adventures. His quiet repressed acting adds immensely to the power of these stories of mystery...The release of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes begins at a paticularly opportune time, since the author of these famous stories is now in the United States on a lecture tour, which will attract added interest to his work, by far the most popular of which have always been the Sherlock Holmes Stories." After his having directed Matheson Long in the Stoll Film Company's 1919 production of the film Mr. Wu, Maurice Elvey had been earlier teamed with Eille Norwood in 1920 for two silent films before their having entered into the Sherlock Holmes series, The Hundreth Chance, adapted from the novel, and The Tavern Knight, also adapted from the novel. George Ridgewell would direct Eille Norwood in 30 short films in which he would star as the consulting detective, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1922) and The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1923), among them being The Boscome Valley Mystery (1922), The Six Napoleons (1922), The Golden Pince-Nez (1922), The Reigate Squires (1922), The Musgrave Ritual (1922), Black Peter, The Norwood Builder, The Red Circle, The Stockbrokers Clerk, The Abbey Grange, The Engineer's Thumb (1923), The Dancing Men (1923), The Mystery of Thor Bridge (1923) , The Cardboard Box, Silver Blaze  (1923) , Lady Frances Carfax, The Gloria Scott, The Crooked Man, The Mazarin Stone and The Final Problem (1923). George Ridgewell during 1922 also directed the mystery The Crimson Circle with Clifton Boyne. In regard to Maurice Elvey, there still lies the possibility that modern detective of lost film could find any conceivable treasure; in 1926 the director filmed several films in a series entitled Haunted Houses and Castles of Great Britain. Like Holmes, counterpart Nyland Smith, portrayed Fred Paul, was extended into a second series of films, the British studio and director A. E. Coleby, after having completed The Mystery of Dr. Fu Man Chu (1923), which when completed ran to fifteen individual short stories, having added The Further Mysteries of Dr. Fu Man Chu to make the number of adventures twenty two. During 1924, the studio added a series of silent adventures entitled Thrilling Stories from the Strand Magazine. During 1923, Pathe had ran an advertsiement asking, "Is Spiritualism Fake? See Is Conan Doyle Right? Two Parts by Cullom Holmes Ferrell. A sensational picture with a sensational pull." A second ad for the film read, "Can the dead talk with the living? It is reported that Sir Author Conan Doyle has said that in case of necessity the spirit of the great and good man for whom the nation mourns could communicate with his successor. Scientists are interested in studying spiritualism. See Is Conan Doyle Right? Two Parts by Cullom Holmes Ferrell. A real big oppurtunity for exhibitors if there ever was one. A third advertisement read, "Did you ever see a spirit? Do you know what "ectoplasm" and the aura are? See Is Conan Doyle Right? Sensational, startling, a miraculous money maker.""A sensation in two reel featrues", Exhibitor's Trade Review introduced the film, "It is said that the picture is in no way offensive to those who believe in spirit control, mediumship, or manifestations of the return of the departed. In fact, a portion of the picture deals with this phase and proceeds to sound its warning in a seance climax of unmistakable power."

By all sccounts, Sherlock Holmes at ElsinoreSherlock Holmes pa Marienlyst, written by Danish author Carl Muusmann during 1906 and republished by the Baker Street Irregulars on thIe fiftieth anniversay of its first appearance, has not been translated into filmic form and on to the screen, it detailing the pariculars to a visit Holmes made to a seaside hotel. Nor has The Vanished Footman, published in the Danish magazine Maaneds-Magisinet in 1910 by Severin Christensen. Sherlock Holmes in a New Light, an anthology of short stories published in Sweden by Sture Stig and the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which he followed with two years later, also seem missing. What Carl Muusmann had in fact written in 1903 that was to find its way into Danish cinema was a novel that Carl Th Dreyer had adapted while a scriptwriter for Nordisk, Fange no 113, directed by Holger-Madsen in 1917 and he had contributed to a script Dreyer had been involved with in 1917 entitled Herregaards Mysteriet. Carl Muusmann had written the background material that went to three films directed by Hjalmer Davidson during 1915 and 1916, Manegens Born, Grevide Clara and Filmens Datter (The Films Datter, adapted from a novel published in 1914. Denmark had had its own early silent cinema with the Nordisk Film Kompagni, founded in 1906, and Swedish film historian Forsyth Hardy can be quoted as having written, "The Danes claim to have made the first dramatic film, in 1903." Most of its early narrative films having had been being directed by Viggo Larsen, they were for the most part "thrillers, tragedies and love stories" (Astrid Soderberg Widding) or "the social melodarama and dime novel that made a hit from 1910 onwards" (Bengt Forslund). Lisabeth Richter Larsen, writing on the internet about the films The Candle and the Moth, The Great Circus Catastrophe and Temptations of a Great City, looks specifically to actor Valdemar Psilander, and quite frankly, his daring, as bringing a wider international audience to Danish silent films, "The film is one of the first in a long row of 'erotic melodramas'- a genre that almost became the trademark of Danish film abroad- and Psilander was born for this type of film with his masculine charm and elegant poise..worth noting. Maybe not so much for Psilander's acting, but for the sensational, action packed story lines that he was in." Anne Bachmann, author of Locating Inter-Scandinavian Silent Film Culture: Connections, Contentions, Configurations, at first quotes a "caustic" Charles Magnusson, "In 1913, the head of Svenska Bio, Charles Magnusson disparingly used a Danish term to express his regret that Stockholm audiences statistically preferred "thrilling" dramas to nature films. Magnusson even contrasted it with overtones of the Romantic sublime associated with breathtaking nature, 'It is sad that I need to state that natural scenery as a rule is not appreciated at its full value. It is not sufficiently thrilling for our restless kind to stop in admiration before Swiss Alps and banal things like that.'" Whether or not Magnusson had adapted his choice of scripts to the Danish vogue, or had added scenes to Scandinavian literature to compensate for a lack of action-centered scripts, the quote displays "a covert critique of the sensationalism of Danish melodrama." Bachmann fittingly adds a quote from the Norwegian director Peter Lykke-Seest (Unge Hjerter, 1917; De Foraeldrevrelose, 1917), who had scripted six films for Nordisk during 1912-1916, "I think the public will soon have had enough of crime films, sensations and empty decorations. It will demand beauty. Beauty and atmosphere. And in that respect, nature will provide more than humans." Author Anna Strauss, while examining Danish silent film as an international cinema, cinema that was exported, writes that, "Danish film was associated with 'social drama' and 'erotic melodrama', so much so that she examines the alternative endings that were filmed in order to export narrative films (not films that are lost, but seperately filmed final acts to conclude their respective feature films). Isak Thorson also writes of the Russian endings to Nordisk films, "It is not easy to say exactly how widely these alternative endings were used. More than half the scrips of over 1100 Nordisk films made between 1911 and 1928 have survived in the NordPisk Special Collection, amid them we find various indications that some at least had alternative endings....On the basis of surviving films, letters and scripts, we know that at least 56 alternative endings were made from 1911 to 1928. Curiously enough, however, there are no indications that alternative endings were created for the five films in which we still have the actual endings. This demonstrates that Nordisk produced alternative endings for more films than the 56 which we know have double endings because they survive." The author notes in particular the American film Flesh and the Devil, with Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson as being a film that had an alternative international ending. More can be learned about the nature of early Danish narrative film as Isak Thosen titles his paper, "We had to Be Careful, the Self-Imposed Regulations, Alternations and Censorship Strategies of Nordisk Films Kompagni 1911-1928". It is taken from a quote from Ole Olsen, "We had to be careful and make films in such a way that the could be understood everywhere. As an example, I might mention that a film could not be sold in England if a man walked through a bedroom and no one else was in the room." Thorsen begins his premise about the Danish erotic melodrama and sensational film by writing, "What's striking about Olsen's recollection is that in his mind there is little distinction between making a film "understood everywhere" and getting it past the often obscure and culturally contingent censorship regulations- in this case the eyes of the British censors and their monitoring of sexual morality." Bo Florin gives an account of there being similar difficulty for Victor Sjostrom in Sweden, in that the censorship board, "continued to irritate producers by cutting out sequences or, worse still, banning entire films." What is in agreement with the Danish concept or necessarily leaving part of the erotic melodrama to the imagination is the later writing of director Peter Urban Gad. If only to characterize Gad as an artist or intellectual, Thomas J. Sanders writes, "Most emphatic was the prominent Danish author Urban Gad, who in early 1919 identified monumentalism, brutality and sentimentality as America's dominant film traits and advised German producers to focus on consistency and substance." Bela Belaz introduces the new subjects and the 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 placed in some specific natural enviornment which must affect the human being 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, sees it 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 of human beings which sometimes excersise a decisive influence on their fate." While providing an analysis of the grammar of film, including the internal framing (proscenium arch, foreground figures, receding planes) of the shot within the temporal-spatiality of continuity, as well as the "tableau plus insert", Bordwell refers to Filmen:Dens Midler Og Maal, written by Peter Urban Gad, "Gad recommends recording a scene in long shot then replacing part of it for a closer view...Gad explicitly declares that one should not 'cut a scene into small bits'." Marguerite Engberg quotes Gad's volume in that there is an entire chapter on the tinting and toning of film, "He tells us that in the early years of cinema it was common to use loud colors such as scarlet, bright yellow, grass-green and purple in a jumble regardless of style and action and he continues, 'It is still important to pay attention to the use of light colors.'"Since then, as many as 19 films have been listed as lost and as having been directed by Peter Urban Gad, including Die Flasche Asta Nielsen (1915) in which Nielsen plays both her double, Boulette, and herself; after Gad's publication director, as the use of tint and toning was in decline Benjamin Christensen decided to change the color plan, using only three colors: light brown, dark brown and blue. Film historian Mark B. Sandberg, using the advent of the multi-reel film between 1910-1912 as a point of departure, adds, "Although Danish films often framed the most aggressive of female sexuality with diegetic performance situations or punished such transgressions with token strategies of narrative closure, the powerful female desire in the course of the erotic melodrama seems to have trumped any onscreen tactics of containment, at least judging from contemporary reactions. Danish films were not famous for their narrative frames, in other words, and the main force of their gender poetics was anything but recuperative." Amanda Elaine Doxtater, in Pathos, Performance, Voliton, a dissertation written for Mark Sandberg, after citing authors that view erotic melodrama itself as a reaction to gendered spectatorship and the need for the emerging Scandinavian female audience to find the sensational, explains, "The Kunst Film, as these mulit-reel features were called, played a key role in Nordisk's phenomenal success in the teens, both financial and artistic. Although literally meaning "art film", kunstfilm was originally used to designate all multi-reel films...for in contrast to the one-reel films...the longer format allowed Nordisk to develop characters and experiment with complex narrative structure. This would lay the ground work for Nordisk's great combination of humanistic stories, psychologically interesting drama and sensational spectacles." Kirsten Drotner, in Asta Nielsen, A Modern Woman Before Her Time summarizes, "The downfall of the female protagonist is a standard element in early film melodrama", but adds that the "first modern sensational drama" belonged to Fotora and that by 1914, there were 24 film studios in Denmark. "The phenomenal economic success of Nordisk Films rested largely on its export of multi-reel films, intiated in 1910 by a rival company, Fotorama...Longer films set new technical standards and demanded novel forms of narration. while it was Nordisk Films that first reaped the profits of these innovations, it neither invented the feature-length film nor initiated its form of narration." And yet the newsreel-like "life-fact" filming of Ole Olsen and Charles Magnusson had crossed into fiction and fantasy as the one-reel film, in summary, had begun to legnthen after the cinema of attractions- while awaiting the pastoral narrative films of Robert Olsson in Sweden, simultaneous to the release of Danish erotic melodrama, mysteries like Pat Corner (Masterdetektiven) and Nat Pinkerton, The Anarchists Plot (Det Mislykkede attentat), both in which the director Viggo Larsen appeared on screen with Elith Pio, had appeared in Denmark, not as early as 1909 but earlier, the Danish photographer Axel Graatjaer Sorensen having begun filming for Larsen in 1906 and having had continued solely for Larsen untill 1911, when he then began photographing first for Danish silent film director August Blom and then for danish silent film director Urban Gad under the name Axel Graatjkjae. Viggo Larsen by 1910, was in Germany, where he directed and starred with Wanda Treumann in Arsene Lupin Against Sherlock Holmes (Arsene Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes), which appears to have been a series consisting of The Old Secretaire, The Blue Diamond, The Fake Rembrandts, Arsene Lupin Escapes, and The Finish of Arsene Lupin.  In 1911 he directed the more successful Sherlock Holmes contra Professor Moriarty, which having been filmed by Vitascope, was two reels in length. It has been reported from Norway that Viggo Larsen had resigned from Nordisk Film in 1909 due to a financial disagreement with Ole Olsen that had also include concerns about his artistic integrity.   During 1908 Great Northern, The Nordisk Film Company, advertised "Next Issue: Sherlock Holmes the Noted Detective's Capture of the King of Criminals. An Absorbing Subject, the interest of which is enhanced by novel stage effects. The fight in the moving train is the Perfection of Realism. Undoubtedly this season's biggest feature." Moving Picture World wrote about the film, "a detective story by Great Northern Film Co. to be issued next week is a masterly production in every respect. The plot in itself is interesting and well worked out. The staging is splendid and introduces some novel effects, not claptrap contraptions, but very realistic in all details. The action throughout is natural and spirited in some parts." In Denmark, Larsen had played Holmesin one reel films to Holger-Madsen's Raffles in both Sherlock Holmes Risks His Life (Sherlock Holmes in Danger of His Life/ Sherlock Holmes i livsfare,1908), a film running seventeen minutes on screen in which Otto Dethefsen appeared as Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes Two, both films photographed by Axel Sorensen, the latter having a running time of ten minutes. Great Northern during 1909 advertised, "Among Many Headliners to go on the market in the very near future is Sherlock Holmes: Series II and III. Series I issued recently is crowding every theater in which it is exhibited." Moving Picture World reviewed the film, "It is quite as much of a thriller as the first. The audience will watch with the most intense interest as they see Raffles escape and afterward see Holmes enticed into a lonely place and into a sewer. But he escapes and captures Raffles in the act of shooting at an image in Holmes' window which Raffles takes to be Holmes himself...The cleverness of the film and the success of Holmes compensates for any shortcomings in other directions." Moving Picture World, surrounding with its text a photograph from the film caption, "The Capture of Raffles by Sherlock Holmes", wrote, "Once free, Raffles' first thought is to revenge himself on Sherlock Holmes and for this he enlists the services of a pretty, but depraved girl to decoy the detective to an old house, where he is met by Raffles under the disguise of an old woman. Sherlock Holmes, taken by suprise is thrown through a masked opening in the wall into an old sewer. When Raffles and his associates discover that Sherlock Holmes has been rescued they plan a second attempt on his life. Raffles takes lodgings opposite the detective's home and watches for a good chance to fire his gun...Sherlock Holmes guessing the intention of the criminal, pulls down the window blinds and arranges a dummy at the window." Raffles shoots, only to "find himself face to face with Sherlock Holmes in the flesh....In Sherlock Holmes II, you will find the same quiet, cool and possessed detective."  Einar Zangenberg played the armchair detective in Larsen's Sherlock Holmes Three (The Secret Document/Det Hemmelige), a film with a running time of fourteen mintues, and in Hotel Thieves (Hotelmystierne/Sherlock Holmes' Last Exploit) in 1911. Hotel Theives was screened that year in the United States as a Great Northern Film, its advertisement reading, "Another of our celebrated detective productions. A brimful of of exciting and sensational incidents." It shared its advertising space with the "exceedingly well-staged drama"Ghost of the Vaults. which in Denmark, was seen as Spogelset i Garvkaeldern, directed by August Blom and starring Otto Langoni, Thilde Fonss and Ingeborg Larsen. There are presumed to be no surviving copies of the one reel film.      One of those productions from Great Northern that year was The Conspirators, " A sensational drama of the Sherlock Holmes type." Rather than a detective, Einar Zanberg was to play a journalist in the 1911 film The Disappearance of the Mona Lisa (Den forms under Mona Lisa), directed bu Eduardo Schnedler-Sorensen and starring Carl Alstrup and Zanny Petersen;Einar Zangerberg then stepped behind the camera as director in 1912 to bring the photography of Poul Eibye to the screen in the films Kvindhjerter and Efter Dodsspriset, both with Edith Psilander, The Last Hurdle (Den Sidste Hurdle), in which he appeared on screen with Edith Psilander, and The Marconi-Operater (The Marconi Telegrafisten). Viggo Larsen would also direct the Sherlock Holmes films The Singer's Diamond (Sangerindens daiamanter (1908), starring Holger Madsen with Aage Brandt as the singer:  int the case of Margaret Hayes, Sherlock Holmes returns the necklace after having climbed to the roof and then on to a balcony for a duel with revolvers near the chimney. Along with the synopsis of the film, Moving Picture World explained that it was often invited to visit Mr. Oes for advanced screenings of forthcoming releases and praised his for their photographic quality and variety of subject matter. It reviewed Theft of Diamonds, "This firm has made an attraction feature of films of this type in the past, its Sherlock Holmes series being graphic representations of this fact. In this film some very dramatic situations are reproduced and the acting is so sympathetic, and the actors develop so much capability in developing their parts that the audience becomes absorbed in the picture and regrets when it closes." The running time of the film was seventeen minutes. The Great Northern Film Company incidently would during 1910 run an advertisement for a film titled The Theft of the Diamonds crediting it  only as "a stirring detective story" without identifying it as a Sherlock Holmes mystery. To follow were the films The Gray Lady (Den Graa Dame, 1909) with a running time of seventeen minutes and Cab Number 519 (Drokes 519), in which Larsen would play the consulting detective with co-star August Blom.  Moving Picture World described Sherlock Holmes in the film, "Holmes, after all, is only a clever man of the world with highly developed reasoning powers. he is not a mere stage detective looking preternaturally wise and relying only upon time-worn expedients. No, he goes about his work in an ordinary matter of fact style, plus, of course, a little permissible exaggeration of acumen...The picture is full of excitement from start to finish...Melodrama such as Cab Number 519 does not call for subtlety of dramatic interpretation; it all has to be plain, decisive and incisive...Holmes works on very slender materials; he also works rationally."  The Baker Street Journal mentions that the Nordisk Film The Gray Lady is often held to be the first film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles despite that it "does not feature a hound at all, but rather a phantom lady used for much the same purpose." Great Northern advetised the film in 1909 as "From Sherlock Holmes' Memoirs" while it was reviewed mostly as a synopsis outline, "There is a legend in a noble English family that when the Gray Dame, a respectable family ghost, appears then the eldest son of the house dies...In this dilemma, Sherlock Holmes is sent for and he discovers the secret doors...Disguising himself as the son of the house he awaits the next appearance of the Gray Dame...The story is full of exciting movements and the plot is worked out with decision. There is not a lingering moment in the story, which moves rapidly, tensely and convincingly, as all detective stories should". In Cab Number 519, "The only clue in the case is the number of the cab but this is quite sufficient to the intelligent detective. In less than an hour the cab is found and Sherlock Holmes is on the box dressed as a driver." Great Northern included "Cab Number 519" in its regular magazines advertisements by claiming it to be "A meritorious subject in every respect. One of the finest detective stories. Holding the interest continuously fro start to finish." Before becoming one of the finest, and most prolific, of Danish silent film directors, August Blom also starred as an actor with Viggo Larsen in front of the camera of Axel Sorensen in the film A Father's Grief (Fadern (1909), directed by Larsen. Ole Olsen in 1910 produced Sherlock Holmes in the Claws of the Confidence Men (Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkler) for Nordisk Films Kompagni, in which Otto Langoni starred as Holmes with the actress Ellen Kornbech. Langoni appeared as Holmes in the 1911 films Den Sorte A Haand (Mordet id Bakerstreet with the actress Ingeborg Rasmussen and in The Bogus GovernessDen forklaedete Barnepige, both listed by the Danish Film Institute as being photographed by an unknown director-a pastiche titled Den Sorte Haand was filmed by William Augustinus. Great Northern advertised the film The Bogus Governess  in Motion Picture World magazine with "One of the best Sherlock Holmes detective films ever produced...Secure a booking of this attraction at once...Don't delay in booking this headliner." It shared advertising space with The Love of a Gypsy Girl, "feature drama" and consequently Love Never Dies. Translators had added the titles Night of Terror and Who is She to the films produced by Nordisk Film chronicling the adventures Sherlock Holmes.       During 1911 magazine readers in the United States were introduced to Alwin Nuess- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the film, directed by August Blom co-starring  Emilie Sannom and Einar Zangenberg, who plays Laertes. Produced in the grounds of the original Castle Cronenberg (Elsinore) Denmark,  the Great Northern film, "surpasses any previous Shakespearean productionin acting,  natural scenery and ensemble. Although a classical subject appeals forcibly to every class of audience." Author Astrid Soderberg Widding recently noted that August Blom had Concieved Hamlet as a three act stage play but that the company had abridged the work to a one-reel play. In the article Hamlet of the Film, published in Motion Picture World during 1911 the author declined evaluating the actor Alvin Nuess by comparing him specifically to the elder Southern, Keanu and Irving with, "The pleasure of comparing many great Hamlets will belong to the critics of the following generations. But the Great Northern Film Company is to be congratulated on having the photograph of so interesting a Hamlet as Herr Neuss...Herr Neuss' Hamlet of the film vividly accents the heart qualities of character, when he first comes out on the castle's platform- it is the actual Castle Cronsberg (Elsinore)..Again, when he advises Ophelia (Fraulien Sannom) to enter a nunnery, his guest urges convey so deep a tenderness that the scene is poignantly affecting. Fraulien Sannom makes a very beautiful Northland Ophelia...she wasn't as pathetic as she might have been." Of interest to Shakespearian actors, underneath an advertisement for the 1910 detective film The Diamond Swindler, Great Northern proclaimed the release of the film Kean or The Prince and the Actor, based on the life of "Edward Kean, the famous tragedian, who was not only a great actor, but an intense self human man." The advertisement praised the film for its actors having originated from the Royal Theater at Copenhagen, the film an adaptation of a play by Dumas. The film had been directed by Holger Rasmussen, and it's actor were in fact Einar Zangenberg and August Bloom paired on screen with Agnes Nyrop Christensen, Thilda Fonss and Otto Langoni. Underneath the advertisement for Hamlet was mystery: A Confidence Trick, "A detective story full of exciting situations" and The Stolen Legacy, "a feature detective film of thrilling character." Motion Picture News reviewed The Stolen Legacy without naming its leading actor, "This is an exceedingly powerful detective story. Sherlock Holmes is in make up a life-like presentiment of Conan Doyle's famous character." A synopsis of the film was provided, there having had been being a Countess who was captured in an automobile chase by Dr. Morse, who instructed his assistant, a hunchback to kill her at midnight should he not return. Morse then goes to Baker Street and makes a "forcible entry" to find Holmes and bring him to his awaiting hostage, the Countess, whom Holmes saves." Great Northern advertised The Stolen Legacy alongside The Cossack and the Duke; in its place were in turn advertisements for The Nun and The Voice of Conscience. Alwin Nuess would portray Sherlock Holmes in the films The One Million Dollar Bond (Millionobilgationen) in 1911 and in The Hound of the Baskervilles (Rudolf Meinert) in 1914. The Baker Street Journal attributes the photography of The Hound of The Baskervilles to Karl Fruend; it also adds a sequel that was sped off under the title The Isolated House (Das einsarne Haus),  Alwin Nuess continued playing Holmes in in the 1915 films William Voss and A Scream in the Night., reviewed in Motion Picture World during 1916. "A Sherlock Holmes drama, was written by Paul Rosenhayn and arranged by Alwin Nuess, who has won great popularity through his numerous interpretations of the world famous detective, chief among which as Holmes in Hound of the Baskerville...Contrary to a recent American criticism of the European depiction of the famous detective, this Sherlock Holmes neglected appearing at a soiree in his checkered cap with the inevitable pipe in mouth...That Mr. Nuess has made a careful study of American films is plainly evident in A Scream in the Night. Alwin Nuess had in fact preceded John Barrymore twice; Nuess also appearred in the with Emilie Sannon, portraying the title role in Den Skaebnesvagngre Opfindelse (August Blom, 1910), known to readers of British literature as The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Great Northern Film advertised the film in Moving Picture World, "This artistic and beautiful film admirably illustrates Stevenson's remarkable word renowned story. It is a production of genuine and thrilling interest and will hold every audience spellbound to the very finish. Splendidly enacted and reproduced in magnificient photographic sequence. Season's Biggest Headliner" In regard to Lost Films Found Magzines, both films by August Blom, "Hamlet" and "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde", are films of which there are no surviving copies and our only, or primary rather, source of access to their content lies in publications from the time period. Without mentioning the director August Blom in its advertisement, it very often billing films by title and synopsis only, it was next to advertise another film directed by August Blom, Necklace of the Dead (Dodes Halsband), "Enacted by Actors of the Royal Theater Copenhagen, a magnificient production of intense thrilling interest." The cast of the film includes Otto Langoni, Rasmussen Otteson and Ingeborg Middlebo Larsen. Moving Picture World carried an advertisement for the Great Northern Film Necklace of the Dead during 1910 claiming it was the "Biggest and Strongest Headliner of the Year, squeezing it into a half page with the films The Christmas Letter and the comedy Dickey's Courtship. Not only was the film "The Necklace of the Dead" included among the films of August Blom that were directed during 1910 and are now presumed to be lost, but there are also no surviving copies of the one reel films "The Storm of Life" ("Livets Storm") and "A Traitor to his Country" ("Forraedren"). During 1910 Great Northern Films also advertised the film The Diamond Swindler, "A detective story of the highest type. Adapted from the Adventures of Harry Taxon, the cleverest pupil of the celebrated Sherlock Holmes. A snappy production which will prove itself popular."      Valdemar Psilander appearred as the fictional detective Otto Berg during 1913 in At the Eleventh Hour (Hven var Forbryderen) with Otto Langoni and Alma Hinding, the film being directed by August Blom. During 1913, Robert Dinesen directed both Otto Langoni and August Blom, together with Agnes Blom, in the mystery horror film, The Man With the Cloak (Manden med Kappen), which uses blue tint to create mood and stmosphere for a double exposure of a ghost-like character, one predating, but reminiscient of, Victor Sjostrom And his use of the device in The Phantom Carriage- the double exposure continues from shot to shot; while the spatio-temporality of the continuity trails behind the two characters in a follow-shot, the camera cuts from interior to exterior to show the progress of both the protagonist and the double-exposed spectre, who then suddenly disappears during the shot as though there had been a stop-motion. In turn, August Blom during that year of 1913 returned behind the camera to direct both Robert Dinesen and Otto Langoni with actress Emma Thomsen in the film The Stolen Treaty (Det Tredie Magt), adapted from a script written by Peter Lykke Seest. Sherlock Holmes in the Great Murder Mystery, a film produced by Crescent, was reviewed during 1908 as having a plot similar to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Holmes returning to his study to play violin before proving his client innocent, but overall it seems like the film Miss Sherlock Holmes commanded just as much if not more publicity.There is in fact a film made in Hungary during 1908 and starring Bauman Karoly that is purportedly a synchronized sound film listed as Sherlock Hochmes, which is astonishingly early when compared to the Swedish Biophon synchronized sound film of that year He Who Catches a Crook (Hans som Klara Boven), a film which under the title He Who Takes Care of a Villian, produced by Franz G Wiberg in Kristianstad Sweden, is thought by film historians to be a film that was never released theatrically. More sensational may seem the Hungarian silent filming of Dracula, Dracula's Death (Drakula halala), which is believed to be a lost film of which there are no existant copies. More of a comedy than pastiche, Den firbende Sherlock Holmes udirected by Lau Lauritzen for Nordisk in 1918 and starring Rasmus Christiansen, from its posters would seem to lack mystery, despite its being compared to the films made in the United States by Benjamin Christensen. The one reel film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Held for Ransom directed in the United States by Stuart Blackton in 1905 and drawn from The Sign of Four, is thought to be a lost film. Harry Benham would later play Sherlock Holmes in in the two reeler Sherlock Holmes Solves the Sign of the Four, written and directed in the United States by Lloyd Lonergan. Thanhouser, during 1913 tucked away its advertisement for The Sign of the Four on the same page as its advertisement for the film The Ghost in Uniform as part of their Three-A-Week full page that seems to have relented after its mere brief announcement while Eclair had ran a full page advertisement with oval portraits of Conan Doyle, Longfellow, Poe and Washington Irving claiming that it had acquired the exclusive rights to film the Holmes stories, several of them having been filmed previously in England. The film listed by the Library of Congress as being from 1912 and titled The Stolen Papers, while being listed as being from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur C. Doyle and having no director was in all probability directed by George Treville, with he himself starring in the role of Holmes. During 1913, Motion Picture World magazine carried an advertisement that read, "There was never but One Sherlock Holmes and that one Originated in the mastermind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who personally supervised the only authorized Sherlock Holmes series of motion pictures on the market. This wonderful series consists of eight complete stories, each featuring the inimitable Sherlock Holmes."The Dead Man's Child was unmistakably a "sensational three reel detective drama", the full page advertisement ran by Great Northern in Moving Picture World Magazine showing stills of the detective Newton "on the trail" and his "daring leap from the bridge", as well as three players in the drama and "Edith in the family vault". It was later that year advertised as "a detective drama that will start them all talking." A second advertisement for the film claimed "The Most Thrilling Detective Drama Ever Staged, a wonderfully exciting film." During 1913 while in the United States a diamond necklace had been the center of The Great Taxicab Mystery, among Nordisk Films that were being shown by Great Northern were The Man in the White Cloak, a "spectral and supernatural interest blend with Heart Throbs and thoroughly human thrills" and A Victim of Intrigue. Motography magazine in 1914 reviewed another Nordisk mystery, "a three-reel detective drama entitled The Charlotte Street Mystery. It is said to contain some novel and startling effects. The story deals with the interesting adventures of an exceptionally clever woman who seeks to elude the law and succeeds in baffling a detective for some time, but is finally captured after several thrilling escapes. The role of the woman is in the hands of Elsie Frolich, the capable Greta Northern leading woman, who gives a very vivid characterization. "In the United States during 1914 The Mystery of the Fatal Pearl with a plot premise reminiscent of The Moonstone was reviewed, of interest to the film detective being the mysteries of the photoplay, the secrets kept by the scenario. "It has been a generally accepted theory that the screen story must be told in chronological order-that events must be shown in a sequence- as opposed to the freedom of relation obtained in literature...there is a departure from the usual custom. The story is told in two sections, the first consisting of three parts, the second of two. The climax is reached at the end of the third part. We are deeply in doubt as to the situation of affairs-it is one that would give occasion for the consumption of many pipefuls of real strong tobbacco on the part of a most competent Sherlock Holmes." One could begin looking for The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in the United States with the 1911 film King, the Detective, "introducing the scientific methods of the modern detective and weaving in a love story to maintain the love interest". Denmark and Great Northern during 1910 offered The Diamond Swindler, "This great feature is another of our famous detective stories. It is adapted from the adventures of Henry Taxon, a clever pupil of the celebrated Sherlock Holmes." Great Northern that year also offered the film The Somnambulist, "a well told and thrilling story that will strongly interest any audience." A synopsis was provided when reviewed, the film centering around a museum director that carried off valuable objects of art, bringing them back to his room. "The acting of the principal character is good and gives a good determination of what a person will do under such circumstances." The film was to be of interest to those audiences that  had never seen examples of sleepwalking. Great Northern also that year distributed an adventure film titled The Hidden Treasure, the films The Jump to Death, The Duel, and The Captain's Wife, bringing audiences up to the midyear of summer. The film that is most haunting is the The Trunk Mystery- it seems unlisted as a Danish film and as a lost film, as though it disappeared, but there is also no mention of who the director or actor pictured in its advertisement was. There is only a photo of an actor smoking a pipe and wearing a plaid, or checkered, Scolley cap and underneath its the caption "The Trunk Mystery Detective". The advertisement from Great Northern during 1911 reviews the film as "A more thrilling, sensational and intensely interesting detective feature has never been released." while another line reads, "A sensational and intesensely interesting story of impersonation to secure an inheritance. The fraud is brought to light by a clever detective who will win the admiration of every spectator- Get busy at once in getting booking for this big feature." The film was accompanied by the advertisement for "a well acted dramatic production" entitled The Homeless Boy. Moving Picture World described the film as a detective story where a love story ensues, "The hiding of the man in the trunk is not novel. It is the keeping him alive after he has been hidden there that introduces a new element in a common enough story." Great Northern at the time had named itself "the 'king pin' of quality films". In Denmark, Valdemar Psilander portrayed the detective Otto Berg during 1913 in the film At the Eleventh Hour (Hvem Var Forbryderen, directed by August Blom. Fictional detective Donald Brice, courtesy of Selig Polyscope in the United States, appeared in the two reel The Cipher Message during 1913. Motography magazine, whom provided an at length synopsis, wrote, "It must not be assumed that the detective tale is one of lurid or sensational type for such is far fromn being the case. The detective hero of the drama is a deliberate, methodical sort of chap, who goes steadily about solving the mystery without any bloodshed or pistol practice." In the film Brice outspeeds a locomotive in his automobile in an attempt to recover a stolen necklace. In the United States, Edison during 1913 ran a full page adverstisement for The Mystery of West Sedgwick with the announcement that there now would be "a two reel Edison feature released every Friday." During 1914, Edison featured Octavius the Amateur Detective, in The Adventure of the Actress' Jewels. It was not only a year in which Betty Harte in the United States was appearing in The Mystery of the Poison Pool, or Who Stole the Kimberley Diamond, but also during which appeared the heavily advertised The Million Dollar Mystery, filmed by Thanhauser Film Corporation as a serial of 42 reels in length and starring Florence la Badie and Marguerite Snow as Countess Olga.Cleek of Scotland Yard, filmed by Edison is certainly a lost film, of which there are no existant copies, but the film was part of a series entitled Chronicles of Cleek, therefore not all the films are necessarily lost, one installment having been titled The Mystery of the Octagonal Room. The Eclipse-Urban Film Company in the United States that year had introduced the fictional detective Barnet Parker in The Mystery of Green Park from a series of "dramas of unusual interest and mystery after the famous novel by Arnold Galopin" while Apex Film that year advertised the film The Dare-Devil Detective along with the mysteries The Devil's Eye, The Secret Seven and The Clue of the Scarab. Feature Photoplay that year took out a full page ad for the film The Mysterious Mr. Wu Chung Foo. And yet as popular as the serial, cliffhanger if you will, had become, the multi-reel film was beginning to come into its own in regard to literary adaptation; during the following year Thomas A Edison produced Vanity Fair, directed by Eugene Norland with a running time of 72 minutes, Shirley Mason having starred as Becky Sharp. Still, Kalem would have an interesting entry during 1915, The False Clue, "A certain star of the legitimate stage, famous for his work in detective dramas, registered at the Hotel, San Fransisco. That night the actor reported the theft of his wife's rings and declared his determination to capture the thief by psychological deduction. It never occurred to this man that someday his adventures would be made the basis of a Photoplay! This is just what happened and the story as told to Kalem by hotel officials." One of the most intriguing Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Mystery of Orcival (1916, MacDonald), a three reel film from Biograph, was advertised as "Perhaps the most celebrated of all detective mysteries- Emile Gaboriau's masterpiece." Motion Picture World reviewed the photoplay, "When the Biograph scenario editor came to adapting Emile Gaboriau's novel he encountered an over abundance of plot material for a three part picture and had the difficult task of making the story reasonably complete and at the same time clear. Altogether he succeeded very well by using the topsy turvy method of construction popular with writers of mystery tales...Gretchen Hartman plays a countess who poisons her husband and soon tastes the bitterness of disillusionment in her love for the man who inspired the crime."

During 1914, The Great Northern Special Feature Film Company advertised, "The Must Baffling Mystery Ever Filmed", By Whose Hand? which promised "Interest and Thrills from Beginning to End". The Great Northern Film Company released "Preferred Feature Attractions". Nordisk Film decidedly advertised the film The Stolen Treaty in 1913, and Great Northern that year distributed the silent filmThe Stolen Secret (three reels); Great Northern in fact ran more than a dozen full page advertisements accompanied by numerous one or two inch "coming attraction" notices for Nordisk films during 1913 in the magazine Motion Picture World. The Stolent Treaty was advertised as "A Photo Drama that Deals with Dramatic Intrigue and Interational Plotting. In three parts, with 90 Powerful and Thrilling Scenes." Great Northern also included a full page for Theresa the Adventuress, "a startling feature photodrama in three parts having in it a strong blending of detective cleverness and criminal cunning; a thrilling and gripping dramatic subject with a tremendous final scene; a sensational feature throughout; how fate overtakes the transgression." That year it also announced the film The White Ghost (Den Hivide Dame, 1913) directed by Holger-Madsen and starring Rita Sacchetto. The cameraman to the film had been Maurius Clausen, who with Holger Madsen was particularly noted for continuing the lighting effects that were singular to early Danish Silent Film. Although Ingvald Oes, the director of Great Northern was quoted as having said that three fourths of the films shown in Scandinavia were filmed in the United States, despite whether his film had been widely seen in the United States as a Great Northern Film Company silent film, Forest Holger Madsen not only directed The White Ghost that year, but also directed the films The Mechanical Saw and During the Plauge (Men's Pesten raster) or Nordisk Film.  Actress Rita Sacchetto also that year appeared in the film The Gambler's Wife (Fran Fyrste till Knejpevart) under the direction of Holger-Madsen. It was a year that Danish audiences were present while Vilhelm Gluckstadt brought the film The Black Music Hall (Ven Sorte Variete), starring Gudrun Houlberg to the screen.  Author Anne Bachman explains the contriving of a metafilm while describing the film The Woman Who Tempted Me (Holger Madsen, 1916) a mystery, "set during a film and features a murder which the film diva realizes is inspired by the detail of the plot of a film-in-the-film. The film-in-the-film provokes the murder's confession when screened in the courtroom in is thus the title's feels ends (redeeming) film for the innocent suspect. in this way the film's diva's inside knowledge of film production solves the mystery. " The photoplay to the film was scripted by Marius Clausen. Ebba Thomsen stars as the silent film actress. Anne Bachman contrasts the use of location shooting in Sweden to the Danish technique, method, perhaps, of filming, "The Danish film industry's predominant reliance on artificial sets was in particular Nordisk's recipe for success: Nordisk used their studio in Valby for both in and outdoor shots and had an extensive array of backgrounds ('master') for outdoors. "      As Nordisk Films was waiting for its brief, although high-gear history to slide over the the precipice of the Great War, Thanhouser during 1917 went directly to the novel by Wilkie Collins, filming The Woman in White (Ernest C. Warde) with Florence LaBadie playing the dual role of Laura Fairlie and Ann Catherine in a film particularly noted for its lighting effects. Thanhouser, as a film studio would shortly thereafter fold its production and the film star, LaBadie would unexpectedly die in an automobile accident. Author Ron Mottram recently published the article The Great Northern Film Company: Nordisk Film in the American Motion Picture Market, out lining the transactions between Ole Olsen and Oes, president of Great Northern, that transpired between 1908-1917. Olsen had originally agreed to send more than one hundred silent films to the United States. During 1913, Great Northern advertising in the United States promised, "One Feature Every Week Hereafter, All of Incomparable Superiority." During a week in 1913 when Motion Picture World had also visited the studios of Famous Players, Motion Picture World chronicled Ivan C Ocs and The Great Northern Film Company having moved into a new office in the United States, "The feat was accomplished on Saturday last and was marked by no more serious incident than the breaking of a couple inkwell covers....we may expect to have flashlight photo of the new offices and a description of the interior of the new home of the 'Polar Bear' brand moving pictures." The Great Northern Special Feature Film Co. That week placed an advertisement that week in the magazine for the coming film "The Grain Speculator", one without photographs or the names of its cast. 143 fiction films were filmed by Nordisk Film during 1914 according to the present company, one that as its continuous existence reached into the 21st century had celebrated 100 years of filmmaking in its present location, Valby, Denmark. Olsen took the position of managing director of Nordisk in 1911, a I'm year during which Denmark had become the first country to make multi-reel films, bringing the running-time up to three quarters of an hour. It was for Nordisk Films Kompani that year that August Blom had directed Asta Neilsen in the film The Ballet Dancer (Balletdanserinden)., she would return to Denmark to make the film Toward the Light (Mod Lyset) for Nordisk Film in 1919. Olsen had in fact entertained the view that the demand for film exceeded its production rate, which led him to export. Olsen required that alternative endings be fimed so that fims could be sent to foreign audiences, one of these being a different ending of August Blom's film Atlantis (1913) and another being Holger-Madsen's film Evangeliemanders Liv, the ending of both films having been changed suit Russian audiences. Ron Mottram writes that specifically, there were two films, His Most Difficult Part (Hans Vanskeligeste Rolle, 1912) and Paradise Lost (Bristet Lykke, 1913), for which two endings were filmed and sent to Oes, who had written that censorship had plight edx the business of distributing Great Northern Films in the United States, and Olsen designated that it would be for him to decide which version would be screened, the dramatic effect of one ending weighed against a happier one. Ole Olsen had appeared as an actor in the film Isbjornejagt, directed in 1907 by Viggo Larsen- Professor Ib Bondebjerg, University of Denmark, recently noted that as many as five hundred and sixty films were produced by Nordisk Film between 1907-1910. While briefly summarizing the history of Danish Silent Film, Professor Bondebjerg has attributed Gad's film The Abyss with not only being a steeping stone for Asta Nielsen's career, but as having "formed the basis of the golden age of Danish Silent Film", although it is not infrequent that Bondebjerg interestingly places Dreyer's Danish silent film, beginning with The President, belonging separate from the films of Nordisk and establishing a cinema of passion, "films that follow both some of the standards of classical Filmaking and at the same time in their expressive style and use of miss en scene, space, lighting and facial expressions refine and transcend the norms of classical cinema and style." Undoubtedly, classical narrative has gone from its brief period of newsreel like short films photographed by Peter Elfelt and Ole Olsen's first film, which lasted two minutes on the screen to more sensational films lasting between 10-15 minutes, much like they had in other international cinemas: Ole Olsen in 1911 would adapt the multi-reel film to a running length of 45 minutes only after purportedly having been given the idea from Fotorama and a year earlier having copied the script treatment of one of their first multi-reel films. The film The Little Hornblowing (Den Lille horn laser) produced in Arhaus by Fotorama, directed by Eduard Schnedler-Sorensen during 1909, had had a running length on screen of approximately up to 20 minutes. David Bordwell sees the second decade of the twentieth century as one where Danish filmmakers produced both classic masterpieces and excitement packed melodrama, but in any event, film had emerged from mere photodocumentary and travel films to photoplays within a very brief interval- while pointing to Ron Mottram's observation that Danish director's used mirrors to create spatial depth,Bordwell adds that author Kristin Thompsen views the use of mirror to convey the spatial depth of the scene as inextricable from narrative technique. Bordwell when writing on The Cinematic Text and poetics  likens stylistic and narrative devices when contrasting them to systems, such as spatial continuity or narrative causality. Author Yuri Tsivan is specific when describing the director August Blom's 1911 film Ved Farenglets Port and a mirror that intercepts the gendered gaze of a female who the spectator can view, but not the male character in the interplay of her entrance, or theatrical blocking and a doorway used in the scene. While advancing that Afgrunden was the most influential early Danish silent film by virtue of its subject matter and it's treatment of sexuality onscreen, author Ron Mottram tersely describes its link the chronology of the period,"After the making of Afgrunden, Kosmorama soon went out of business and it's managing director, Hjalmar Davidsen, was soon hired by Olsen." It has been written that Asta Nielsen was one of the first actresses to have commodified sexuality, endorsements for products soon appearing under  her name, the spectator entering into a relation of purchasing the sexually desired on screen subject and that subject positioned in order to delineate the view of the male viewer to the look of the female glance. In his volume Scandinavian Film, Forsythe Hardy writes about the film The Abyss, "It was an immediate success and audiences everywhere responded to the sensitive, expressive style of acting which contrasted sharply with the grimacing antics of her contemporaries. Even as a girl, we are told, her face was already a tragic mask." Astrid Soderberg Widding has remarked upon the film, "It contained some innovative devices, for example the lack of intertitles, but achieved its reputation mainly as an erotic film with a touch of dark fatalism." Danish screenwriter Harriet Bloch years later explained that it had been the film "The Abyss" that had compelled her to write for the movies. Bloch, who wrote for Nordisk Films between 1911-1920 was purportedly Ole Olsen's favorite screenwriter, although, admittedly, they had never met.      The actress Asta Nielsen also during 1911 appeared with Valdemar Psilander in The Black Dream (Dem Sorte Drom), thought to be remarkable for the the use of silhouette, by  Asta Neilsen's husband, Peter Urban Gad, the film's director. Even more startling to audiences that year was the Norwegian silent The Demon (Daemonen), directed by Jens Christian Gunderson, a film that quickly followed the subject matter of Nielsen's film The Abyss by including erotic dances between Per Krough and actress Carla Rasmussen. Photographed by Alfred Lind and starring Ellen Tenger, the film was almost responsible for an early rating system that would allow only adults into theaters. In Denmark, Urban Gad also directed actresses Emilie Sannom and Ellen Kornbeck, among the film's Gad directed for Nordisk Films in 1911 having been "When Passion Blinds Honest" ("Dyrekobt Glimmer") in which both actresses appeared with Johannesburg Poulsen, Otto Langoni and Elna From, "An Aviator's Generosity" ("Den Store Flyver", 3 reels) which, photographed by Axel Graatkjaer, starred Christel Holck with Einar Zangenberg, and "Gennom Kamp Fil Sejv" written by Harriet Bloch and starring Edith Bremann Psilander with Augusta Blad. During 1912, an entire page of Moving Picture World magazine was devoted to the review of Gypsy Blood, "The First of a Series of Feature Films in which Miss Asta Nielsen appears. It in detail provides a synopsis to the film and on the opposite page there was a portrait of the actress with the caption "Miss Asta Nielsen Supreme Dramatic Artists 'Asta Nielsen Features'". The magazine briefly noted that they had reviewed her earlier- later that year there were advertisements for The Traitoress, "a Stupendous Military Drama". Great Northern during her absence from Denmark advertised the film Those Eyes, "a strong dramatic story enacted with an intensity which gives to every scene a semblence of reality. One of the most powerful stories which could be chosen for a moving picture drama." it adding that it was a Novel and Thrilling Drama full of Spirited Action". In Denmark, the film had been seen as Inbruddet Hos Skuespillerinden, directed by Eduard-Scnedler-Sorensen and starring Edith Psilander." The Great Northern Film Company that year also advertised Painter and Peasant, "a clever love story" and How to Make a Reputation, "a clever subject in which an artist 'dies' in order to live'. Great Northern also advertised the films Revenge is Blind, "a Splendid Dramtic Production and A Dream of Death, "a story certain to attract considerable attention." In the United States Asta Nielsen Features in 1912, after releasing Gypsy Blood and the Traitoress, announced in Motion Picture Magazine "Our next release featuring the 'German Bernhardt', The Course of True Love.

Danish Silent Film

Silent FilmSilent Film

The Lesser of Evil starred actresses Blanche Sweet and Mae Marsh and was directed for Biograph by D.W. Griffith. The film was photographed by G.W Bitzer. Silent Film

Silent FilmSilent FilmSilent FilmSilent Film

Mary Picford's director Marshall Neilan was quoted by Peter Milne during 1922 in the volume Motion Picture Directing. "Above all, I consider the director's appreciation of the human side of life his greatest assest. Unless a director is human down to the bery earth and appreciative of the tings in life that are common to the ordinary mortal, he cannot hope to any degree of success."Silent FilmMary Pickford

Greta Garbo as continuance of Vamp

Author Roger Manvell, in his volume The Film and the Public notes that after World War I, the genres that were already in place began to take a new turn with the new decade and that the star system that had emerged with silent film began to look for different interests to coincide with the new modernity. He writes, "the vamp, the siren, and even the shimmering courtesan played by Marlene Deitrich seemed dated, if not a little absurd. No great star has risen to take the place of Garbo and inherit her indisputable and hypnotic hold upon her world audiences." Manvell reinforces his impression, "The twenties became a wild period in filmmaking and themes of marital infidelity and liscence of all kinds were again carried to the heights of a new absurdity with titles like 'Temptation', 'Passion Flame', 'Flaming Youth' and 'La,La,Lucille'. The glamor star was in real demand and names like Pola Negri, Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo began to be well known."
While waiting for the next film to be made by Greta Garbo, Photoplay magazine during 1926 printed, "Yet an automobile almost kept Greta from Metro. Mayer had seen Miss Garbo's work in a foreign made film, The Atonement of Gosta Berling. THe picture is incidentally directed by Mauritz Stiller who is directing the second Garbo opus and it it considered an artistic gem, but aositive flop as so far as American audiences are concerned. For that reason it probably will never be released here." In actuality films from Svenska Bio were generally released years after they had been made in Sweden; the article continued to elaborate that Greta Garbo knew that movie stars were provided with limousines whereas Mayer would not include one in her contract! insisting that they were bought by the stars themselves. Having related the disappointment on the part of Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller when Stiller had not be asked to direct Greta Garbo in The Torrent, one that would have returned Garbo to Sweden had it not been for Stiller's encouragement, biographer John Bainbridge relates Stiller's optimism when assigned her second film, The Temptress. In Sweden it had been the reverse where Garbo had to audition for Stiller, a more than well known director who had already directed Lars Hanson in Erotikon, a film Greta Garbo had seen in theaters. "Now that he had been given a chance to direct his protegee his dark mood had disappeared. He was full of excitement and enthusiasm. 'At last,' he topld Lars Hanson, 'They'll see what Greta can do.'" Stiller wanted to open the film with a discovery shot, or revelatory shot, that dollyed back, pulled back, to show the wider context of the scene while establishing it location. "Telling Hanson of his plans, Stiller confidently predicted, 'We'll show them a thing or two.'" Upon arriving on the set, in a studio system that in regard to constructing the photoplay, had evolved from Griffith and Ince, Stiller was a prefigurement of the auteur, expressing his bewilderment that there would be an assistant director, an assistant producer, a script girl and other members of the film crew present on the set and attempting to dismiss them, "All I need is a camera and actors." The author continues, "'They brought me here to direct because they liked my methods.' he told Hanson. 'Instead they try to teach me to direct.'" Lars Hanson explained further "Stiller tied to work in Hollywood the same way he worked in Sweden...He had his own particular way of making a picture. He shot scenes as he wished, not necessarily in sequence and not necessarily the ones he intended to use. He liked to shoot everything, and then make the film he wanted to by cutting. He could never stick to a schedule." Both John Bainbridge and Richard Corliss relay that there were stories of Stiller confronting a language barrier while instructing cameraman and that he would begin with "Stop" when he wanted to say "places, roll them, or action" and that he had interchanged "Go" with "Cut or Print" when the scene was to conclude, although the present author is uncertain as to whether it was included specificlly in the published reminiscenes of actors that often made their way into fan magazines or what their source may have been. Before the release of the film, Motion Picture Magazine attested to the experience and craftsmanship of Maurtiz Stiller as a film director by publishing a photograph from the set of the film which was captioned, "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, it would be notable, excepting that Stiller had previously filmed in Sweden Nd built the traditions of filmmaking there as one of its pioneers under Charles Magnusson. The Hollywood system that had evolved from Griffith and Ince had placed Stiller and Clarence Brown as directors that created camerawork and technique. 
Within a fortnight, two events occurred which seemed not to have shaken the on-screen Greta Garbo personna, or the need to create an off-screen Garbo character, as though they went unnoticed as more mystery around the recluse seemed to build. Biographer John Bainbridge writes of her sister Alva's passing away during the early filming of The Temptress, "As soon as Garbo informed Stiller of the tragic news, he dismissed the cast and took her home." Apparently Garbo was present when Stiller was dismissed and replaced, after ten days of shooting, as the film's director. She had been waiting outside the building during the conference, pacing the sidewalk. "Stiller wappp s laid low with despondency and he was also ailing physically. As he sat on his terrace brooding, Garbo went about propping him up with pillows," Bainbridge records, "and doing what she could to cheer him up." According to Bainbridge, "when Stiller saw Thalberg after the premiere he delivered an invective about Garbo, as well as an excellant script, having been ruined by him." Motion Picture Magazine chronicled the event as nearly expected, "Stiller has sufferred from the fate that overcomes most foreign directors shen they come to Hollywood. He was unable to grasp an understanding of the business and technical end of making a motion picture in an American studio." In one of the many posthumous accounts of the career of Mauritz Stiller that appeared linking him to Greta Garbo, Ruth Biery intimated during 1932 that Stiller was removed from The Temptress because of an objection made by Antonio Moreno, the director apparently having insisted that the actor wear a pompadour to compensate fro Garbo's having had been being the taller of the two. Greta Garbo described to Photoplay Magazine her filming in The Temptress under the direction of Fred Niblo, "I could not undeIrstand the English directions. Week in, week out from seven untill six. Six months on the story. More than twenty costumes to try on over and over. That is why I donot care about clothes. There are so many clothes in every picture, I can not think of them when I am away from a picture. I never missed a day. I was never late for work." Photoplay inserted a paragraph on Greta Garbo written in bold type into one of its backpages during 1927, "Fred Niblo, who had directed the alabaster and ivory Garbo was making the usual introductory speeches. Remarking on the beauty of Greta's performance, he further said that it was most difficult to direct her for she spoke not one word of English. 'Do you?' queried Niblo turning to her where the Swedish lorelei sat. 'No', answered Greta slowly, perfectly, 'I do not speak one word of English.'" Irregardless of Greta Garbo having been reluctant to work with Monta Bell and preferring to remain under the wing of Mauritz Stiller, a look independent of that to the 1927 Motion Picture New Booking Guide and Studio Directory draws a contrast between the directors Monta Bell and Fred Niblo, the former depicted in biographical sketches as merely a novice, the latter as experienced as to where he would soon become head of the studio, Monta Bell, Metro Goldwyn Mayer director, is comparatively a newcomer to the motion picture industry." Where Bell is noted as having began with Chaplin, Niblo is noted as having begun with Thomss Ince and for his directing his wife, Enid Bennett, "Motion Picture Stars are not the only ones to claim interesting claim to backgrounds."
Film Daily during 1926 included a column of what it considered to be pertinent Newspaper Opninions, or newspaper clippings, on recently released films; these touted the "seductive charm of languid eyed Elena, the "gorgeous beauty" Greta Garbo, "who besides wearing stunning clothes can also act" and a Garbo that "vitalizes the name part of this picture." Motion Picture News during 1926 also carried a similar section entitled Newspaper Opinions on New Pictures, in which it quoted the exact same reviews, where, "Greta Garbo is a delight for the eye", "Greta Garbo makes every move a picture" and although they praised the newcomer Garbo in General a mild outlook was taken of her vamping, or being illicit as a mysterious foreign road to perdition, in the press quotes of that year. The Exceptional Photoplays department of National Board of Review Magazine credited William Daniels and Gaetano Gardino 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 as an artist,pliable and lively. 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." Motion Picture Magazine featured a still from on the set of the film captioned, "Fred Niblo insists on realism...and this scene of Tony Moreno and Greta Garbo in The Temptress promises to provide a thrill when it reaches the scene. Note the angle of the camera."
Bainbridge reviewed the film by writing, "Despite its florid subtitles and spurious plot, The Temptress was another distinct triumph for Garbo." Educational Screen Magazine, during a month in which it had reviewed the film Bardleys the Magnificient also looked at the film, "Most of this can be dismissed as perfectly ordinary.It is merely a tale of a siren who couldn't help attracting men, with an appended list of the fatalities...Miss Garbo as. Woman of the streets demonstrates a remarkable dramatic ability."              Photoplay reviewed the performance of Greta Garbo in the film briefly, "The Ibanez story is forgiven and forgotten when Greta Garbo is in the cast. Greta is a show in herself." Photoplay reiterated its sentiment, "While this 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 Garbo. Nothing else matters."
There is a report that M.G.M purchased the talking rights to both The Torrent and The Temptress in 1932. Bent Forslund adds,"Her first two films, The Torrent and The Temptress, both in 1926, were insignificant, but showed that she had appeal. The audience liked her." 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 Belasvo Ibanez, their having been titled Among the Orange Trees and The Earth Belongs to Everyone, respectively. When interviewed by Motion Picture Magazine, novelist Vincente Belasco Ibanez was quoted as having said, "The future of the camera is limitless. Now it is going ahead very fast. There is no standard in the cinema. Why do the artists not get together and set up standards?"
The novels written by Vincente Belasco Ibanez also include "The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse", filmed after "Blood and Sand" in 1921, "Enemies of Women" (Crosland 1923), starring Alma Rubens, and the film "Marie Nostrum" filmed in 1926 by Rex Ingram. The lost film "Circe, the Enchantress" (Robert Z. Leonard, 1924) featured a screenplay written by Ibanez specifically for the actress Mae Murray.

Swedish Silent Film

Silent Film

Silent FilmRudolph Valentino

After directing “True Heart Susie” in 1919, to end the year, D.W. Griffith directed Lillian Gish in the film “The Greatest Question” (six reels), photographed by G.W. Bitzer.

The films "A Romance of Happy Valley", starring Lillian Gish, and "Scarlet Days", both directed by D.W. Griffith, were though to be lost and donated to the Modern Museum of Art by Russia when rediscovered. Silent FilmD.W. Griffith

After filming “Hearts of the World” (1918), D.W. Griffith featured actress Lillian Gish in another drama set during World War I, “The Great Love” (1918). The film is lost with no copies surviving. Photographed by G.W. Bitzer, it was produced by Famous Players Lasky.

Lillian and Dorothy GishD. W. GriffithD. W. Griffith

Silent FilmLars HansonVictor Sjostrom

A suitable story for director Mauritz Stiller, famous Swedish director who just began work under M.G.M. contract is now being sought and will be announced at an early date. Greta Garbo, who has also just arrived in America will be assigned a suitable vehicle sometime this month." -Exhibitor's Trade Review, 1925

During the summer of 1925, Metro Goldwyn advertised Victor Seastrom's "Tower of Lies" with Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney as "Selma Lagerlof's world prize novel with the outstanding personalities of 'He Who Gets Slapped'". Using the front and inside covers of Moving Picture World Magazine, it also advertised "Bardleys the Magnificient", starring John Gilbert as a "colossal production in full technicolor", "Lights of Old Broadway", starring Marion Davies and directed by Monta Bell, and advertised two Cosmolitan Productions, The Temptress, "backed by intensive national publicity promotions of Cosmopolitan Productions, and "The Torrent"- "with Aileen Pringle in a cast of big names". To readers beginning with the recent biography by Robert Dance, Pringle was "displaced" by Greta Garbo

Author Lucy Fischer, in the paper Greta Garbo and Silent Cinema:The Actress as Art Deco Icon In no way establishes an Art Deco style of filmmaking as opposed to an art nouveau style of painting, although the elements of a modernity, including thematic elements, are certainly present. Fischer sees the film “The Torrent”, essentially a jazz age film and a precursor to the upcoming surprise of precode, as fluctuating between stylistic flourishes. These for Fischer are not inserted inadvertently, but at “heightened moments of the text” and the first “glamour shot” of Greta Garbo“inhabits a modernist space”. It is almost as if the author is implying that the screenwriter worked more closely with the wardrobe department than the scenario department while making her point. It would seem that Fischer is analyzing the shot structure of the film and its camera movement, the photoplay, by changes in what Greta Garbo is wearing rather than by evaluating how the spectator is drawn to the screen by a medium that after art nouveau, Dadaism and ante-bellum needed Art Deco to commercialize in a world apart from Sarah Bernhardt and the poster iconography of Alphonse Mucha. But Fischer brings a point of departure as the subculture of early surrealism lacked popularity in Hollywood- is Art Deco more than set and costume design and is there a corresponding style of acting, if not directing for the “lost generation”?
For a moment, let’s allow our look at Greta Garboin the film be a collection of shots of the new fashions within modernity and transfer theory written about one genre, the Silent Western to another- with the hope of providing a key to her volume on the iconography of Silent Western Film, the content of its mise en scene and typical motifs, author Nanna Verhoeff, in her volume “The West in Early Cinema, before quoting Jacques Derrida,claims to have coined the phrase “archival poetics” as compared and contrasted to other semiotics systems, to narrative poetics or to poetics of gender, much as a “landscape poetics” emerged in the reviews of the silent films of Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom. The author highlights the content of Western Silent films by searchingly for their common physical elements, which presumably at times include Sjostrom’s masterpieces “The Wind” and at times, owing to its historical context, would not. The author writes, “I am to reflect on the connections between objects, discursive systems within which they can be understood and the cultural life in the present within which such ‘readability’ in terms of poetics’ etymological sense of making. The current interest in hypertextual discursive organization will serve as a heuretical metaphor that will help articulate an archival poetics useful for cultural analysis of early screen culture, in other words screening the past.” Needless to say this alone doesn’t place Greta Garboas an Art Deco figurehead and the volume written by Verhoeff consists of analysis of early silent film independent of the work of Greta Garbo but it places an archival value on the screen prescence of Greta Garbo contingent on the technology of the period and on audience reception that dates genres as having a chronological beginning when they are to emerge- Garbo’s insistence she did not belong to the Vamp iconography. If a dress worn by Garbo, then an article in a time capsule. To see the effect of costume design clearly, one might look at Elizabeth Taylor in the film Cleopatra, where it seems that every cut to a new scene includes Taylor wearing a different gown, adding a aesthetic value to the silence within each scene through numerous visual additions to mine en scene through numerous costume changes.

Greta Garbo arrives from Europe

When refilmed, her hollywood screentest would by filmed by Mauritz Stiller and purportedly spliced into the rushes of Torrent and was then, in turn, seen by Monta Bell, who insisted the script be given to Garbo. Greta 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 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."

"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

"The stylistic changes brought about by Sjostrom's moving to Hollywood may not have been as definite as film history would have it according to the paradigm. Still the story of Sjostrom was transformed by his transition to Seastrom"- Bo Florin

An actress tells a film director, with whom she is having a brief affair, that he is not the author of the film he is making, "Hon menar att det ar hennes bok Victor. Inte din. Du mekar bara."/ "She means that it is her book Victor. Not yours. You are just tinkering with it."- Lynn R Wilkinson on the Victor Sjostrom film Bildmakarna

When reading the play "The Image Makers" by P. O. Enquist, who passed away in 2020, Ingmar Bergman reiterated an often quoted sentiment about the actor-director Victor Sjostrom with "'The Phantom Cariiage' is one of my most important cinematographic experiences." I needed a question that could be answered quickly when recently corresponding with, introducing myself to, rather, author Bo Florin, Stockholm University, my having asked him which was his favorite film directed by Victor Sjostrom and his favorite directed by Ingmar Bergman. He was kind enough to reply by offering to send me a copy of the book on Stiller and Garbo that he wrote with author Patrick Vonderau in that although it could be downloaded it was nicer "in the real", so in the future I might have something more than a preliminary question, one having to do with film history or film technique, at which both Stiller and Sjostrom were highly proficient. Florin wrote, "Concerning favourites: I guess my favorite Sjostrom is same as was Bergman's ('the film that he saw at least once a year': The Phantom Carriage." Although I here mention having recieved letters from Jon Wengstrom and Ase Kleveland, my correspondence has been sparse and has contained little film theory, that having been delegated to massive open online courses, some of which were on film and some of which, those on literature and history, where I have had the oppurtunity to meet my instructors in person here in the United States - so of course I was thrilled to hear from Professor Florin. In his letter, Bo Florin mentioned Patrick Vonderau, his coauthor to the volume "A Tale from Constantinople". Later in the week I recieved a letter from Professor Vonderau in which he wrote, "Thanks for your interest." The book did come to our apartment through the mail, and I have sent Bo Florin a note of thanks, which he has recieved and acknowledged with the closing, "All the best". Included in the volume is the entire unfilmed shooting script of the film written by Mauritz Stiller and Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius which was adapted from the novel Whirlpools of Life, written by Vladimir Semitjov. While writing "A Tale from Constantinople" Florin drew upon correspondence between Stiller and Semitjov that is now housed by the archive of The Swedish Film Institute. The photoplay is spectacular and not only includes both expository and dialouge intertitles as well as the shot structure of the film but blocking instructions. The daughter of Sweden’s greatest director of Silent Film, Victor Seastrom, passed away during the beginning of 2019. Guge Lagerwall, actress and wife of Swedish actor Sture Lagerwall, had celebrated her one hundredth birthday during January of 2018 before having died two weeks before turning one hundred and one years old. Lagerwall was the daughter of the director and Swedish Silent Film actress Edith Erastoff and, according to Victor Sjostrom one of the reasons why he returned from the United States to Sweden. The daughter of Victor Sjostrom, Guge Lagerwall wrote the screenplays to two Swedish Films, “Smeder pa luffen” (Erik Hampe Faustian, 1949) and ”Lattjo med Boccaccio” (Gosta Bernhard, 1949)- she appeared in seven films that were made in Sweden, including “Franskild” directed by Gustaf Molander in 1951. It may be noted that since the passing of Guge Lagerwall, two actors that starred with Victor Sjostrom in the masterpiece “Wild Strawberries” (1957) directed by Ingmar Bergman and photographed by Gunnar Fischer, are now recently deceased. Actress Bibi Andersson passed away early during 2019, actor Max Von Sydow early during 2020. Author Tommy Gustafsson is more than correct when he reluctantantly admits a canonization of Swedish Silent Film hinging on the names Victor Sjostrom, Mauritz Stiller and Selma Lagerloff. Mauritz Stiller had given Greta Garbo a lead role while in Sweden in adaptation of one of Lagerwall’s novels, an adaptation that did not go unnoticed by Lagerwall, while Victor Sjostrom had given Greta Garbo the leading role in a film version of the life of actress Sarah Bernhardt after she has arrived in America with Stiller. Although Gustafsson omits placing directors George af Klerker, Gustaf Molander and John Bruinius in a chronological relation to the forming of Svenska Filmindustri, he marks their absence in cannon that has been widely familiarized, including the discourse of what he notes Bordwell and Thompson see as a “dependence” upon landscape in Swedish film that distinguished Stiller and Sjostrom as filmmakers concerned with artistically articulating man’s place in the universe through personifying the emotion inherent in Scandinavian exterior shots and through heightening the interest in human action when confronting the elements. In his book Masculinity in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema, Tommy Gustafsson looks toward the viewpoints of Leif Furhammar to see competing foreign markets as a reason for the Swedish Art Film, markets that would not only compete for the attention of rivetted audiences, but for the directors of Sweden and Europe themselves. In an attempt to delineate Victor Sjostrom as a Swedish auteur, as a pioneering father of Swedish Cinema that propagated a nationalistic style, Bo Florin also asks us to keep in mind the influence of American Film on the global market, perhaps an influence that was competing with popular Danish films. Florin notes that an economic crisis that was weighing heavily upon Charles Magnusson caused the formation of a subsidiary company, AB Filminspelning, that included directors Victor Sjostrom ,Mauritz Stiller and John Brunius, a company that was unsuccessful in preventing the departure of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller to America and a Hollywood which comprised 90% of all silent film being manufactured, easily and readily drawing the two monolithic directors away from Sweden after they had established the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film where stylistically, often the character is analyzed against the backdrop of his enviornment to deepen the film thematically. Paul Rotha, in his volume "The Film Till Now, a survey of world cinema", had earlier made the pronouncement that the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film had "died a natural death by reason of its national characteristics of poetic feeling and lyricism." He summarized the films as having been "realized with exceptional visual beauty, being characterized by their lyrical quality of theme and by their slowness of develpoment. For enviornment, full use was made of the natural landscape value of Sweden, whilst their directors were marked by their poetic feeling." In their article Film Studies In Sweden, The Past, The Present and The Future, authors Goran Bolan and Michael Forsmann add an interesting perspective when crediting producer Charles Magnusson as a proponent of Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom. They note that despite his success,that “in spite of taking up established and well-reputed plays and literary classics, the public reception was negative”, especially with the cultural elite, which coalesced into the first publications on Swedish Film, particularly those of author Frans Hallgren. Interestingly, student Jesper Larsson, in a recent undergraduate paper for Lund University circulated on academia.org titled Tora Teje Teje, Reception and Swedishness wrote, “The Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film started with ’A Man There Was’ (Terge Vogel, Victor Sjostrom, 1917) reached its climax with ‘The Phantom Carriage’ (Korkarlen, Victor Sjostrom, 1921), and ended with ‘The Saga of Gosta Berling’ (Mauritz Stiller, 1924), whereas all these films served as a distillation of a distinctive national style. These films, often set in historical times or in rural Sweden, did not allow actresses to be glamorous in a contemporary sense and thus did not reproduce the idea of a consumerist culture.” To these, Jespersen might have added the historical dramas of Director John Brunius. Jespersen’s claim that Swedish Silent Film expressed a nationalism in its nostalgic, or rural,subject matter and a resultant camera technique to fit the exigencies of exterior location style is apparent in advertising and motion pictures both sought to reflect a visual culture with an intense interest in modernity receptive to the avaunt guarde, as is reflected not onlyin the paper Films That Sell: Motion Pictures and Advertising by Patrick Vondreau of Stockholm University but in the emergence of the relationship between advertising and Imagist poetry and Dadaist poetry. America had gone to France and created The Flapper, leaving us the view that not only were the film directors of the Swedish Golden Age tottering on seeming archaic, but that director D.W. Griffith might also have a Morality not suited to the quickening pace of the New Modern Woman, almost indicative in Lillian Gish having left to find Lars Hanson and Victor Sjostrom as though both cinemas were to compete with a short-lived German Expressionism and French Poeticism. A similar corollary between the Wasteland of Modernity and the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film is fascinatingly introduced by film historian Mark Sandberg, to quote an abstract of his paper The Outlaw and Noman’s Land: The International Circulation of Visual Repertoires, analyses the film “The Outlaw and His Wife”, directed byVictor Sjostrom by drawing attention to “the film,s insistent verticality and location shooting” by contrasting the landscapes of Neutrality to the trenchwarfare that was ravaging and devastating Europe during the four years that preceded the film’s premiere, the battlefields that perhaps may have been spied by the flanneurs while en route to the cinema forming a visual context by which audience reception took place for European viewer of the Swedish export. To keep the topic within a peer-reviewed frame, author Bo Florin dileneates the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film as 1917-1923. While reviewing Bo Florin’s volume Transition and Transformation, Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood 1923-1930 film critic Erik Hedling uses the same chronological yardstick, 1917-1923, to measure the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film, and adds,”These were characterized by elaborate landscapes depiction, heavy influences from high art, subtle acting, expressive lighting and a focus on specific devices, such as the dissolve and systematic cuts across the 180-degree line.” With the grace of a footnote to the writing of Bengt Forslund, Bo Florin extends Helding’s summarization by also characterizing Victor Sjostromas an Auteur within Swedish Silent Film, characterizing his style as displaying a “lyrical intimacy” effected by “downplayed acting, thorough work on the lighting of scenes, and mise ens scene and montage privileging a circular space with a clear center towards which movements converge.” Bo Florin includes the film “Terje Vigen” in the cannon of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film in part for its portrayal of the interiority of the character having been explored metaphorically, perhaps more metaphorically, ie. through metonymic representation, than in Sjostrom’s earlier films which included “Ingeborg Holm”. In the article “Confronting The Wind, a reading of a Hollywood Film by Victor Sjostrom”, Florin notes Peter Cowie as having pointed out that the film “consequently reflects the conflicts both within and between the characters in the narrative”, his adding that Fullerton “points to the dialectics in the relationship between human and landscape, which establishes analogies between them”, Fullerton having compared elements of “Terje Vigen” with those of “The Outlaw and his Wife”. Added to this is the thought that American Silent film came under a European influence and that the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film was just that in light of it being carried over into Hollywood, which was very congenially expressed in the volume The Film Answers Back: A Historical Appreciation of the Cinema, written In 1939 by E.W. Robson, who briefly, but succinctly traces the importing of film technique by Victor Sjostrom. He writes, “In Hollywood, Victor Sjostrom continued the Scandinavian tradition of reflecting upon the elements, the wind and and sky as symbolizations of the shifting nature of social life.” Bo Florin has noted that author Graham Petrie has compared the adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” directed by Victor Sjostrom not only thematically in regard to literary tropes to the earlier adaptations of the writings of Selma Lagerlof in its examination of Puritan culture but in that his filming also permits an interplay between man and the context of nature in which man finds himself. Perhaps this is by drawing parralels between the Swedish landscape and the pioneer aspect of the spiritual remoteness from Europe that drove the Puritan onward during the first Thanksgivings in a new colony while establishing New England, if not New Amsterdam as well in what was more than rural in being a frontier ecumenically, the poet Anne Bradstreet in fact mourning the loss of a child when first arriving in the harsh New England of Hester Prynne. Graham Petrie’s volume Hollywood Destines, European directors in America 1922-1931 includes the Chapter Victor Sjostrom, ‘The Greatest Director in the World’ as well as the chapter Mauritz Stiller and others, ‘They are a Sad Looking people these Swedes’. Magnus Rosborn, archivist for the Swedish Film Institute includes “Dunagen” (1919), adapted from the writing of Selma Lagerlof to the screen by Swedish Silent Film Director Ivan Hedquvist, as well as “Ingmarservet” (1925) and “Til Osterland” (1926), adaptations of the writings of Selma Lagerlof scripted by Ragnar Hylten Cavaliius and directed by Gustaf Molander, the former having starred Lars Hanson, the latter having starred Edvin Adolphson, to the cannon of films expressing man’s relation to the Swedish environment in the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film. The films of Swedish Silent Film directors George af Klerker, Carl Barklind and John W. Brunius were included by the Modern Museum of Art during 1977 for the festival entitled "Sjostrom, Stiller and His Contemporaries". Apologizing for "The Story of Gosta Berling" being the one unavailable print in the museum's selection, the press releases for the museum quote critic George Sandoul as having had the opinion that "Stiller's work was as delicate as Sjostrom's was massive." It is entirely a matter of folklore as to whether Greta Garbo msy have attended the screenings. One more recent silent film festival honoring Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller organized and curated by Jon Wengstrom, Swedish Film Institute archivist, at a European film museum not only included a screening of the “In the Chains of Darkness” (I markets bojor, 1917) directed by George af Klercker, among the twenty five Swedish Silent Films it projected, included to the programme “The Nortull Gang” (Norrtullsligan, 1923”, acknowledging its Director, Per Lindgren as an admittedly “lesser known director”. The program to the festival noted that George af Klercker used prominent exterior shots during outdoor scenes shot on location by that these were mostly for visual effect and could not be construed as being used to develop metaphors depicting the interaction between man and nature, as often is the case with the films of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. Last year, John Wengstrom of the Swedish Film Institute was kind enough to reply to my letter to the Film Institute. It had been forwarded from Kristin Engtedt of the Swedish Film Institute to Mathias Rosengren and then finally to John Wengstrom. In the letter, while thanking the recipient for reading it, I mentioned that it had been over ten years since I received a letter from Ase Kleveland of the Swedish Film Institute in reply to my writing about the one hundredth birthday of actress Greta Garbo. When writing Wengstrom I had asked if The Saga of Gosta Berling, directed by Mauritz Stiller in 1924, was in tthe public domain. I had asked it almost rhetorically based on the view of the Library of Congress that every film of its age has been placed in the public domain, specifically all those filmed before 1926. Wengstrom begged to differ, noting that in Sweden, although Mauritz Stiller died in 1928, it had not been seventy years since the death of Ragnar Hylten-Cavillius, The co-writer of the script, who died in 1970. He added that The Swedish Film Institute, owner of the film, had restored the film that year and that it “regained its original aspect ratio, colors, design of inter titles and is now substantially longer than previous restorations.” During the Spring of 2018, John Wengstrom, archivist for the Swedish Film Institute, was honored by the San Franscisco Silent Film Festival for a recent restoration of “The Saga of Gösta Berling” (Mauritz Stiller, 1924), starring Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson, the new version lasting 200 minutes on screen. It is to be presented with 10 other restored silent films, among them being a previously unseen 1929 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. My former online classmate, Emma Vestrheim, who participated with me in a class on Scandinavian film offered by the University of Copenhagen, writes that the restored version adds sixteen minutes to Greta Garbo’s debut film. Author Forsyth Hardy notes that Saga of Gosta Berling was last film Mauritz Stiller directed in Sweden before his departing to the United States in 1925. While evaluating, or comprising, a filmography of silent film of the Swedish directors of Svenska Bio and Svenska Filmindustri; Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjostrom, John Brunius and George Af Klercker and with them the camerman Julius Jaenzon, It was refreshing to find that author Astrid Soderberg Widing tries to agree with film critic Leif Furhammar that Georg af Klerker, who began as a filmmaker at Svenska Biografteatern, can be placed with Sjostrom and Stiller as being an autuer of the pioneering art form, in that, although he seldom wrote scenarios, he added a "personal signature" to filmmaking contemporary to the other two directors- during the centennial of the two reeler in the United States and of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller having become contemporaries at Svenska Bio. When first writing on the internet, before the deaths of Vilgot Sjoman, Sven Nykvist and Ingmar Bergman, I included this in my webpage, "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 literature. 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 filent 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 Ingmar Bergman’s daughter Lena has noted that even late in life Bergman watched film extensively, his own cinema named “The Cinematograh”, which he built in a barn on Faro with three projectors, one film that he included having been Mauritz Stiller’s silent comedy “Love and Journalism”. The Museum of Modern Art during a 1977 retrospective quoted Peter Cowie, “Stiller the dramatist began to overtake Stiller the wit who made ‘Love And Journalism. His work began to resemble Sjostrom’s.” It explained that Bergman’s father was known to screen early Swedish films in his church after communion. The Museum quoted Peter Cowie, “No filmmaker before Sjostrom integrate digital landscape so fundamentally into his work or concieved of nature as a mystical as well as a physical force in terms of film language.” It added, “The tumult that threatens his heroes’ psyche corresponds, says Cowie, to the majestic power of nature and while Sjostrom’s themes are elemental, there is a tragic and noble severity in them.” While Ingmar Bergman was not unknown for his efforts toward film preservation- Widding credits him with having preserved the film Nattiga Toner directed by Georg af Klercker- Gosta Werner painstaking restored Swedish Silent Films "frame by frame", taking thousands of frames from envelopes and reassembling them before copying them into a modern print, his enlarging prints made on bromide paper and then in order to reconstruct their shot structure, comparing them to stills from several films to insure the director's sense of compostition, his also recommending the searching for of all material on the film, including a synopsis of the plot and other descriptions of what the film contained. Essential to the viewing Swedish Silent film is the evaluation of the thematic technique of conveying a relationship between man and his environment, the character to the landscape, but before even introducing this the present author would share that there is an interesting quote form Gosta Werner the archivist from his having examined the restoring the films The Sea Vultures (Sjostrom), The Death Kiss (Sjostrom), The Master Theif (Stiller) and Madam de Thebes (Stiller), "In pre-1920 films, close ups were very rare, as were landscapes devoid of actors. Actually, shots without actors were very rare. Almost every shot included an actor involved in some obvious situation. The film told its story with pictures, but they were pictures of actors." It is with that appreciation of the art that the present author would look toward the photoplays that, with the development of both their dialogue and expository intertitles, became cinematic novels during the silent era. Werner further analyzes the early films and their mise-en-scene, making them seem as though they were in fact part of the body of work produced in the United States, "Many sequences begin with an actor entering the room pand with the main actor (not always the same one) leaving the set." It is also of interest that the last film of the twenty seven that he restored was one of the most difficult in that it was a Danish detective film that lacked intertitles. Particularly because I found the cutting on the action of the actor leaving the frame of interest, if I can connect the quote to one from my own previous webpages on silent film, before reading Werner I had written, "The aesthetics of pictorial composition could utilize placing the figure in either the foreground or background of the shot, depth of plane, depth of frame, narrative and pictorial continuity being then developed together. Compositions would be related to each other in the editing of successive images and adjacent shots, the structure; Griffith had already begun to cut mid-scene, his cutting to another scene before the action of the previous scene was completely finished, and he had already begun to cut between two seperate spatial locations within the scene." It is now difficult to overlook the importance of Gosta Werner's having directed the short film Stiller-fragment in 1969. Produced by Stiftelsen Svenska Filminstitutet it showcased surviving footage from several silent films made by Mauritz Stiller in Sweden, including Mannekangen (1913) with Lili Ziedner, Gransfolken (1913) with Stina Berg and Edith Erastoff, Nar Karleken dodar(1913) with Mauritz Stiller behind the lens and George af Klerker and Victor Sjostrom both in front of the camera, Hans brollopsnatt (1914) starring Swedish silent film actresses Gull Nathorp and Jenny-Tschernichin-Larson and Pa livets odesvager. Jon Wengstrom marked the 100th birthday of Gosta Werner by crediting him with identifying an existing fragment from Stiller’s film “Ballettprimadonna” (1915). The fillm “Ballettprimadonna”, directed by Mauritz Stiller, was restored and premiered at the Filmhuset during 2016. At the end of 2017, the Swedish Film Institutetet announced that it would be restoring the film “The Price of Betrayl” (“Judaspengar”), directed by Victor Sjostrom during 1915. In the announcement the Swedish Film Institute notes that with this film, only 16 of the 42 silent films directed by Victor Sjostrom will have been restored. It may be noted that since the work of Gosta Werner, author Ingrid Stigsdotter has brought interest in a feminist historiography of film and a feminist archive with her article “Women Film Exhibition Pioneers in Sweden, Agency, invisiblity and first wave feminism” in which she credits Rune Waldekranz as having acknowledged the contributions of director Anna Hoffman-Undgren during 1911-1912. Supplemental to the cataloging of women involved in the production of Swedish Film is the contention of scholar Laura Horak that director Mauritz Stiller had broache the subject directly in his “feminist comedies” depicting “women of ambition” and presenting an “emancipated woman image”, Horak citing in particular the films “The Modern Suffradette” (1913), “Love and Journalism” (1916) and “Thomas Graal’s Best Child”. The writing of Laura Horak is also featured in the volume Not So Silent, Women In Cinema Before Sound, edited by Sofia Bull and Astrid Soderbergh Widding.      There is one important recent quote from that Swedish Film Institute and the Internet, "Films considered to be lost still resurface in private collections or in foreign archives." During 1970, American author Gary Carey had in fact been quoted as having said, "It is quite possible that one or more of the films in this book may sometime turn up.", the occaison having been the rediscovery of the film "The Devil's Circus" (Benjamin Christensen, 1926). Carey is responsible for having begun the search for lost silent films in the United States with the volume Lost Films, which is culled from a still collection belonging to the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive, his adding plot synopsis and historical data to the photographs. He notes that with the advent of sound film, silent films were more susceptible to falling into desuetude, as was perhaps the intention when color films changed the aspect ratio used when first competeing with television. It may be fitting that, although a film version of the novel the Atonement of Gosta Berling had been planned by Skandinavisk Film Central, a company that had merged the Danish Silent Film companies Dania Biofilm and Kinogram into Palladium, between 1919 and 1921, the first part of The Saga of Gosta Berling, during March of 1924 premiered in Stockholm at The Roda Kvarn, it's second part having premiered a week later- not only is the art-deco, art-nouveau theater famous as having continued into the twenty first century, but when constructed in 1915 by Charles Magnusson, included in the first films screened in the art-house theater were those directed for Svenska Biografteatern by Mauritz Stiller, particularly, the 35 minute film Lekkamraterna, written by Stiller and photographed by Henrik Jaenzon, which starred Lili Bech, Stina Berg and Emmy Elffors, and the 65 minute film Madame Thebes, written by Mauritz Stiller and photographed by Julius Jaenzon, which starred Ragnar Wettergren, Martha Hallden and Karin Molander. It is often written that Swedish silent film before Molander had paid devout attention to Scandinavian landscape and its effect upon the characters in the drama, there also being an underlying sense that the conception of space, traveling through space according the the seasonal, played a transparent part during the recoding of the now ancient, therefore runic, Prose and Poetic Eddas. true to form the daughter of Ingmar Bergman, Journalist Linn Ullmann, included the historical place of Swedish Filmmaking in her second novel, Stella Descending. "The once thriving ostrich farm in Sundbyberg was sold, taken over by two rival companies, Svensk Bio and Skandia, who joined forces to build Rasunda Filmstad, home of the legendary film studios. Here the filmmakers Victor Sjostromand Mauritz Stiller worked alongside such stars as Tora Teje, Lars Hanson, Anders de Wahl, Karin Molonder and Hilda Bjorgstrom. Greta Garbo turned in an impressive performance in Gosta Berling's Saga in 1924, "giving us hope for the future" to quote the ecstatic critic in Svenska Dagbladet. I can well imagine how Elias must have cursed the day his parents put their money in ostriches rather than the movies....And so it passed that Elias was part of the audience that evening in February 1934 to see When We Dead Awaken."

Victor Sjostrom: Swedish Silent Film

Peter Cowie writes of a voice that was described to Vilgot Sjoman as being "so nice and gentle" it having "a quiet huskiness that makes it interesting". "'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, her watching his face to measure the emotion of the director, she excitedly began discussing her acting in The Saga of Gosta Berling. When they returned to the room, one that had also been used by Molander, Bergman poeticlly studied her face." It had been Gustaf Molander, during 1923 while director of the Royal Dramatic Academy, who had been asked by Mauritz Stiller to decide upon two students to appear in his next film. Mona Martenson was already in Molander's office when Greta Garbo was called in and asked to report to Svenska Filmindustri's studios the following morning. Garbo went to Rasunda to meet Stiller for a screen test to be filmed by Julius Jaenzon, whom she happenned to meet on the train, it almost to presage the unexpected encountering she had years later with Swedish director Ragnar Ring while crossing the Atlantic. While waiting for Stiller to arrive, cinematographer Julius Jaenzon told Greta Garbo, "You are the lovliest girl I've ever seen walk into the place." In America, while being interviewed by journalist Rilla Page Palmborg in the old publicity department of M.G.M., Greta Garbo reminisced about filming with Mauritz Stiller at a time when she only saw him when he was not on his own set. "We don't rush so in Sweden. It took months to make 'Gosta Berling's Saga'. We had to wait for winter to make the winter scenes. Then, we had to wait for summer to get the summer scenes." While visiting Stockholm during 1938, Garbo asked to view the film The Saga of Gosta Berling, her having said to William Sorensen it was "the movie I loved most of all." Not incidentally, Barry Paris has since chronicled that it was Kerstin Bernadette that had brought Garbo to meet then renowned Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, his having requested it in order for her to return to the screen in his film The Silence. 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. My earlier webpages, which often noted film festivals in Scandinavian, namely Sweden, had mentioned that, "In previous years Cinemateket has screened the films of Mauritz Stiller, it having published with Svenska Filminstituet the volume Morderna motiv-Mauritz Stiller I retrospektiv, under Bo Florin, to accompany the screenings. Bo Florin and the Cinematecket have also published Regi:Victor Sjostrom= Directed by Victor Seastrom with the Svenska Filminstituet." It also noted that at that time that the silent films of Sweden were also being screened on Faro, where resided the Magic Lantern and the dancing skeletons that appear when lights are lowered, possibly representative of the magician-personnas we only for a brief time borrow, identify with, while spectators; Ingmar Bergman had added a screening room to Faro that sat fifteen with a daily showing at 3:00.

As a measure of the myth-image created by Greta Garbo, the life of Greta Louisa Gustafsson and her meeting Swedish Silent film director Mauritz Stiller has admittedly become a Swedish novel, published by Magdalena Hedlund and Nordstedt in Stockholm. Five years after filming the documentary "Garbo- Berattekien Bakom Breven" for Sveringes Television, Filmmaker Lena Einhorn had read thirty three letters written by Greta Garbo over the course of her career to actress Mimi Pollock. From there, accordingly, Einhorn begins the epilogue to her novel with the words, "I thought I "knew" Greta Garbo". Greta Garbo had kept private idea and emotions that would posthumously become the subject of the novel "Blekingegatan 32" written in 2013, well after the one hundredth birthday of the actress. Prior to that the film "Nina's Journey" ("Nina's Resa"), directed by Lena Einhorn had been screened at the Filmhuset in Stockholm.      During her Photoplay interview, Greta Garbo continued on the film "The Saga of Gosta Berling", 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 aquirred 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."     Mauritz Stiller in 1921 had direciiited Lars Hanson in the film The Emigrants (De landsflyktiga) with Karin Swanstrom, Jenny Hasselquist and Edvin Adolphson. The script was co-written by Stiller with Ragnar Hylten Cavallius, it having had been being an adaptation of the modern novel Zoja, written by Runar Schildt. There also seems to have been an unused screenplay written by Ture Newman. Photographed by Henrik Jaenzon, it was the first film in which Tyra Ryman was to appear. Exhibitor's Trade Review during 1922 listed the film under the title In Self Defence, it also appearing as Guarded Lips. It wrote, "It has a closing of real power. And by power, we mean the final thousand feet...It is a generally sombre role that falls to Miss Hasselquist, but it is played with fine feeling and excellant judgement." In the United States, Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1922 provided a brief synopsis of the Swedish Biograph film In Self Defence, directed by Mauritz Stiller, "Melodrama centering about a group of Russioan refugees. The Prince and Princess were able to escape at the time of the uprising through aid of young revolutionist under obligation to them. Living in a foreign country, their means dwindles and the Prince becomes heavily indebted to a banker who covets the Princess. She repulsed him but still a situation develops where the Prine dies, the banker is shot and she is accused. Through the assistance of the young revolutionist who has left Russia, she is cleared of the charge and the story closes with a promise of happiness for them."      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 himself, 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 Filmstar 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.'
     To those either fascinated by her, or, bluntly, merely erotically stimulated by her body, one possible reason for this was alighted upon by biographer Raymond 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 added that it continued into her filming with G.W. Pabst, who speeded up the camera to adjust for it.     "Years after his death Garbo still spoke of him in the present tense: 'Maurice thinks...'" Appearing seperate to the hard cover biography titled Garbo written by John Bainbridge was his work published in magazine form, which was titled, "Garbo's Haunted Path to Stardom. A hypnotic director made over her very soul." In it he gives an account of Mauritz Stiller's first session with Greta Garbo at Rasunda, where he asked her to act in front of the camera, Stiller having been quoted as having said, "Have you no feelings. Do you know nothing of sadness and misery? Act, miss, act." Stiller instructed that there be close ups of Garbo shot and this is thought by Bainbridge to be the reason Stiller remarked upon Garbo's shyness. An eerie not arose in 1962 as the author of a volume entitled The Stars claimed John Bainbridge to be "Garbo's best biographer". The author of the now out of print volume used a quote acquired by Bainbridge from "a woman who workded at Svenska Filmindustri, particularly, "Stiller was always teaching and preaching, Greta solemnly listening and learning. I never saw anyone more earnest and eager to learn. With the hypnotic power he seemed to have over her he could make her do extraordinary things. But we had little idea that he was making over her soul." The author portrays Greta Garbo in retirement, adding "Perhaps the last sentence is hyperbolic but the essence of the reminiscence is true." More eerie still is the foregone conclusion that Greta Garbo had sealed herself into a crypt of retirement, the article published as though her comeback was out of the question, despite the amount of truth in that there may have been- a photo of Greta Garbo, middle adged, perhaps thin with her facial skin drawn a little tighter than in most photos, with dark sunglasses, the author adding, "There is reason to believe that Garbo knows her career was mismanaged, and that from time to time the knowledge still disturbs her."
     During its filming Greta Garbo and Mona Martenson had stayed in the same hotel together. The beauty of Mona Martenson is miraculous, a deep beauty that can only be seen as wonderous. In The Story of Greta Garbo, a rare interview with Ruth Biery published in Photoplay during 1928, Garbo relates of Martenson's being in Hollywood and of her planning to later return to Sweden. Karin Swanstrom, who had already directed her first film, also appears in The Saga of Gosta Berling. Gloria Swanson, when asked what she enjoyed in literature by Picture Play magazine during February of 1926 replied, "Just now I am greatly interested in Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof. I first read it in the hospital in France during my illness and brought it home with me.”
     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. After Victor Sjostrom had directed several stories based on the writing of Selma Lagerlof, while in the United States he had been interviewed by the publication Scenario Bulletin Digest and had seemed to broach the subject of film adaptation that had brought a rift between Mauritz Stiller and Selma Lagerlof, "'Some great works of literature should not be attempted in motion pictures yet,' says Victor Seastrom, famous European director now with Goldwyn. He says further that one should not try to film a masterpiece unless the picture can be made as fine as the book." Iris Barry briefly reviewed the film by Maurtiz Stiller 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." Forsyth Hardy, author of Scandinavian Film, relates that Mauritz Stiller’s adaptation of the Lagerlof novel was thought to be plagued by “obscure and arbitrary ellipses, of melancholy effects and of the absence of a convincing psychological arquement”, an evaluation which Hardy skirts by pointing out the exigencies of the novel and its structure when being translated into a screenplay and by praising Stiller as a sensitive director expressing “deep feeling”
In their section on Foreign Films during June 1924, Motion Picture Classic magazine allowed a view of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film while it was taking place. "It is noteworthy that while the Swedish film out put is small in comparision with other producing centers, almost all of the Swedish films are of a very high quality." Of "The Saga of Gosta Berling" it added, "The quaint costumes of the day have been excellantly reproduced and the charming backgrounds have been faithfully reconstructed."
 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. Victor Sjostrom had met Selma Lagerlof when she had invited him to Flaun during January of 1917. It is only with beaming delight that modern readers encounter the writing of Leif Furhammer, which chronicles that as early as 1910, Selma Lagerlof had become a shareholder with, among others, Queen Dowager Sofia in the albeit short lived film company Victoria, which had filmed her newly bought estate in Marbacka for publicity purposes. it has been seen that Victoria evenly merged with Hasselblad. Vladimir Petric, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, reverberates the consensus of modern film critics in his outline Visual/Analytical History of the Silent Cinema (1895-1930) with the proposition that Golden age of Swedish Silent Film is refracted in the works of Selma Lagerlof through ‘the evocation of atmosphere in Scandinavia through the use of outdoor photography and contextual use of national folklore and legend”, folklore and legend being implicit it nature and landscape prior to its use as metaphor. Interestingly enough Petrie not only for shadows the later term transnational cinema with the one word use of “national”, but it is fascinating that Petric tersely and succinctly adds that analysis of the film should “contrast the realism of Sjostrom with the romantic exoticism of Stiller’s approach to legend”, implying not only the the two directors were not interchangeable while blindly following each other, but that they simultaneously autuer filmmakers.
     After The Saga of Gosta Berling was shot, Greta Garbo briefly returned to Sweden 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”. In his biography Hollywood Rajah, The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer, film critic Bosley Crowther gives an interesting account of how Mauritz Stiller and Greta Garbo were brought to Hollywood. “In Berlin he was shown some pictures...Among them one was made by Mauritz Stiller, a Swedish director whom Victor Seastrom had urged him to meet. It was full of snow and reindeer. Mayer said he would like to see what sTiller could do with people: he wasn’t interested in hiring reindeer this trip. Stiller has some call the next day and say he would like to show Mayer his latest film ‘Saga of Gosta Berling’ from a novel by Selma Lagerlof. They met at a screening room. There Mayer discovered Stiller was a tall, lantern-jawed man who could speak English. Early along a little actress , Mona Martenson, came on and Mayer made some comment about her. Stiller merely grunted a reply.” Rilla Page Palmborg, in her biography of Greta Garbo, The Private Life of Greta Garbo, also includes Mauritz Stiller as being the decisive factor in Greta Garbo being noticed in the United States, describing Mayer as “making a trip throughout Europe on lookout for new talent. The night he saw Gosta Berling’s Saga’ he saw photography and new directorial tricks that had never been done before. He wanted to see the genius who directed the fine picture. He wanted to take him back to Hollywood and introduce him to the American screen.”
     Significantly, during 1923 actress Mary Johnsonstarred 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 screenplay was co-written by Stiller and Alma Soderhjelm and it is what appears to be her only screenplay. The film was an adaptation of the novel Herrgarssagen. Forsyth Hardy on Gunnar Hedes Saga writes, "Again there is a distinctive combination of a powerfully dramatic story and a magnificent setting in the northern landscape.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 forceful 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. Motion Picture News Booking Guide in the United States provided a brief synopsis of The Blizzard, directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1924, "Theme: Drama of a broken romance which nearly culminates in tragedy when a youth drives a herd of reindeer across the white wastes. The frightened animals stampede. The romance is renewed." 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". One source, perhaps resource, of beautiful material on the film is the
Svenska Filminstituet Biblioteket On reviewing Mauritz Stiller's“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. Mauritz 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." Kwaitkoski, in his volume Swedish Film Classics, writes, "Stiller and his scriptwriter Molander simplified the meandering plot of the story, making the narration more consistent and building up tension in a logical way justified by the development of events." The photographers of the film were Julius Jaenzon and Gustaf Boge.

While Greta 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." Motion Picture Classic gives a jarring account of Stiller's new assignment, "It's just one director after another with Pola Negri...And the blame has rested equally on the mediocre stories given her and on the directors. The latter have failed to understand her...So Pola, according to my spies on the Coast, will give Mauritz Stiller a chance to understand her moods and make the best of them. The tempermental swedish director has been given a verbal barrage of bouquets by the other foreigners who handle the megaphone. Practically all of them proclaim him the master of them all." It went on with a severity to explain that the director and star were forever joined by their being tempermental, and that that in fact was the reason Stiller was dismissed from The Temptress, it claiming "maybe it needs temperment to combant temperment." Paramount, having had been being reluctant to allow Stiller to direct, at the insistence of the producer relented and granted his artistic license and freedom to create with the other branches of the studio. "He wrote the scenario for the film in nine days." Biographer John Bainbridge quotes Lars Hanson as having said, "I saw Stiller when he was ready to shoot Hotel Imperial', Lars Hanson has recalled, "He was bursting with energy. He showed me the script of some of the scenes he was preparing to do- mass scenes of people in a square. According to the script, that was to take three weeks of shooting. Stiller did it in three days." The biographer continues later by writing that after Hotel Imperial Stiller told Lars Hanson he then intended, for financial reasons and for commercial success to make only one more film in the United States. Greta Garbo had intimated words very much to the same effect, "'I'm not staying here much longer,' she Ktold the Hansons when they talked about leaving Hollywood, 'Moje and I will go home soon.'" 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 Victor Sjostrom'sThe 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 foremost of our imported directors." Motion Picture Magazine reviewed the film with, "It accomplishes almost to perfection those photographic effects which directors have been striving for; and so simply and directly that one is unconscious of the freakishness of the camerawork in one's absorption in the dramatic unfolding of the plot, with rapid succession...It is a smooth, eloquent tale told in an entirely new language- a thrilling language of pictures...Though one is ever conscious that it is essentially a war story, and the menace of wartime is (constantly) present, there are no actual battle pictures. It is almost altogether a story of the reactions of individuals to war." Motion Picture News during 1927 looked at the view, "The story could be stronger, yet its weakness is never manifested so expertly has the director handled it. The plot disntegrates toward the finish principally because it is so difficult to keep it so compact all the way. The story centers around The Hotel Imperial...Pola Negri plays the servant with splendid feeling and imagination." Under its section on Theme, the magazine summarized, "Drama of intrigue and decepetion revolving around hotel maid outwitting commander of army and finding happiness with her bethrothed." 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." Paul Rotha writes, "Not only was it the comeback of Miss Negri, but it was a triumph of a star in a role that asked no sympathy." Paul Rotha extensively quotes Mr. L'Estrange Fawcett, but because The Film till Now is out of print, the present author will requote it here, "Some may remember the use of the travelling camera in Hotel Imperial...the stage accomodating the hotel was one of the largest in existence, and eight rooms were built complete in every detail...Suspended above the set were rails along which the camera mounted on a little carriage moved at the director's will. Scenes (shots) could be taken of each room above from every point of view...to experiment with angle photography, representing impressions of scenes taken from the point of view of a character watching the others...the story could be filmed in proper sequence. In Hotel Imperial, an attempt was made to build up cumulative dramatic effect following the characters swiftly from one room to another by means of several cameras and rolling shots." For those who may have seen the subjective camera of Carl Dreyer in Vampyr, the quote is intriguing. Stiller also directed Pola Negri, and Clive Brook, in Barbed Wire (Ned med vapen 1927, seven reels). Motion 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."Barbed Wire was adapted from the novel The Woman of Knockaloe by Sir Hall Caine. Author and curator Jan-Christopher Horak writing about scriptwriter Lajos Biro in Film History chronologically follows Barbed Wire with a script directed by Victor Fleming, "His next film was to be The Man Who God Forgot (released as The Way of All Flesh, 1927), again to be directed by Mauritz Stiller, which went into preproduction as Emil Jannings' first American film. Pommer and Stiller both disagreed with studio executives about the script." This, according to the authorj, lead to Pommer's resignation and to Stiller's dismissal from the studio. When Stiller directed the actress Pola Negri 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." Motion Picture News reviewed the film as being "well-suited" for Pola Negri, "Having done pretty well by Pola Negri with Hotel Imperial, Mauritz Stiller takes her in tow and guides her through a likely melodrama- one in which she makes a strong bid for sympathy...The director uses the cutback method in building the plot. but he gets away from the obvious plan by refraining from flashing to the woman...the characters are sharply contrasted and as the cutbacks develop it is easy to guess...it is logically told and builds progressively. Miss Pola Negri gives a sincere performance and succeeds in establishing a sympathetic bond with her audience. The late Einar Hanson delivers some elegant pathos as the sick lovKer." 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. There is also an account of her attending a dinner party that Pola Negri had "given in her honor""She had her hair waived and arranged in a novel style resembling a half-open parasol. Her gown for the occasion was equally sensational, being a silk green creation that had been to the cleaner's and shrunk so that the hem was at her knees." All four films that Stiller had begun directing at Paramount had been a collaboration between him and cameraman Bert Glennon. It was through Stiller that Greta Garbo became acquainted with Emil Jannings, who in turn had brought Garbo together with director Jacques Feyder, with whom Garbo often met with socially. Motion Picture News during 1927 published a photograph of "a little Sunday afternoon group of celebrities" in front of the home of Emil Jannings, the group consisting of Mauritz Stiller, F.W. Murnau, and Jannings. That year the trade magazine reported that Emil Jannings' second starring film for Paramount, tentatively titled Hitting for Heaven, "was started last Monday under the direction of Mauritz Stiller."      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. Motion Picture Magazine during 1927 reported that, "Maurice Stiller, who was slated to direct Jannings in his first picture, will not be given that pleasure. Stiller is to handle megaphone work on Pola Negri's next production." 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. Paul Rotha opwrote, "Taking shots through hanging iron chains did not establish the atmosphere of place, although it may have created pretty pictorial compositions. Sternberg seems lodged in this gully of pictorial values. He has no control over his dramatic feelings (Street of Sin and very little idea of the filmic psychology of any scene that he shoots. He has, however some feeling for the use of women. His contrast of Betty Copson and Olga Baclanova in the latter film was good." (It might be asked if this criticism is lacking in regard to the symbolic scenework of Ingmar Bergman, and that if his "pretty pictorial compositions" have been given just enough dramatic ambiguity to become symbolic in their being arbitary, a personal obscurity accepted as having layers of meaning.) 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. 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.      The death of Mauritz Stiller is more frequently encountered when discovering the reaction of Greta Garbo, whom had heard of his passing while on the set with Nils Asther. Sjostrom, who had been with Stiller the night before and had telegrammed Garbo, described his last time seeing the then ill Stiller after his release from the hospital, "Then Stiller got desperate. he grabbed my arm in despair and would not let me go. 'No,no', he cried. 'I haven't told him what I must tell him!' The nurse separated us and pushed me toward the door. I tried to quiet and comfort him, saying that he could tell me tommorow. But he go more and more desperate. His face was wet with tears. And he said, 'I want to tell you a story for a film. It will be a great film. It is about real human beings, and you are the only one who can do it.' I was so moved I didn't know what to say. 'Yes, yes, Moje,' was all I could stammer. 'I will be with you the first thing in the morning and then you can tell me.' I left him crying in the arms of the nurse. There was no morning." Close Up magazine marked the director's passing, "The death of Mauritz Stiller has been a genuine loss to the whole cinema world. The great Swedish director, poineer of the artistic film, did more for the screen than people will realize. While others were despairing the lowly medium, when it was given over exclusively to vulgarity akin to that of the penny novelellete, Stiller was froming his conception of a great art, developing its potenialities, seeing far into the future. He was a great artist, working with profound care and intensity. His intensity may have been impart responsible for his early demise." Journalist Harriet Parsons goes beyond having written that Stiller hated John Gilbert as she added a tragic chord to her account of the silent era, much like biographer John Bainbridge, she quotes Greta Garbo by listing an unknown source. Parsons describes an anonymous woman during 1931 in Modern Screen Magazine, "She holds herself irrevocably and inexcusably accountable. One day a woman friend was visiting her at home. Garbo insisted on playing over and over a collection of melancholy, Swedish records. 'Why do you play that sad music?' asked the friend. 'It must depress you frightfully.''Yes,' said Garbo. 'it reminds me of the one I hurt- one I murdered. But that is good. It is right that I should remember.' No one else in the world would dreamed saying that Greta Garbo killed Mauritz Stiller. No one could possibly hold her responsible that a man died because she did not love him."      As late as 1933, after the Greta Garbo image had been established, Axel Ingwerson published an article in Photoplay titled, "Did Garbo Marry Stiller?" With the subtitle "Is there any basis I fact for this strange rumor?" While describing Mauritz Stiller, Ingwerson 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." Biographer Fredrick Sands quotes Victor Sjostrom as having said, "For a certain time at least Stiller was in love with her and she with him. They told me so themselves." I have had Victor Sjostrom quoted as having said, "At one time, Moje was without any doubt in love with Garbo and she with him." and that she had reiterated that if ever she were to love anyone, it would be Mauritz Stiller, the director who had taken her to see her first movie in the United States, "The Lady Who Lied" (1925, eight reels), starring Lewis Stone and Nita Naldi.      Among the events of 1924 had been 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. As he was wont to do, biographer John Bainbridge quoted an unknown source in order to indirectly quote Garbo, possibly lifted from a fan magazine, or perhaps actually from a personal interview, "Content with her little circle of friends, Garbo resolutely refused to anything to do with the conventional social life of the film colony. When Mary Picford invited her to a dinner in honor of Lord Montbatten...Miss Garbo declined with thanks. Miss Pickford then wrote Miss garbo a long letter...This pleading missive brought no results. 'It would be the same old thing,' Garbo said to one of ther friends. 'Strangers staring at me and talking about me. I would be expected to dance and I despair dancing. I can't do it.'" Marion Davies laso gave a similar dinner for Lord Montbatten where Garbo also declined her invitation. Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom In the United States, Exceptional Photoplays, in an article titled The Swedish Photoplays distinguished the film of Svenska Bio for their "quality of composition" 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 posesses lies in the splendid composition of its scenes and incomparable lovliness of its lighting effects. There is a certain architectural magnificence 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). That year the films Sjostrom had made in Sweden were becoming more widely reviewed in the United States- in an article that compared the no longer new art form of film to painting, Majorie Mayne, in The New Masters published in Pictures and PictureGoer, wrote, "And the director went to picture galleries for his data; Victor Seastrom reincarnated Renaisance art in his Love's Crucible, scene after scene of which remains an unforgettable memory, and in Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness, pictures of a different, thoroughly compelling type Iabounded." 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 personalities." 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 title of the book on Victor Sjostrom written by Bo Florin is fitting; the idea that Victor Sjostrom's coming to Hollywood to film would entail some type of transition and transformation was prefigured in Scenario Bulletin Digest, the Open Forum between the Writer and Studio, published by the Universal Scenario Corporation in 1923 when Sjostrom had first signed his contract with Goldwyn and the need to keep his artistic integrity was formulated by Sjostrom himself before he had toured the studio. The article illustrates the theme of Florin's book on Sjostrom by outlining the expectations of Sjostrom and Goldwyn, "The arrangement gives him a free hand in the artistic making of photodramas. The assurance that Mr. Seastrom will be unhampered in the development of his art is one of the most significant features of his connection with Goldwyn." The magazine quoted Sjostrom at a time when he had just only arrived in Hollywood and it would have been suprising that the quote had not come to the attention of Bengt Forslund, a biographer who had chronicled Sjostrom's transitions while becoming a revered, hallowed director of Swedish Silent Film and later through letters Sjostrom had sent while in Hollywood. "'No definite plans have been made as of yet,' he said, but I am to make pictures in the best way I am able, to satisfy myself as nearly as possible. That is all there is to it.'" He is again quoted,"The most striking attribute of American made motion pictures,' he continued, 'is their humanness. It is my hope that I will be able to develop this remarkable quality of humanness on the screen. It is this quality, i think that has made the popularity os so many American pictures abroad.'" It then profiled the director with, "Mr. Seastrom, who is also one of the most noted actors on the screen, has not decided, he said, whether or not he will appear in his productions in this country...Although Mr. Seastrom's fame has been more closely associated in this country with the grimmest sort of screen dramas. beautifully photographed, (some of his double exposure effects, notably in The Stroke of Midnight, never have been equalled) he has had striking success in his country with comedies." 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. While noting that Name the Man had not been Sjostrom's Photoplay, Bo Florin records that while in Hollywood, where the techniques of Griffith and Ince had differed as to the details included in a shooting script, Sjostrom created from behind the camera, Paul Bern having had drawn the storyline into its treatment. "When compRing the script to the film, it becomes clear that these details consist of stylistic devices which Sjostrom in Sweden had been used to including at the script stage, but which are now added afterwards. Thus, Name the Man contains a dissolve combined with a cut across the line which shows exactly the same space from the reverse angle. While the dissolve remains quite conventional in its function, bridging a spatial transition, it's combination with the violation of the 180 rule creates an interesting effect." Oddly, as the studio was using Seastrom's name before filming had completed to advertise that "Golddwyn 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." Exhibitor's Trade Review in March, 1923 reported similarly, "Another recent addition was the signing of Victor Seastrom, director and actor with Swedish Biograph to come to this country and direct productions for it. hat his first picture will be is not known." In April of that year it printed that he had selected The Master of Men, "The story selected is of such unusual dramatic quality that it will be worth all of the energy and directorial genius that Mr. Seastrom brings to bear upon his productions...The leading members of the cast are now being selected and the sets are being built." The film stars Mae Busch, Bo Florin noting that Victor Sjostrom had not wanted Mae Busch for the lead, but that she had appeared in an earlier film, The Christian, an adaptation of the novel by Sir Hall Caine by Maurice Tourner- according to the studio, Sjostrom had to relent. 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."      A photo caption in Picture Play magazine during 1924 reintroduced actress Patsy Ruth Miller to magazine readers and movie audiences, "Every new film shows new development in Patsy Ruth Miller, which augers well for her mature years. The Goldwyn Picture "Name the Man" has been her greatest chance to date."      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." Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1924 provided a brief synopsis of Name the Man, directed by Victor Seastrom, "Drama showing how human passions changed the lives of four persons from low and high positions in the social strata." During 1923, Victor Sjostrom wrote from the United States that he thought he might be given a script by Elinor Glyn to adapt into a photoplay, "I told them that I knew a film like that would succeed on her name, but that I didn't believe it was the kind of stuff I should do." He also writes that the novel Born av tiden (A Simple Life, written by Knut Hamsun, at that time could have been a possibility.      1922 had been the year during which appeared the second film directed by Gustaf Molander, Amatorfilmen, the first film in which actress Elsa Ebbengen-Thorblad was to appear, brought actress Mimi Pollack to Swedish movie audiences. 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." Karin Molander had been married to the Swedish director between 1910-1919, her and Lars Hanson having been paired together under the direction of Victor Sjostrom during 1917. 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." After their return to Sweden the Molander's were invited to a dinner party with Garbo acquaintance Knut Martin by visiting journalist Jack Cambell, who quoted Karin Molander in the article "I am the Unhappiest Girl in the World- says Greta Garbo", published by The New Movie Magazine. After Hanson related that he had lately seen very little of Greta Garbo Karin Molander described the actress, "She was always a timid girl. terribly shy. Even in the old days in Hollywood, she used to go right home from the studio and go to bed. she'd never see anybody...You must admire her for the way she has fought herself upward, all alone, since Stiller." Picture Play magazine printed the article Two Gentlemen from Sweden, which was to comparatively interview both Einar Hansen and Lars Hanson. It read, "To crush flappers hopes, I regret that I must report he is happily married to Karen Nolander, formerly an actress in Sweden.She is charming and a lovely lady, whose sparkle and quaint naïveté have intrigued Hollywood."       Victor Sjostrom wrote an article entitled The Screen Story of the Future, published by The Story World and Photodramatist in July, 1923, in which he advised, "The screenwriter must first of all have something to say, and secondly, the vitality and the sincerity that will enable him to say it in a deeply human way. But technique is vastly essential." 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 ratherP 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 version of Hall Caine's Name the Man, we were disappointed. he failed to rise much above the level of a fourth rate novel." They reversed their position 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 clearly 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." Film Daily also mentioned Conrad Nagel as being the second choice for the film's "masculine lead.""The Master of Men" was noted by Film Daily as having been in production during July of 1923. During August, Film Daily reported, "Victor Seastrom is now making scenes with the crowd storming the castle in "The Master of Men". It ran "Seastrom Finsihes Picture" that September, finally providing the tile of the film rather than the title of the novel Sjostrom was adapting. A photocaption during 1924 in Screenland was to read, "Victor Seastrom directing a scene of The Judge and The Woman. Seastrom has his camera mounted upon an automobile chassis while he shoots Patsy Ruth Miller and Conrad Miller out for a stroll." 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." Bo Florin admittedly agrees with Bengt Forslund that there is a parallel between the storylines of Name the Man and the earlier film The Sons of Ingmar, the two novelist thereby compared after their having had been being adapted to the screen.

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 1924 Film Daily ran the sub-headline, "Three from Seastrom, Swedish Director Signs with Metro-Goldwyn, His Next 'Kings in Exile'. It printed, "Victor Seastrom, the Swedish director borught over by Goldwyn before the merger has signed a new contract to direct three more pictures. It is understood his original arrangement was for two which were Name the Man and He Who gets Slapped. His next will be Kings in Exile, in which Alice terry will appear as the Queen. Work starts in six weeks." It again during October wrote, "Victor Seastrom signs new contract with Metro-Goldwyn to direct three more." It reported during December of 1924 that the title had been changed to Confessions of a Queen, it being one of three films from Metro-Goldwyn reported to have title changes, Henley and Vignola being the other two directors affected. 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. Filming was completed in four weeks. 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; to avoid controversy, Exhibitor's Trade Review reported the novel's title as The King's Exile, "Of course, much of Daudet's original novel is eliminated, chiefly, perhaps, because of the screen's limitations. But the plot is interesting, has a humoruous angle and despite its unpopular ending, will please the average audience...And both Alice Terry and Lewis Stone ably depict the royal character roles, which Victor Seastrom rounds out with considerable skill." 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. Bo Florin writes that, "The film in several respects is less elaborate than the director's other Hollywood films. This may partly have been due to the film being produced in such haste, but probably partly also to the previously mentioned fact that he as a director, to a large extent seems to have chosen to subordinate his wishes to the demands of the script, which was, in this case, a straitforward, realist story."      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 sheik" (the Swedish Valentino) and predicted his soon aquiring fame in the United States, as it did that year with Sigrid Holmqvist. Holmqvist had often been depicted as "The Swedish Mary Pickford". 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 Victor Sjostrom directs Lillian Gish as Victor Seastrom       It was in 1926 that Lillian Gish, while filming La Boheme (King Vidor, nine reels) with John Gilbert, had met Victor Sjöst röm. 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."      Picture Play magazine during 1926 featured a photograph of Lillian Gish in costume wearing the Scarlet Letter while being visited on the set by Dorothy Gish, who was about to sail for England. 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 before they became associated at Svenska Bio, but he was aware of his reputation." The reptutation acquired by Mauritz Stiller that Victor Sjostrom would have been aware of has been chronicled by Jan Olsson of Stockholm University who views Stiller as being a local celebrity, or cult figure at the moment of his directorial debut, from the first day of shooting as a result of “cultural intertwining” between the Stockholm theatrical society and bohemian journalists. Olsson relates there having been several newspaper interviews of Stiller during 1912, one reviewer using the pen name William and another, who soon after interviewed Lillian Beck, using the penname Pius, but while doing so, the author points to inconsistencies between the memories of Stiller and Sjostrom when weighed against Charles Magnusson and Gosta Werner.Jan Olsson challenges Victor Sjostrom’s memory as to whether or not his first film as an actor under the direction of Maurice Stiller, “The Vampire” (1913) in which he starred with Lilly Bech, had literally been shortened by censorship. In any event, if the Golden age of Swedish Silent Film had in fact began three years earlier in Kristianstad Sweden with the films of Director Carl Endahl, then it is ostensibly that Stockholm was a center of Swedish Theater that effected the move that seems to eclipse the first Swedish Silent Films, Films which still might support the recent idea that audiences felt connected to the natural landscape depicted in Scandinavian films and that provided a feeling of national identity to filmgoers.      It had been early in 1912 that Magnusson had met with screenwriter Erik Ljungberger who gave Magnusson Victor Sjostrom's name and who telephoned him for Magnusson. Bo Florin, in Victor Sjostrom and the Golden Age, quotes Victor Sjostrom, "Both Stiller and I had the great fortune to stumble upon directing careers at a time that was so suitable for us. Suitable to break away from the muck, to question the assumptions behind what I was so often to hear in Hollywood later on-'give the public what it wants'. We also had the good fortune to work for a studio whose president, Charles Magnusson was an intelligent man. So intelligent, in fact, that he eventually discovered the best way to deal with us was to leave us alone." John Bainbridge quotes Victor Sjostrom as having said, "We were great, very great friends. But in spite of our sincere friendship, I am not sure that I knew him profoundly, got deep under his skin. I don't think anybody did. So many different kinds of men were gathered within him."      Photoplay reviewed the 1926 film version of The Scarlet Letter, "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 received 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 gelatinizing 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 addition to her gallery of suffering heroines." Before beginning his chapter An Aesthetics of Light, Bo Florin lays an emphasis to the "cinematic language" used by Victor Sjostrom in the film, particularly superimposures and the metaphoric function of their metrynomy, and the use of off-screen space. a language which "emphasizes the presence of the spectator"(Florin). The chapter title ultimately leads to an analysis of the film's mise-en-scene by author Orjan Roth-Lindberg, and then continues to a look at stylistic devices, summarized in Florin having written, "Thus continuity may be traced on a general thematic level as well as stylistically, in the handling of light and landscape, and down to the smallest details, such as the use of one specific device, the dissolve, which perhaps, more than any other, has characterized Sjostrom as a director." November 1926, Motion Picture announced "Seastrom Returns". Victor Sjostrom had sailed to to United States on the Gripsholm from Sweden, where he and his family had been vacationing.

Silent Film: Lost Film, Found Magazines Mauritz Stiller, after having met cameraman 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 noted 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 reported 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. Begnt Forslund exuberantly remarks upon the discovery of a hitherto unknown copy of Predators of the Sea (Sea Vultures, Havsgama, 1914), starring Richard Lund, Greta Almoth and John Ekman, and not so exhuberantly on the unlikelihood of a copy of Victor Sjostrom"s film The Divine Woman ever being found in the future. 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. Although preserved and restored by the Swedish Film Institute, the film Nar karleken dodar (1913), a two act drama (with a prologue) photographed by Julius Jaenzon in which Mauritz Stiller directed Victor Sjostrom and George af Klerker, exists only in incomplente form as fragmentary, as does Par livets odesvager from that same year, again photographed by Julius Jaenzon with Mauritz Stiller directing from a script written by Peter Lykke-Seest. More perfunctory was the author Aleksander Kwaiatowski, writing in the latter fourth of the twentieth century about the remnants of Mauritz Stiller at Swedish Biograph, "Of the thirty two pictures he made between 1912 and 1916, prints of only one are available, Love and Journalism...Contemporaries thought Love and Journalism a Danish-inspired film, the presentation of society life meant only to entertain audiences, with no attention to social problems. Added to the missing Swedish catalog, 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". One clue in finding them, or realigning their photo play subject matter and story lines may be that Leif Furhammar has written that after Swedish director George af Klerker left the studio to conceivably film with Pathe and director Paul Garbagni, Producer Charles Magnusson shifted his attention to Denmark, securing the rights to Danish melodramas while exporting Swedish films through Copenhagen rather than Paris. "Several of the movies produced in the Swedish studios were pure imitations of Danish popular films." From the magazines that were circulated at the time period, there can be found a more detailed view of the films that are now lost. In Close Up magazine, essayist Robert Herring allows a fragment where there would otherwise be none. In the article Film Imagery :Seastrom, he quotes the now deteriorated intertitles while describing a scene, "When the great actress breaks down she cries, 'I can't go on. Oh God, I'm done for. I hate it all.'" It was the author's sentiment that this scene be placed nearer toward the end of the film, and yet what is certain is that there aren't enough remaining stills from the film to piece together how the scene appeared on the screen visually. When the magazine reviewed the film as a new release it advised, "The Divine Woman. If you must see Garbo, see her under Seastrom." 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 existing 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). The Tower of Lies was photographed by Percy Hilburn. 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." After providing a brief synopsis, Exhibitor's Trade Review summarized the film and its tone, "A heart-gripping photoplay well produced and full of fine characterization. It's audience appeal is nevertheless in doubt because of the sombre futility of the story. It is replete with bitterness. Scarce a ray of sunshine penetrates the gloom. When the clouds do part it is for a brief instant. It is depressing...It is full of a rare symbolism. people will not forget it...Get the best people in town to see this one. Tell them about Lon Chaney's latest effort. Stress the book tie-up." A press notice from the studio included, "Another of Lon Chaney's remarkable character portrayals will be seen in 'The Tower of Lies' and the catch lines provided to theater owners were, "LIfe was cruel to him, but he held Truth and Honor to the end- and when the Tower of Lies crashed, he was ready to meet it." Motion PIcture News reviewed the film, "Victor Seastrom approaches more nearly to the artistic masterpieces which he produced abroad than in anything he has made here. Not that it is finer than 'He Who Gets Slapped' but that it approaches his Swedish pictures more nearly in theme and mood. This is partly due no doubt to the fact that it is based upon Selma Lagerlof's Swedish novel." The plot theme of the "story of Scandinavian peasant life" and "scenes of rural life" was given in outline by the magazine, "Intimate drama of a farmer who awakens to the beauty of life through his daughter, and who loses his reason when she goes astray. His death brings the girl back to herself."      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 mask of a mountebank...In The Tower of Lies, his make-up demonstrates a transition from middle age to old age." Both films The Tower of Lies and The Unholy Three were unreleased at the time of the review. Robert Herring, who published Film Imagery: Seastrom in Close Up magazine, wrote, "When Seastrom made Tower of Lies in Hollywood, and his landscapes were reduced to softened orchards, and smooth hills, life in the house was still as living, still almost as Swedish, in the very details exteriorized the main theme as much as ever, even though to my taste, the theme was poor."       Victor Sjostromwould exchange his place behind the camera to play the character he filmed as Victor Seastrom: director Gustav Molander remade Tower of Lies in Sweden during 1944, Victor Sjostrom himself taking Lon Chaney's character in the cast with Swedish actress Gunn Walgren filling in for Norma Shearer. Forsyth Hardy wrote, "Although Sjostrom"s intense acting made the film moving, it was curiously out of sympathy with the new atmosphere of production." A year earlier, Gustaf Molander had directed Sjostrom in Det Brinner en Eld, Forsyth Hardy having written that, "The acting in these parts of Victor Sjostrom, Lars Hanson and Inga Tiblad gave the film a strong human appeal and from the war setting Molander resourcefully drew a nervous tension to sharpen his drama."      Made before Tower of Lies, an earlier film starring John Gilbert and Norma Shearer, The Wolfman, directed by Edmund Mortimer in 1924, is also among the myriad of films now thought to be lost, included among them Four Devils, filmed in the United States by F. W Murnau in 1928 and starring Janet Gaynor and Nacy Drexel. Photoplay, while providing a still from the film, saw The Four Devils as the "long awaited successor" to Murnau's Sunrise and as a source of a plot summary to the film, it alludes to the film's tone, "the final shot implies a happy ending. The film will probably be cut to eliminate the over drawn scenes before it is released." One film thought to be non-existent before preservation attempts is a film which introduced actor Nils Asther in his first appearance onscreen, a Lars Hanson film directed by Mauritz Stiller in 1916, The Wings (Vingarne)- it was remade, or re-adapted rather, as a silent by Carl Theodore Dreyer. Maurtiz Stiller had directed Lars Hanson in his first film, Dolken, photographed by Julius Jaenzon and starring Lili Bech, a year earlier. Another recent discovery led to the restoration of the "previously thought lost" (Svenska Filminstitutet) 1913 film Gransfolken also directed by Mauritz Stiller. The Svenska Filminsitutet reported the finding of a tinted nitrate print of the film of which black and white negatives were made, thereby allowing recreated intertitles to be added to a Desmet print. The film stars Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Lily Jacobsson, Edith Erastoff and Stina Berg and was photographed by Julius Jaenzon and Hugo Edlund. Loves of An Actress (Rowland Lee,1928) in which Nils Asther starred with Pola Negri and Mary McAllister, as a matter of fact, is a lost film.      Bo Florin has noted, "Sjostrom's career as a film director in Sweden before he went to Hollywood is usually divided into two parts: before and after A Man There Was (1917)...much of the earlier material is lost. The rediscovery of Dodskyssen (The Kiss of Death) from 1916, however, calls for a nuancing of this; in its complex stylistic effects, this films stands much closer to Korkarlen (The Phantom Carriage) 1921, his internationally most famous and stylistically most elaborated film, than to A Man There Was." And yet, Florin also compares The Phantom Carriage with Name the Man in an examination of the style of Victor Sjostrom, "The dissolve in Name the Man might serve the particular purpose of softening the spatial reversal...a comparision to The Phantom Carriage might illustrate the function of the dissolve. The whole narrative development in the film could be said to be condensed within one constrasting device...In The Phantom Carriage as in Name the Man, the clear structural parallel between two images adds a new dimension to the interpretation of the film's meaning. These examples of style clearly indicate continuity between Sweden and Hollywood, where Sjostrom has preserved his characteristic signature in spite of the shift between to production cultures." In regard to spatial reversal, Florin chronicles that there are eighteen seperate instances of Victor Sjostrom "cutting across the 180 degree line to a completely reversed camera position" in the film The phantom Carriage. Interestingly, David Bordwell has written, "Sjostrom is perhaps the model for a fast learner, having created one of the masterpieces in Ingeborg Holm, and only a few years later making The Girl from Stormycroft (1917) and The Outlaw and His Wife, assured excercises in continuity editing." To which can be added a quote from Jon Wengstrom of the Swedish Film Institute, "The pictorial compostitions in Sea Vultures (Havsgamar, 1916) and the complex narrative structure in the recently rediscovered Kiss of Death (Dodskyssen, 1916) show a director in full command of the medium." Maximillan Schmige quotes author Hans Pensel, "By 1920 Sjostrom had learned to employ a faster editing of his pictures and began to understand the enormous importance of the visual elements in cinema."The Phantom Carriage (Korkarlen/The Phantom Chariot, 1920, also listed as 1921), when shown in the United States during 1922 under the title The Stroke of Midnight, was reviewed by Photoplay Magazine as being, "Drama from the Swedish- so drab and grim in its realism that one longs, almost, for a bit of unassuming splapstick to liven it up...Impressive, but depressing." Picture-play Magazine in 1922 reviewed the film, "It is a Swedish film and full of gloom. But the strong point of 'Midnight' is not the gloom, but its ghost story." it continued to note that the film "will send shivers up your spine" the reviewer conceded that they "had to sit through reels of endless dreary moralizing." On the acting performance of Victor Sjostrom in front of the camera during The Phantom Carriage, Forsyth Hardy wrote, "The exaggerated gestures of some of the earlier films had gone, but the intensity of feeling was still there." Hardy summarizes his impression of Sjostrom with the premise that Sjostrom inevitably preferred acting, and the theater, to directing and staging camerawork. When asked about Victor Sjostrom, Ingmar Bergman had told Torsten Manns, "His films meant a tremendous lot to me, particularly The Phantom Carriage and Ingeborg Holm." In his autobiography Images, Ingmar Bergman writes, "He made the movie that, to me, was the first film of all films. I saw it for the first time when I was fifteen; to this day I see it at least once every summer, either alone or in the company of young people. I clearly see how The Phantom Carriage influenced my work." Birgitta steene in fact writes,"The aim of both The Phantom carriage and Wild strawberries is moral; they tell of a change of character in an egotistical old man and his integration into a community of love." The recently married editor of the online journal Scandinavian Cinema, Australian Emma Vestrheim has expressed a similar common sentiment of film buffs, "Wild Strawberries is a road trip through the Swedish countryside, where the protagonist played by Victor Sjostrom comes to terms with his own life and death, after he dreams that he dies. The trip through nature represents his own inner conflicts and battles, and it fits perfect that Sjostrom is both one of Bergman's inspirations and the director of The Phantom Carriage, one of the first Scandinavian films about death." Emma, with whom I had been taking an online class on Scandinavian Cinema, was extremely polite while I was being considered as a contributor to her fist issue. Bergman has written that while filming "Wild Strawberries" ("Simultronstallet" 1957) that it seemed to him that it soon became "Victor's film", the film belonging more to the actor than to the director, and yet after "Wild Strawberries", Bergman would begin to write films in which "dialogue and characteristizations would take precedence over scenery and locations." (Cowie) In part, what may account for Berman's feeling that the film had become more of a contribution that Sjostrom had made rather than one of his own, Bergman an auteur if anything, may have been its use of the protagonist as narrative address rather than the omniscient, time-traveling third person authorial camera as an unnown lyrical "I"; the character imparts storyline rather than a construct of the director known as observer. During an interview with Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima, Bergman had said, "Many of my films are about journeys, people going from one place to another." Narrative space seems character centered- a throne from subjectivity. Sima had noted shortly before that "Wild Strawberries" centers around the character portrayed by Victor Sjostrom and his "relationship to himself". But is the clock ticking differently in the two films, both of which star Sjostrom; are the deadlines and exigencies oblique to each other when films are compared? Victor Sjostrom was in fact not in the best health while filming for Ingmar Bergman and reportedly had difficulty remembering lines of dialogue. There were scenes that had been filmed on interior sets using back screen projection to accommodate Sjostrom. In regard to narrative linearity, it could be said that there are structural parallels between the two films, beginning with the placement of flashbacks and scene segmentation. Adapted from the novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness by Selma Lagerlof and directed by Victor Sjostrom from his own screenplay, the film was photographed by Julius Jaenzon. In the United States, Exceptional Photoplays reviewed the film during 1922, "In this picture is present to a very marked degree the inclination toward the supernatural, toward the the eerie forces beyond the bounds of reason, which is characteristic of nearly all Swedish productions. Obviously any attempt to transpose the works of Selma Lagerlof to the screen would necessitate careful handling of the suggestion of the supernatural nowhere more strikingly present than in her novel Stroke of Midnight is a picturization." Einar Lauritzen wrote, "The double exposures in the graveyard scenes and in the scenes with the phantom chariot are beautifully executed, and, as always in Julius Jaenzon's photography, the interplay of light and shadow is superb. Peter Cowie has noted that during the scene, "Occaisionaly as many as four images are superimposed on a single frame." Francis Taylor Patterson of Exceptional Photoplays reviewed the film, "Here a strong dramatic interest is built upon the legend of the Gray Driver, who drives his grim cart over the moors, through the cities, to the floor of the sea itself, collecting the souls of the dead...There is a wealth of imagery in the play, a freshness both of in conception and execution, which combined with the admirable acting, again, of Victor Seastrom, place the play well forward among screen excellencies." In Remapping Lagerlof:performance, Intermediality and European transmissions; Selma Lagerlof in the Goden Age of Swedish Film, author Anna Nordlund writes, "Sjostrom's ethical and aesthetic ideals coincided with the visual dimensions of Lagerlof's narrative technique, as well as with the drama and growing emotional tension of her narrative content." She highlights that Sjostrom was to "experiment in depth with the cinematic possibilities of depicting more than one level of place and time and of visualizing a complex plot rather than chronological story. During April of 1921, Educational film Magazine reviewed the film with, "The actual story passes in a period of not more than fifteen minutes, during which time a man's soul is completely regenerated...The spiritual wandering a of (the character), as he lies unconscious, and as he believes, dead in a churchyard, after a midnight orgy, convey to the spectator, episode by episode, his complete life history. These retrospective scenes are introduced unite deftly. the thesis of the story is essentially a morality tale...The picture is inspird throughout by the highest ethical motives, although it is in no sense religious or Salvationalist propaganda." Victor Sjostrom appears as Victor Seastrom in Film Daily magazine during 1920. During 1920, audiences in the United States were asked to flock to A Man There Was, a full page advertisement with To Our Critics scrolled across the top appearing in The Film Dauly on March 14. beneath the picture of Victor Sjostrom was the caption ,"the Great American artists acclaimed in Europe as "Prince of the Screen", who overwhelmed the American Press as a Grat Actor and still a greater director." quoting reviewers from Moving Picture World, Motion Picture News, Exhibitor!s trade Review and Wids's Daily, in which the ad appeared, it claimed to impart "What the leading critics of the motion picture press said about A Man There Was after it's first (imperfect) Picture Projection arranged for the press." Sjostrom's film, one that had been filmed before the merger of studios in Sweden, has followed him to the United States, finally screened not only four years after it was made, but in a country that Sjostrom would not direct in until four years after that- he was not yet Victor Seastrom. Summarizing the film A Man There was not a moving picture but a moving painting, Victor Seastrom, not a movie star but a screen luminary of the first magnitude. and both combined are the treat of the season." The photo caption identifies the director as Victor Seastrom. Motion Picture News introduced Victor Sjostrom to American readers during 1920 with The review Actor-Director plays role By Proxy., "Victor Sjostrom, the actor director of the Swedish Biograph Company employs a double to his own role during rehearsals of film plays, only portraying the part himself when the actual photographing of the events is going on. By viewing his own role from being the camera, Sjostrom derives a better understanding, declared Ernest Mattsson, American manager of the Swedish Biograph Company.      The films of Sjostrom and Stiller can be compared while relating their influence upon the silent film of Finland, but it can be allowed that, "Victor Sjostrom delved deeper into the mysteries of landscape"(Annetti Alanen). Venerated film historian Forsyth Hardy compared the two silent film directors by writing, "Both turned instinctively for materials from the works of Selma Lagerlof with their combination of ardent puritainism and passionate love of nature. And both were sensitively aware of the virtue which the cameraq could draw out of inanimate objects." Director Mauritz Stiller had in 1921 used the Swedish part of Lapland to film the beautiful actress Jenny Hasselquist in the film "Johan" ("Troubled Waters"), an adaptation of the 1911 novel written by Juhani Aho. As well as being an author, Aho had translated the work of Selma Lagerlof into the Finnish language. Like Selma Lagerlof, Juhani Aho complained that if the novel had not been translated exactly to film by Stiller, it had certainly not been translated to the screen literally, but his objections seem less strongly put and Stiller's poetic liscence seems less flagrant. Aho had been promised he could review the film script before it had been filmed, which was apparently passed by at the time. Juhani Aho wrote from Helsinki to Mauritz Stiller in Stockholm with the announcement that he has translated the intertitles to Stiller's Photoplay into Finnish. "The Swedish actors," wrote Aho, "are above all criticism. They are faultless. I don't know who I should praise most." Once considered a lost film "Johan", directed by Mauritz Stiller has since been restored. It was photographed by Swedish cinematographer Henrik Jaenzon.  The scholar Antii Alanen has written, "The composition is based on the elements of light and the stream. The characters radiate in the enchanted light and night never falls. The ever-present stream rushes forth as an image of life and even time itself." As an "ode to light", Antii compares Stiller's film to Murnau's "Faust", but in doing so it would seem that he was thinking more about "The Wind", directed by Victor Sjostrom.      Birgitta Steene noted that, "it was Sjostrom and Stiller (as well as Griffith) who began to shoot pictures outdoors." Peter Cowie has noted that Swedish films were often shot on location and that Sjostrom had "revelled in location shooting and embarked on the most perilous of stunts for the sake of realism." Often in the films of Sjostrom, like in those of Bergman, "the landscape in which his journeys take place are part of the journey." (Simon)  During 1920, Victor Sjostrom had veered from Selma Lagerlof and had adapted, that is to say wrote and directed, a story by Franz Grillparzer, his relying upon Swedish camerman Henrik Jaenzon behind the lens to film The Monastery of Sendomir (Klosteret i Sendomir/The Secret of the Monastery, starring Tora Teje, Renee Bjorling, Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson and Erik A Petschler. Francis Taylor Patterson reviewed the film for the magazine Exceptional Photoplays, "The Secret of the Monastery has used for dramatic purposes an interior setting just as 'Sir Arne' used an exterior." The magazine felt that as there were only two exterior shots employed in the film in shifted  the interest from setting to characterization at the expense of depicting the splendor of the Scandinavian landscape. There is a beauty to film criticism if it is not a separate art form and if it is not a separate form of extratextural discourse in its being a specificity if not in its being personal that is reflected in a quote from Francis Taylor Patterson in his Swedish Photoplays published in Exceptional Photoplays magazine during 1922, "This is an impression of quietude, of dramatic repose. There is a smoothness in the flow of the scene sequence. There does not seem to be that constant urge to speed up the action, which mars some of our pictures. A slowness of movement, a dignity, sits well upon the tragic mood which most of these pictures sustain." There is an appreciation of film for what it is, the viewer experience- yet in comparing Sjostrom before he came to the United States to Griffith or Ince, the author has alighted upon film theory and just that; the principle that montage should acclerate, that it is necessary that it should, that cross cutting inordinately should become more rapid.      Forsyth Hardy brackets the film with Masterman with the observation, "Sjostrom never lost his interest in the film as a medium for the expression of inner conflicts and for the revelation of character from within." While providing a synopsis-analysis of the film, Bo Florin writes that Sjostrom uses the dissolve in Monastery of Sendomir as a transformatory device, "In addition to the cuts [across the line cutting, reverse angle], the dissolve plays a particularly central role among other optical transitions in Sjostrom's films. Moreover, it is often used as a transformatory device creeating analogies between two images- sometimes also in connection with superimposures...The dissolve works, as an independent device which does not in this context recieve any clarifying support from any other narrative patterns. In this single changing of images through motion in reverse direction (is) the whole drama". Florin continues to note a series of five transformatory dissolves in the film Love's Crucible (Vem Domer, 1922)." Picturegooer Magazine during 1922 in fact mispelled Hjalmer Bergman's name as Hjalmer Borgstrom while introducing Victor Sjostrom to its audiences with the film "Vem Domer", filmed while Sjostrom was still in Sweden. "'Good stories,' Sjostrom averred,'are many. But those having a world wide appeal are not easy to procure." Victor Sjostrom had again relied upon Julius Jaenzon while filming "Masterman" ("Master Samuel", "A Dangerous Pledge") during 1920, in which he starred with Greta Almroth and Concordia Selander. The film was scripted by Hjalmer Bergman. Victor Sjostrom was referred to as Victor Seastrom as early as 1919, before making The Phantom Carriage During 1919, while Victor Sjostrom was still in Sweden, the periodical Picture Show Magazine introduced to its readers the director of the recent productions "A Man There Was", "Love- the Only Law" and "Dawn of Love". It called Sjostrom "The 'Beerbohm Tree' of Screen Drama". The magazine explained that during rehearsal Sjostrom used an understudy so he could observe the drama as though from behind the camera and acted only when the film was literally being photographed. Sjostrom would spend weeks in his study before beginning to films, as well as time deciding upon scenery and visiting the location and its people. The Picture Show Magazine quoted Victor Sjostrom contrasting directing for the stage with that of directing scenarios for the screen, "One has to deal with more people and also with grandly terrible landscapes, with shifting effects of sun and shadow." It fuether explained by adding on its part that "There is also the problem of getting tehe actors, as it were, to magnify themselves so that in spite of the immensity of the background, man or woman will still be the most compelling interest." The 1919 article addressed Victor Sjostrom only as Victor Seastrom, it having been subtitled "The Art of Victor Seastrom". Picturegooer Magazine during 1922, in an article entitled "The Saga of Sjostrom" had a unique way of introducing Victor Seastrom to its British readership, the photocaptions referred to the director as Victor Seastrom, while the content of the entire article referred to him as Victor Sjostrom. During August of 1919, Motion Picture News ran two full pages of illustrated advertisement for the Swedish Biograph Company reminiscient of the advertisements for Nordisk film that had Untill then been placed in magazines during most of the decade. It, along with a page devoted to the films Love the Only Law, a Man There Was, Flame of Life and Dawn of Love, announced its first feature that had been brought to the United States, the Girl from Marshcroft, which "was run at Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass. For two record breaking weeks. During 1920, Film Daily reported that Fine Arts Pictures had acquired for distribution in the United States the film "The Woman He Chose, which is The Girl Of Marshcroft renamed." To Bengt Forslund, Sjostrom had found a "descriptive visual language" which accounts for his collaboration with Selma Lagerlof and her novels being particularly suited for adaptation. John Fullerton, in his article Notes on the Cultural Context of Reception: The Girl from Marsh Croft 1917, includes novelist Selma Lagerlof in his assessment of how the film interpellated audiences to identify with its subjects in the triad of unseen-observer/authorial camera, viewing subject as objectification-embodiment of the look and the spectator-in-the-public-sphere; Fullerton enters the extra-textural deigesis of flanneur/commodity by pointing to a fourpage advertisement or "publicity newsheet" that appeared in Film Nyheter prior to the film's release that primarily details a screening of the film that author Selma Lagerlof and director Victor Sjostrom attended together, a sneak preview in effect, in Gothenburg where Lagerlof publicly approves of the content of the film, "we are told that she believes Sjostrom has given of his best in this production and the he has not compromised his intentions." Fullerton mentions that Lagerlof criticises the number of intertitles in one particular scene and then quotes her as having said that despite of this she was in tears like everyone else who had seen the ending of the scene. Fullerton continues, "Lagerlof is reported as saying that '[f]ilm is much better and stronger that drama...Never before have the different roles in a dialogue scene been so thoroughly or excellantly realized." After analyzing a pivotal scene of the film, Fullerton writes, "In conjunction with an unusually high number of medium shots and medium close shots, intertitles promote character-centered narration. In do so, the film recasts the conventions of the dramatic tableau whose origin in nineteenth centuring staging [proscenium arch], genre painting and museum display had been so central to the formal development of the medium before the mid-1910's. The Girl from Marshcroft redefined earlier nodes of investment in the folk body as nostalgic object." The Girl From Marshcroft, which begins with a panning exterior establishing long shot and then reverses the screen direction to repeat it in a second shot before cutting to an interior with Greta Almroth after an introductory expository intertitle. It advances the scene with an over-the shoulder mirror shot of her readying to leave. Anna Nordlund, in Selma Lagerlof in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema chronicles that "Sjostrom made no attempt to capture cinematically Lagerlof's flashback technique and the complex shifts in time and place in the opening sequence of her story. on the contrary, while remaining faithful to the events portrayed in Lagerlof's story, Sjostrom rearranged the sequence of events chronologically throughout the film." Forsyth Hardy compares The Girl from the Marshcroft (Tosen fran Stormytorpet to the film The Outlaw and his Wife (Berg-Ejvind och frans Hustru. "Both films showed a marked advance on anything previously achieved in the Swedish cinema. There was greater freedom of movement, an assured sense of rhythm and a fine feeling for composition." In order to arrive at the premise that Sjostrom's productions in Hollywood were far removed from those made in Sweden, Bo Florin, in Transition and Transformation, begins his chapter Lyrical Intimacy as Authorial Style, with a look at the technique and cutting used in The Girl from the Marshcroft, The Monstery of Sendomir and The Outlaw and His Wife, "Sjostrom's preserved films from the Swedish years, which have formed the overall picture of the director, are perhaps above all characterized by their lyrical intimacy, created through downplayed acting, through a mise-en-scene and montage privileging a circular space with a clear center, towards which movements converge."The Girl From Marshcroft was produced by Charles Magnusson and was co-written with Victor Sjostrom by Esther Julin. Bo Florin notes that Sjostrom made modifications in the margins of the script of the film The Girl From Marshcroft while collaborating with Esther Julin, particularly one specific instance of cutting across the 180-degree line, a photographic device that Florin returns to while discussing the film Name the Man. On the silent film of Victor Sjostrom, Bo Florin has previously written, "In his review of The Outlaw and His Wife, french filmmaker and critic Louis Delluc has already mentioned "a third interpreter, particularly eloquent: landscape'- which echoes several other comments from this period. Henri Agel repeats the same point, talking about a fascinating "fusion between man and landscape.'" It is central to Florin's appreciation of Sjostrom that as a director, the journey to the United States was one where Sjostrom wasn't entirely out of his element, and that the camerawork was to be used to deepen the thematic content and symbolic characterizations in his films. "In my own analysis of The Outlaw and his Wife I have shown in detail how man's exposure to the overwhelmingly powerful forces of nature seem to make the latter more and more hostile. This, the shape of the landscape in the film functions as a series of visual presages, which to the spectators forebode the dark conclusion of the narrative. In quite a similar manner, the central element in The Wind appears an ever-present overwhelming force in the film that makes all attempts at human resistance appear futile and ineffectual." Florin also notes, "The film had been distributed in the United States with the title You and I, with the addition of a prologue and epilogue providing the original film with a frame which made it appear as a film within a film."Love the Only Law has also been listed as an alternative title to the film. Anne Bachmann, in Locating Inter-Scandinavian Silent Film Culture: Connections, Contentions, Configurations summarizes the view of critics toward the film, "In the reception of Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru, the most reiterated statements were comments on how the film engaged with nature: 'Natur och naturlighet helt igenom dew ar denna films stora sturka' (Nature and naturalness all through- that is the great strength of this film) was the phrase in Stockholms Dagblad. In several aspects Berg Ejvind was an offshoot from Terje Vigen, the first specimen of the Swedish wave of nature-focused films...In the reception of Berg-Ejvind, the nature discourse conversely fully overshadowed the mentions of the both popular and recent theater production of the play." Bachmann happened to find a quote from the author of the play, whom has seen the film, regarding the use of landscape as the veracity of the "nature-shot" when filming for an authenticity of location, "Johann Sigurjonsson stepped forward as a guarantor of the location's felt authenticity when declaring Lapland had the 'same' mountains, views, and clean air as Iceland.... 'I have wandered on foot through ther most desolate areas of Iceland, he said, and now [in the film] it was as if I recognized every spot. But, above all, it was the inner, invisible likeness [metaphysical aspect]- that which lives in the soil itself.' Photographed by Julius Jaenzon, it is Victor Sjostrom's scrrenplay, co-written by Swedish screenwriter Sam Ask, as the first script Ask had written, and was adapted from a novel by Johann Sigurjonsson that had already been brought to the theater. Victor sjostrom had performed the four act play quickly after it had been published; Eyvind of the Hills had been printed in Danish in 1911 and only later published in Icelandic. Sjostrom had performed the play in Goteborg that same year. The playwright, Johann Sigurjonsson explained it was built around the two principal characters by writing, "Halla's nature is moulded on a Danish woman's soul," but oddly he adds something more thematic by writing, "In my little garret in Copenhagen, i learned by my own experience the agony of lonliness." Sigurjohansson relates that it had been his correspondence with Bjornstjerne Bjornson that had helped him publish his first play, Dr. Rung, in 1905. He followed in 1908 with the play The Hraun Farm (Bondinn a Hrauni). Before the screening of Victor Sjostrom's The Outlaw and His Wife, Sigurjonsson also published the play The Wish (Onsket), which was printed in 1915. Anne Bachmann of Stockholm Universityl lends an insight into Victor Sjostrom the actor and director, "Hand in hand with the the discourse of 'nature and naturalness' went tales of danger encountered while I'm filming, particularly by Victor Sjostrom himself. For Berg-Ejvid he allegedly risked a fatal accident, and for Terje Vigen, his health in cold dips." Later in her essay, Bachmann identifies the scene as a stunt displaying "the anecdotal trope of danger of slipping down a rope and falling down a precipice to a certain death".   During 1926, Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius directed his first film, which he also scripted, Flickorna Gyurkovics, starring Betty Balfour, Karin Swanstrom, Stina Berg and Lydia Potechina. Contemporary to Victor Sjostrom's use of symbolic narrative, Swedish poet Birger Sjoberg during 1926 published the volume Cries and Wreaths (Kriser och kransar in which scandinavian landscape is used within mood images to envelope its symbolism. Landscape to thematicly depict emotion that needed to be expressed through the symbolic had been used earlier in the poetry of Vilhelm Ekelund.  In Sweden, during 1926 author Selma Lagerlof watched filmstrips of the adaptation to the screen of her novel by Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom in the United States, the scenario having been drawn up by Agnes Christine Johnston. All seven reels of the film are presently considered to be lost. There are seventeen dissolves in the film, the lowest incidence in the films directed by Sjostrom, but that nevertheless contributing to his "authorial imprint" (Florin). Norma Shearer, who had starred under Victor Sjostrom's direction in Tower of Lies with William Haines had said that Sjostrom "was more concerned with the moods he was creating than the shadings he would have injected into my performance." When reviewed by Photoplay Magazine, the film was seen as "a worthwhile picture spoiled by a too conscious effort to achieve art. Consequently, a human story suffers from artificiality." When further reviewed by Photoplay, it was added that, "If the director had been as concerned with telling the story as he was thinking of symbolic scenes, this would have been a great picture. As it is, Victor Seastrom was sko busy being artistic that he forgot to be human. The emotions are of those of the theater, not of life." Actor William Haines later was to tell Photoplay Magazine, "But then it is strange, too, that I have worked here for several years on the same lot with Greta Garbo and have never met her." On Sjostrom, Author Iris Barry observed, "He has a genius for the rural. In Tower of Lies he has redeemed himself on exactly these lines. Also witness the love scene in He Who Gets Slapped, the only really attractive part in that rather tedious picture."

Motion Picture News during early 1927 printed the announcement "Swedish Film Actress Signed by M.G.M.", which read, "Swedish distributors of M.G.M. pictures and announcements in Swedish trade papers state that Mona Martenson, a well known and beautiful actress of that country, has been signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and will come to America this summer."     The Picture Show Annual of 1930 featured still photographs John Gilbert with both Alma Rubens and Eva Von Berne to audiences that would see both the stills and the film, hoping to arrive at a consensus that no matter which he was with it was John Gilbert "in a really villainous role", his "love making playing second only to his versatility."     Important to modern authors, Movie Makers magazine, a journal for semi-professional or amateur cameramen, published in 1929 the shot structure from a scene from Masks of the Devil in Central Focusing, Technical Reviews to Aid the Amateur, it putting the film making of Victor Sjostrom on to paper as one of the forerunners to modern film criticism and theory, "Cinematics: In several instances, the camera is used to depict a character's inner thought or impulse in addition to thought and action which he conventionally expresses. In those cases the cinema becomes the all seeing eye of a narrator who penetrates the minds of the characters as well as show their surface reactions, In this case the technique used is as follows: first a medium shot or semi-close shot of two characters in conversation, then a close up of the face of one of them which dissolves into a scene showing him reacting as he really feels. This scene then dissolves back to a semi-closeup of the two characters talking together, fitting in smoothly," As a magazine article from a publication swamped with advertisements for "home projectors", it comes a half-century before the study of semiotics and film narrative. Interestingly, the same issue reviewed the film Uneasy Money (Berthold Vietral) in regard to plot complications, inanimate objects and story-line as the expression of human emotions. In a later issue it looks at the moving camera, flashback narrative and double exposed titles, the use of an image with inter-title, in the film Night Watch (Lajos Biros) looks at the overuse of the moving camera in The Street of Illusion (Kenton), "the camera pauses before a door, opens it, goes through a hall, enters a curtained arch, then another curtained arch, passes to a man and then gives a close up of him." It almost reevaluates the criticism of Stiller's and Dreyer's use of the moving camera from the perspective of 1929. Also, a double exposure of a seance scene is pointed out in the film Unholy Night. In regard to the art of Victor Sjostrom, its is of interest to glance at the article Magic Shadows-what double exposure is doing for the art of the screen, an article written by Edwin Shallert for Picture Play magazine in 1923. While discussing double exposure and "higher artistic imagination" he discusses the narrative use of "dual roles", superimposing one actor on to a split screen and looks at trick photography in the photplay Earthbound (1920, T Hayes Hunter), starring actress Caroline Desborough, along with the later film All Soul's Eve, both belonging to "spiritistic pictures". "Double exposure in its attempt to suggest to the mind some new and yet unseen dream or actuality, may delight with novel humor, may charm with a visible poetry or perhaps even for a second or two inspire thoughts of the sublime."

Victor Sjostrom directs Greta Garbo as Victor Seastrom

During 1928 Lon Chaney had told Photoplay Magazine, "I've had good directors. Tod Browning and I have worked so much together he's called the Chaney director. I like his work. I think Victor Seastrom and Benjamin Christenson are great directors. Their values are finer." In a Photoplay article entitled, "They Think Alike, both "Sphinxes" Greta Garbo were drawn into parallel by Cal York. In the article Garbo and Chaney are both quoted as they were to trade complimentary remarks. "Of Chaney, Garbo has said, 'His work intrigues me. He is an artist, a creator of illusions. I think he is a magnificent character actor." Chaney is quoted as having returned with a compliment for Greta Garbo, "Garbo is the Bernhardt of the screen" and there is the quotation, "Chaney recently declared, 'She is the greatest feminine personality I have ever seen in the theater and film.'" Photoplay Magazine in an article published in 1932 by Ruth Beiry alluded to Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo having known each other, "He spent many hours with her while she was making her first pictures. And he gave her his opinion on this weird unparalled buisness...'If you let them know much about you, they will lose interest,' he admonished her again and again.'" Greta Garbo, as had Lillian Gish, had asked that Sjostrom direct. Of Greta Garbo, Sjostrom had said, "She thinks above her eyes. Certain great actors posses what seems to be an uncanny ability to register thought- Lon Chaney was one- Garbo is another. They seem to literally absorb impressions...Garbo is more sensitive to emotions than film is to light, (and) you see it through her eyes."The Divine Woman (En Gudomlig Kvinnaeight reels), one of the three films directed by Victor Sjostrom in 1928, was photographed by Oliver T. Marsh, who had photographed the silent film Camille using panchromatic film. The earlier films of Greta Garbo had been filmed on orthochromatic film. Austin Lescarboura, author of Behind the Motion-Picture Screen seems timely in divulging, "Scenery is no longer painted in the prevailing tones of blue and brown, but in full real life values. Costumes are quite as colorful. As a result, orthochromatic registry is correct."The Divine Woman, starring Greta Garbo directed by Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom was based on the play starlight by Gladys Unger, who had also written an early revision of the screenplay. The final rewrite of the screenplay was given to Dorothy Farnum, the titles written by John Colton. The film took six weeks to shoot. Silent film director Victor Sjostrom had remarked after filming, "I and Metro's own scriptwriter, Frances Marion, wrote the story eight times before it was accepted. By that time, nothing remained of the original materia and every trace of the divine Sarah obliterated." While there are several accounts that would keep the researcher on tenterhooks written by biographers in regard to a synopsis of the film, and each of those only adding to the mysterious eroticism belonging to the silent films of Greta Garbo, this film in particular displaying her in a more girlish promiscuity with a playfullness rather than an the more distant Garbo, the script itself now lingers as a ghost or phantom as Garbo flirts with the movement of onscreen shadows; to this Bengt Forslund adds that there were further revisions after the completed script was approved and the ending was made more tragic. John Bainbridge wrote that the film had been "well recieved", that Sjostrom spoke "glowingly" of Garbo's work in the film and also of Stiller's having had an interest in directing it. Bengt Forslund hints that the script itself had been Stiller's idea as a way for him to return from directing at Paramount. Forslund, in his book Victor Sjostrom: His Life and Work writes, "One recogzines that the story could not be helped, but clearly Sjostrom was trying to do something different with Garbo, to make her a softer, more easy-going woman than she appeared in her earlier films." This premonition was echoed by Paul Rotha, writing in his volume The Film Till Now, but with a different sentiment, "But Seastrom had ceased to develop. He remains stationary in his outlook, thinking in terms of his early Swedish imagery. He has recently made little use of the progress of the cinema itself. The Divine Woman, although it had Greta Garbo of The Atonement of Gosta Berling, had none of the lyricism, the poetic imagery of the earlier film. It is true, however, he rendered the Scandinavian less of a star and more of a woman than in any other of her American film." Biographer and actor Fritiof Billquist quotes Sjostrom as having said, "She never once came to the set without having prepared herself thoroughly down to the last detail, and if one gave her directions, she accepted them, gladly, even though she was a big star even then." Dorothy Farnum was quoted on Greta Garbo by Movies, a magazine which featured Greta Garbo on the cover of its first issue in 1930; it was also one of the many magazines that gave Mauritz Stiller posthumous publicity for having discovered Greta Garbo, it too featuring a photograph of the late Swedish director, "Dorothy Farnum, scenario writer who adapted several of Miss Garbo's stories remarked of the actress, 'She has been a puzzle in Hollywood. She is looked upon as a sophisticated type, yet she has the naivette of a child, the same reactions to simple diversions. She likes to take long walks alone. She is melodramatic, nervous, but at the same time placid and reserved.'" Bo Florin chronicles, "When it comes to set design however, Sjostrom, just as in Sweden, worked with only one designer, Cedric Gibbons, on all productions without exception, though in some cases (Confessions of a Queen, The Scarlet Letter, The Wind and The Divine Woman) Gibbons was assisted by different designers. As concerns editiing- as indicated earlier, this task was accomplished by Sjostrom himself during the Swedish years- he was almost as consistent. Thus Huge Wynn did all the editing work on the first Hollywood films, The Scarlet Letter included. J. Hayden replaced him on The Tower of Lies, but then Wynn (with Conrad Nevig) resumed working as editor on the remaining four films." The fragment of Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman showcases the interior editing of Victor Sjostrom. Garbo and Lars Hanson are filmed from behind a dining table in a stationary medium full shot, a brief insert shot included in the sequence. The insert shot of the clock acquires the qualities of a similie and trope as it is repeated, much like the isolated metaphors in Wild Strawberries(Bergman) and Cries and Whispers (Bergman). They are filmed in a series of alternating closeups while seated at the table. On Garbo's later delivering the line of dialouge, "I'd give up the whole world for you, ". Sjostrom dissolves to another insert shot of a clock, using the object, and the motion of an inanimate object within the image, to punctuate the events driven by the characters, spatial-temporality illustrated through leitmotif, narrative continuity using the symbolic as a relationship to emotion, or the inner landscape of character study. The film The Divine Woman"according to the cutting continuity script" (Florin) included 54 dissolves. For film detectives that look to piece together the script details from magazine articles, the clock also appears in the 1928 review of the film in the bi-weekly The Film Spectator and it is put into relation with Lars Hanson's dialog as he relates to Garbo that his time with her could be limited, but it then chides the actor and actress for their not seeing the seriousness of their existential engagement and involvement with their circumstances. In a second later review it pointed out, "Greta Garbo establishes the fact that in The Divine Woman that it is all right for young Parisian washerwomen to have plucked eyebrows." For Greta Garbo, in the role of Marianne, it is not a choice between Lucien (Lars Hanson) and Legrande (Lowell Sherman); her mother's lover, brings her to acclaim on the stage when Lucien has to return to his conscription. Despondent, she leaves the theater, but then Lucien finds her again. He takes her to South America where they can begin again. (One rewrite of the continuity script has the character's names as being 'Marah', who is introduced by a dollyshot, her apparently coming to Paris from the province of Auverone)." In regard to the revisions of the film being followed by the press, Motion Picture News during 1927 was one magazine that had happenned to announce the film as being in production, "The role of 'Aurelic', the French actress in The Divine Woman is Greta Garbo's next starring role for Metro Goldwyn." It claimed Gladys Unger was "a member of the Metrod Goldwyn Mayer scenario staff." When reviewed in the United States, it was deemed that, "Mr. Seastrom reveals in sharp contrasts...When the actress tries to end her life because of her love for Lucien, Mr. Seastrom introduces the idea of having a group of sympathizers, some with a bouquet of flowers, filling a doorway while Marianne is unconscious on her bed." Photoplay reviewed the storyline, "Marianne, as they have called the Divine Sarah is brought to Paris as a suprise present to a wordly wise mother who does not wish to openly acknowledge an eighteen year old daughter. She is gawky, untutored, ugly. Thrown upon her own resources she falls in love with a soldier. Chance introduces her to the stage. The conflict between her and her love for the stage and the man is the theme of the story. Watching Marianne make love; watching her suffer in poverty; glory in applause;rage at the unkindness of Fate-makes it well worth your while to see this picture." It continues, "How an ugly duckling becomes a great actress." It is interesting that when Photoplay reviewed the reissue of The Saga of Gosta Berling a year later. it claimed that, with Greta Garbo, "Hollywood had turned an ugly duckling into a swan." As there are no copies of the film, I have added the entire review of The Divine Woman as it appeared in National Board of Review magazine, "Paris is the backdrop for this romantic drama. Scorned by her pleasure loving mother, a young girl is brought up in the home of a Briton peasant. Later she reenters the realm of the theater winning fame and recognition, all of which she gives up for the love of a poor peasant. The story holds the interest and the acting of the two Swedish stars is excellent." Robert Herring, writing for Close Up magazine in the article Film Imagery: Seastrom, looked at the film's storyline, "The first thing that you get from The Divine Woman is cynicism. At first it has seemed and ordinary film (and it never becomes a very extraordinary one) of a girl who loved a soldier, became an actress; became the mistress of a producer to go on being an actress; and gave up both in order to settle down with the soldier...Then the way the girl got what she wanted, and as the action swung between actress and love, the director's emphasis swung between "divine" and "woman". Was it by mistake that the divinity was so very tinsel?" Herring was keenly aware that Sjostrom used the landscape to find metaphoric and synedochic images, "The furs and chrysanthemums are there, but they're not insisted on, not even stressed dramaticly, certainly not realized visually. They are BACKGROUND. Miss Arzener brings her backstages to life, but here Seastrom suddenly concentrates on the woman. He concentrates on the effect of the furs and flowers on the woman." By examining the symbols used in the film, Close Up magazine divulges more of the missing fragments of its plot along with the interaction of plot and image, "There was good technique in The Phantom Carriage, but The Divine Woman shows very little use of recent improvements...Now, Seastrom uses old tricks, but not new ones. he uses ones that were new when he was developing. Now he's quite capable of outdated clumsy visions in The Divine Woman and emphasizes the new lover treading on the cap of a former that has fallen on the floor..there's not much imagery in it. Plenty of symbols. The most clear image is the soldier's cap, which runs through. It is through his first dropping it that he met Garbo, and when he is arrested it is left behind. It is an image different from the clothes he steals for her while she is trying on better one's for the theater. There are more symbols than images because the film progresses dramaticly, but the use of the cap has interest, because as an image, it links the past and present and the past scenes in a film are the horizon...Seastrom's images do this. They carry on." The author likens the soldier's cap in The Divine Woman to the cup used as a symbol to connect scenes in The Wind, his almost arriving at the conception of "thematic temporality", perhaps images linked into a spatial continuity and only then a symbolic objects or objectifications. The Film Spectator provided its brief summary, "Victor Sjostrom, who directed The Divine Woman used close-ups here, there and everywhere, for little or no reason. There is no story to speak of, there may have been originally, but by the time it was translated into the screen's language, it was most uninteresting. The hero of the story was a soldier who deserted because the girl he loved did not want him to leave her...Besides, any woman whose love couldn't stand a seperation is not worth worrying about. A story based on two unsympathetic characters is bound to make a poor picture. Greta Gabo and Lars Hanson headed the cast of The Divine Woman and both gave adequate perfomances. However, the acting honors all went to Lowell Sherman, who gave another of his brilliant heavy chaacters." Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1929 provided a brief synopsis of The Divine Woman, directed by Victor SeStrom, "Theme: Romantic drama of misguided girl who after worshipping a shrine of wealth and fame realizes that love can only be won through trust and honesty."     As a lost silent film, Christopher Natzen of Stockholm Cinema Studies at Stockholm University provides valuable insight in regard to the theme of the film The Divine Woman by looking at its soundtrack, which was a signature waltz, a recurrent mood provided by the background music, or non-diegetic music. He writes, "Music played an important role in the conversion of integrating the audience into the sieges is- in fact equal to other aspects of the medium, like camera angles, lighting and editing. The 'labelled' musical suggestions designed to integrate the audience could be very detailed." The subtitled text "Now then wipe tears" appeared that was used as a cue to switch the musical theme as were stage instructions, proxemics positions, of Madame Latour when she was with her daughter and when Lars Hanson on screen runs after Greta Garbo. "The sequence begins with the title melody 'A Divine Woman' being played in its entirety before the film starts. Then follow shorter and longer parts of musical pieces assembled by the conductor to give an unfolding sense of musical coherence. In no instance is the music interrupted with silence, as it flows from scene change to scene change...the conductor sets up the film musically in relation to the images."     Picture Play magazine devoted a full page with three photos during 1928 I'm which reveals more of the pictures storyline entitled A Toy of Fate, "Greta Garbo, as Marah in The Divine Woman again loves not wisely, but too well. Above she is seen with Polly Moran and Lans Hanson, who befriends her before she becomes a great actress. Marah, above is so fascinating over the supper table that she ruins the career of her soldier lover. Though she's only a laundress, her possibilities her possible as a stage star are discovered by Lowell Sherman." In its actual review of the film Picture Play magazine lent a synopsis, "Not so divine. Greta Garbo miscast as an actress who will not acknowledge her soldier- sweetheart after she becomes a star, attempts suicide, and, is saved, of course, by the hero. They live happily, et cetera." exhibitor's Herald and Moving Picture World, during February of 1928 saw Greta Garbo as having emerged, "I've lived to learn the amazing fact that Greta Garbo can act...Miss Garbo really acts in The Divine Woman...It's possible while watching the actress to forget that she's going again through the course of the second or third oldest story in the valut. And even as the age of the yarn is noted, the actresses' direct, on-the-set and nothing-up-the sleeve performace staqnds up on its own feet and demands attention...It is the story of the boyfriend who comes back to create a not too spectacular scene, and therefore gets a little close to Camille, but veers off finally to nice happy domesticity with everything except the knitted shoes for a finish. I believe this is the sort of thing for Miss Garbo. I was never able to steam up about her vampires. I have always felt, in viewing her Gilbertian vehicles, that it just won't happen." The author admonished that Garbo, Sjostrom and Hanson should continue on to film together again in a subsequent endeavor. The magazine later advised, "This is really the first Garbo subject that we feel can be put across with a bang in a small town. Although it is no picture for youngsters, you need not be afraid of it." When Motion Picture News in 1927 announced that John Mack Brown and Lars Hanson were to be included in the cast of The Divine Woman, it added, "The director is coaching Hanson and Miss Garbo in Swedish, his and their native tongue." In an article entitled Love Stories, Photoplay during 1928 used a still photo from The Divine Woman that the present author was unfamiliar with as having had been published elsewhere,but added a photocaption to a still of Lars Hanson on the floor with Garbo putting her cheek next to his while nearly laying on top of him during an embrace that read, "By nature we are polygamous or polyandrous. Such love scenes between Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson are a pretty safe way of satisfying that desire to philander." There is another movie still later that only add to whether the photocaption is incorrectly, or hurriedly, used, "Because we are curious about love, because we are always seeking the perfect love affair, the screen romances of Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman have a constant fascination for us. John Bainbridge devotes no more than a page to The Divine Woman, briefly chronicling that its title had been changed from Starlight, the play from which it was only "loosely adapted" without mentioning that it had been through numerous revisions by several screenwriters, his quickly advancing to the death of Mauritz Stiller, which occurred during the winter of 1928, after Stiller had returned to Sweden, Victor Sjostrom having returned as well to visit him while ill. Garbo by then was on the set of Wild Orchids, her planning to visit Sweden after the film was completed and Sjostrom, while there having related to Stiller that she had completed the films A Woman of Affairs,at that time still unreleased, and A Woman of Affairs, which was met by the public with indifference according to Sjostrom. Garbo had written to Stiller in the interval between the when the two directors had been together and Sjostrom had been assigned The Divine Woman only after Stiller, who wholeheartedly wanted to direct Garbo and Hanson, had excerted every influence he could to be selected. Garbo and Stiller had been together when Stiller, dismissed from both Paramount and M.G.M., left for Sweden. "Both she and Stiller wept when he kisses her goodbye. 'I will see you soon, Moje', she called as Stiller waved farewell from the departing train. That was the last time she saw her mentor." If the fan magazines in the United States that year had intimated that there was an unfilmed or perhaps unfinished film script that Stiller had in mind, one interviewer having asked Garbo, it could either have been a reworking of a script written by Esther Juhlin, whom with Stiller had considered returning to Hollywood, or a project he had already begun planning that was to be filmed in England. "If I live, it will be thanks to you." Stiller told Sjostrom. "What did she think about the newly found Mauritz Stiller manuscript? This was the play that the late, great Swedish director (and her discoverer) had wanted to film with Garbo as star upon his first arrival in Hollywood. 'How can I make any statement about that off hand? It is entirely too important-maybe- and near my heart.'" Gunnilla Bjelke had directly quoted Greta Garbo in Movie Classic Magazine during 1935 in regard to a brief interview granted in Gothenberg, Sweden before the actor Sven Garbo politely concluded it, taking Garbo on his arm. "A director, Clarence Brown, was highly enthusiastic over the possiblities of "Wind" on the screen, but a favorable decision might have been less quickly reached had all the conditions been seen...They had waited a long time for Brown- untill they could wait no longer." Biographer Albert Bigelow Paine relates that Clarence Brown had been on location and was unavailable to film Lillian Gish in The Wind, which brought her under the direction of Victor Sjostrom again, paired with actor Lars Hanson. Motion Picture News during 1926 had sported an earlier account by running the headline, "Victor Seastrom to Direct Lillian Gish in The Enemy, "An important directorial assignment made as the Metro-Golwyn-Mayer studio recently is the announcement that Victor Seastrom is to direct Lillian Gish in The Enemy. When the Swedish director finished directing The Scarlett Letter last spring he returned to his native country for several months and has only been back at the studio for a short time. Work on The Enemy will be started soon as The Wind, originally scheduled as the next Lillian Gish vehicle has been postponed because Clarence Badger, who will direct the film, is now occupied." During early 1927, Motion Picture News reported, "The male lead opposite Lillian Gish in the latter's starring vehicle for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, The Enemy, has been given to Lars Hanson, the Swedish stage and screen actor who was seen in The Scarlet Letter. Victor Seastrom, director of the Hawthorne tale will again direct the Hanson-Gish combination in this screen version of the Channing Pollock stageplay...June Mathis has prepared the scenario." Bo Florin, Stockholm University, when writing on The Wind saw the need to ask about landscape as being metaphorical, it not only designating man confronting a force of nature, but ,without overlooking the 'phantasms of origins that mystically inhabit the Swedish landscape and render it iconographic, landscape also reflecting internal conflicts experienced by the characters, as new emotions, as protean emotions, as well as it representing relations dynamic between characters from which conflicts might arise. As the reader begins to ask if the symbolic is not always static but works within narrative context, fluid within the relationship between man and enviornment just as the spatial and temporal are brought into relation with narrative, what makes Florin enjoyable to read is his recognition content-form, of the relation of a specific image to the particular shot structure within which it is used; he connects the abstract to the concrete by examining the construction of space and distinguishing between subjective space and objective. "Film historians have particularly pointed out that Sjostrom in this film succeeded in rendering the invisible- the wind- visible through its effect: the sandstorm, which plays an important role in the film." Bo Florin, in his article "Confronting The Wind: reading of a Hollywood film by Victor Sjostrom" points out, "In The Wind, landscape also seems to take center stage again...In the film too, the traditional theme of woman in domestic space overlays with woman striving to conquer and dominate landscape." Robert Herring eloquently writing for Close-Up magazine in the article Film Imagery:Seastrom reviewed the film, "What is Seastrom's is the lyricism which makes his landscapes lyrical landscapes... The wind is an image, the fields of snow are images, the roads and the woods of The Scarlet Letter are images. Landscape is image in Seastrom....the landscape is not only a mauve to throw up a blue. It is a darker blue itself. It is of the same colour, it is of the same mood, as that colour or mood which brings it into prominence." When Photoplay magazine first announced that Lillian Gish would be filming in The Wind for Victor Sjostrom it gave the prediction that Lars Hanson would leave after its completion, "Lars Hanson will next go to Germany to appear in From Nine to Nine, a special production to be made by F.W. Murnau." In The Film Answers Back, An Historical Appreciation of the Cinema, authors E.W. and M.M. Robson summarzie the work of Victor Sjostrom to align with a consensus of authors that had written about his directing, "The work of Berthold Viertel on the whole is less subjectivist than the work of the average German director working abroad. He had perhaps a little more in common with the Scandinavian Victor Sjostrom, whose productions in America were of the contemplative rather than subjective type. In Hollywood, Victor Sjostrom continued the Scandinavian tradition of reflecting upon the elements, the wind and the sky, as symbolizations of the shifting nature of social life." Film Daily during 1923 ran the notice, "Goldwyn signs Hjalmer Bergman". It read,"Hjalmer Bergman, one of the most discussed of the younger writers of Europe, has arrived on his way to California, where he is contracted with Goldwyn to write, and adapt stories for the screen. The arrangement was made at the suggestion of Victor Seastrom, for whom Bergman will concentrate his efforts. Bergman is little known in the United States, one one of his novels having been translated into English. It is "God's Orchid." Three is of his stories Mortal Clay, The Hellship and The Headsman were produced by Seastrom in Sweden." Goldwyn had initially planned to film an adaptation of Sir Hall Caine's novel The Bondman: a New Saga, directed by Victor Seastrom from a script written by Hjalmer Bergman, the project collapsing financially. Among the unrealized scripts written in Hollywood by Hjalmer Bergman was a synopsis for an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's work Bygmester Solness, to be directed by Victor Sjostrom. Before Bergman had returned to Sweden, Sjostrom had decided against filming an adaptation of the novel The Tree of Knowledge, written by Edwin C. Booth. The scripts of Tancred Ibsen in Hollywood were left unrealized while he worked on set construction during 1924, his not only having worked on the set design of Victor Sjostrom's film Tower of Lies, but on the set of silent film director King Vidor. Ibsen unsucessfully went to Thalberg after copyrighting a script titled Viking Hero, often reputedly an adaptation of the novel The Last Viking written by Johan Bojer. Anne Bachmann looks to Tancred Ibsen's autobiography as well as his letters for an account of his writing the screenplay to The Last Viking from the novel by Bojer, the former providing only a cursory glance at an afternoon spent writing in Denmark, whereas the former show more toiling over the script and its possiblities, "Den Siste Viking is perhaps easily confused with another, though fundamentally different Tancred Tancred project that likewise came to nought. This was A Viking Hero, which brought together the figures of Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus in one film. Ibsen tried to sell the script to M.G.M. when he worked in their story department." Ibsen had hoped to be assigned assistant director to the film, directors that had been discussed, if not enlisted having included Carl Th. Dreyer, John Brunius, Jacques Feyder and Leif Sinding. Ibsen would rejoin Sjostrom in Sweden, directing him in the 1934 film Synnove Solbakken. Bengt Forslund writes about Victor Sjostrom, no longer Victor Seastrom, "His final films in the United States had not been successful. However much they valued him at M.G.M. they were not eager for him to return." According to Paul Rotha, "For sometime Sweden tried gallantly to make films of good quality, but again financial failure was the result. One by one her best directors and players drifted across to Hollywood, where their work steadily deteriorated...Perhaps these directors, when given carte blanche and the wonderful technical resources of Hollywood, lost her sense of values...Or perhaps, and this is probably nearer to the mark, it was impossible to produce, let alone conceive any work of real aesthetic value when surrounded by the Hollywood atmosphere." Specifically in response to Bordwell and Thompson, Bo Florin in his publication Transition and Transformation writes, "The general remaining impression is that Sjostrom, perhaps being too austere, didn't really succeed in adapting, neither to the Hollywood style, nor to the demands of the time: that is sound cinema." Florin adds a tint of sincerity on the part of Sjostrom as a director when looking at Bordwell's assessment of actor from Sweden as a director in Hollywood. Author Casper Tyberg quotes Carl Theodor Dreyer on the film of Victor Sjostrom, "Through Sjostrom's work, film was led into a promised land of art, nor was he dissapointed in his conviction that sound literature should prevail over the pennydreadful, good dramatic acting over the puppetshow, atmosphere over technique." It is extremely commendable that young  British novelist Christian Hayes,author of The Glass Book, mentions the volume Victor Sjostrom: His Life and Work by Bengt Forsluund, along with his citing the authors Bent Idestam-Almquist, the Swedish film critic known to readers as Robin Hood, Hans Pensel, John Fullerton, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, Jan Olssen and Bo Florin, to begin his dissertation on Cinema's First Master? Reviewing the Cinema of Victor Sjostrom. It is also quite quotable how he begins to review the director's film. "Having seen every extant film of Sjostrom's (with the exception of his 1930 talkie A Lady to Love), I will firstly provide an overview and reaaessment of his films and career. The footnote does in fact read that, "All extant films were screened apart from Sjostrom's American talkie A Lady to Love (1930) with Edmund G. Robinson and Vilma Banky. Graham Petrie in Hollywood Destinies states that the film no longer survives, but i have been told that a print exists in the USA Turner archives.". The film was photographed by Merrit B. Gerstad, cinematographer to one of the lost films to leave its wake in found magazines, London After Midnight. And yet Bo Florin definitively answers the readers of Bengt Forslund resoundingly by writing during 2012 that "considered lost for a long time" Sjostrom's film "has recently been discovered.", the author analyzing the film to examine the transition of the director to sound, and if Sjostrom did not direct extensively in Sweden during the sound era, the present author sees this as being a component of the direct transition brought by Gustav Molander and the several cameramen leading up to Gunnar Fischer that reversed intertitle-lanscape with interior-dialougue. Photoplay Magazine described the film by Victor Sjostrom as being the play penned by playwright Sidney Howard "made censor-proof". Motion Picture magazine in 1930 had noted that the characterizations were drawn so "thickly" that the "plot is almost drained out", but added, "Yet above the babel, Vilma Banky, in a perfectly intelligible Hungarian accent, gives one of her most sympathetic performances. You remember the tired waitress who accepts an offer of marriage from an unknown man because she falls in love with his picture, and arrives on the farm to find it was all a dirty trick and her husband is not what he seemed." Photoplay reported, "But not so Miss Banky. She brought along a lot of manners to the M. G. M. lot, refused to see interviewers and to pose for publicity pictures, and made herself otherwise unpleasant." Author Robert Dance, in his biography of Ruth Harriet Louise from the perspective of Hollywood Glamour Photography notes that Louise had only photographed at M.G.M during years 1925-1930, "Louise's last documented portrait session at M.G.M. seems to have been with Vilma Banky on December 2, 1929, during the filming of the actress's last American (and only M.G.M) film, A Lady to Love, directed by Seastrom. Banky had been Louise's first published Hollywood subject and now would be virtually her last." The portrait of Banky published in Photoplay has no photocredit beneath it and the caption reads, "Vilma Banky-yes its Vilma, sleek hair and all. Vilma's voice will be heard for the first time in Sunkissed, the photoplay version of Sidney Howard's unusual play." The portrait of Greta Garbo during the following month also has no photo credit, and also seems as it could have been taken by either Louise or Hurrell. Ruth Harriet Louise earlier that year had photographed Hedda Hopper for Photoplay. Although photographed by Swedish cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, The Markurrel family in Wodkoping  (Markurells I Wadkopping) was filmed in Sweden after the departure of Charles Magnusson from Svenska Filmindustri. It having been also filmed as a silent and sound film, Bengt Forslund sees the film as one that Sjostrom directed mostly out of friendship, its script having been based on a novel written by Swedish playwright Hjalmer Bergman first considered by Svensk Filmindustri shortly after its publication in 1919. And yet author Forsyth Hardy's opinion of the film was that it was "adult and mature". Hardy writes, "it gave Sjostrom, who played the leading part an oppurtunity for one of his strongly developed character studies. With Julius Jaenzon as his cameraman he succeeded in giving the film a refreshing freedom of movement and showed no tendency to be overawed by the prescence of the microphone." Writing in 1929, the Mourdant Hall added, "There is no longer any Swedish coterie in hollywood, for Victor Seastrom is no longer there. Lars Hanson is back in his native land, to which lesser lights have flown." After returning to Sweden in hope that it was there that his daughters would be raised, Sjostrom appeared with Lars Hanson and Karin Molander in a short 1931 beauty contesst film, Froken, Ni linkar Greta Garbo, where Eivor Nordstrom was chosen to be most like Greta Garbo. Its photographer was Ake Dahlquist. With Per-Axel Branner for an assistant director and actress Karin Granberg in the first film in which sshe was to appear,Juilius Jaenzon photographed and directed the fil Ulla, My Ulla, during 1930, while Victor Sjostrom returned to the screen with Brokiga Blad, in which he cast Lili Ziedner.       In the United States, Motion Classic magazine during 1932 asked the question, "Did you know Garbo has spent much of her time at the estate of Victor Seastrom, famous Swedish director, who left Hollywood just before the talkies, in search of 'artistic freedom”.      The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers during 1930 printed, "According to reports sound motion pictures have met with the approval of the Swedish cinema goer, and several additional theaters will be wired in the near future. Sound pictures have been shown in Stockholm since May 2, 1929. While there is considerable adverse criticism regarding the talking picture, there are strong indications, at least in Stockholm, that the public prefers the sound film to the silent." Forsyth Hardy chronicles the use of sound-on-track for films made at Rasunda, "In Charlotte Lowenskold, Gustaf Molander turned again to a Selma Lagerlof novel describing the spiritual conflict of a young priest and his struggle between loyalty to a fiancee and loyalty to the Christian faith. Made in the style of a silent film, it included only a brief passsage of dialouge." Hardy later chronicles that Molander had filmed The Word (Ordet) written by slain playwright Kaj Munk. "Molander recreated the theme in the setting of a small Swedish coastal community and gave it an atmosphere so realistic that there was no hint of a stage or studio. Victor Sjostrom played the tyrannical old farmer...and Rune Lindstrom, who collaborated in the treatment, played one of the sons, who studying for the church, loses first his faith...The supreme test for director and players came in the final scene of the half-demented youth's miraculous act of faith after tragedy had overtaken his family...Molander had succeeded because he was able to create and sustain an atmosphere in which the events he described seemed natural and convincing."        John W. Brunius directed two films during 1930, The Doctor's ISecret (Docktorns Hemlighet) and The Two of Us (Vi Tva), in which Edvin Adolphson appeared as an actor with Margit Manstad, Marta Ekstrom and Anna-Lisa Froberg, the film having been the first in which the actress was to appear. Swedish cinematographer Harald Berglund in 1930 began filming under the direction of Ragnar Ring on the film Lyckobreven.       Danish film director George Schneevoigt continued the beginning of early Danish sound film the following year with the film Pastor of Vejlby (Praesten i Vejlby). The first Norwegian sound film, The Big Chirstening (Den store Barnedapen) was also the first film directed by Tancred Ibsen.

SILENT FILM The book Pictorial Beauty on the Screen, written by Victor Oscar Freeburg in 1923, was dedicated to James Cruze, director of the silent film'The Covered Wagon'. The introduction to the volume was written by silent film director Rex Ingram. Ingram notes that the silent film "must be composed of certain pictorial qualifications such as form, composition and a proper distribution of light and shade." Film poetry began with the silent film, despite any rennaisance in the nineteen seventies. Allan Eyles notes that "The Covered Wagon" (Cruze, 1923), made in the United States at a time when film criticism was giving more than a cursoy glance to the work of Swedish silent film director Victor Seastrom who had only just then arrived in America with Mauritz Stiller to bring a close to the Golden Age of SWEDISH Silent, was remarkable for its depicting the relationships of the characters within narrative to the enviornment in which the story takes place, its plotline built around the interaction of its three primary characters. Silent FilmSilent FILM

Crosscutting and D.W. Griffith

Three years before the premier of "Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916), author Eustace Ball, in the volume "The Art of the Photoplay" advised, "Put one plot at a time; the single reel picture lasts only eighteen minutes and only one line can be worked out well in this time. This is another important detail in which the photplay differs from the drama."
David Bordwell sees cinematic history as a "Basic Story" and that within this approximation, D.W. Griffith is attributed with having invented "cinematic syntax". This syntax is apparent in what Raymond Spottiswoode referred to as the "grammar of film", or shot structure and perhaps in what is expanded later into semiotics and the "grande syntagmatique". While crediting Edwin S. Porter with the use of crosscutting two simultaneous actions, Bordwell notes the crosscutting of four historical periods (seperate storylines, which thematically merge) in Griffith's film Intolerance, filmed thirteen years later. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier sees crosscutting as a programmed languague and dismisses the need to view D.W. Griffith as its inventor, but rather as his "method of film construction", which having previous existed, he "developed and systemized", specifically that editing used in chase scenes and last minute rescue scenes to meet the exingencies of his narrative technique. While properly evaluating the work of D.W. Griffith and the canonical structuring of editing through a "suspensefull call for help, the proximity of the threat and the last minute rescue", Phillipe Gauthier finds early examples of the origins of film technique neglected by earlier prominent film historians. The director of the 1908 Pathe film "A Narrow Escape", if nothing else, certainly does quite often cut on the action of the character leaving the frame.
Both Lillian Gish and Paul Rotha write of Griffith having found lines in a poem by Walt Whitman that were to connect the stories thematically, Gish appearing at intervals throughout the film to contrast the dramatic quickening of the pace of the film and lending it a symbolism, "Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film." Motion Picture World during 1916 popularized the film as bringing Griffith to a pantheon by subtitling its review with, "Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form are Successfully Revolutionized." Paragraph subtitles were to include, "Original Method of Construction", "Human Interest in Abundance" and "Marvelous Spectacular Effects". In her book entitled Screen Acting, Mae Marsh explains the differences between the acting required for each camera distance. She begins with telling us that during a long shot facial expressions register indifferently and need to be compensated by body movement. She allows that most dramatic action is filmed in three quarters legnth, from the face to the knees, intermediate shots that require both facial expressions and body movement. It is thought that the later films of D. W. Griffith, including "The White Rose" (1923) with Mae Marsh, more elaborately presented theme as being intertwined with the drama in which the characters were situated. D. W. GriffithVictor Sjostrom

Scholar Bo Florin gives us a point of departure when seeking to analyze the film “Lady to Love” and the transition from silent to sound film by placing director Victor Sjsotrom as part of the M.G.M. Studio, adding that Sjostrom had ushered in the beginning of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film with his adapation of Ibsen’s poem Terje Vigen and effected the transition which would be carried through the merger of Swedish film companies that had changed Svenska Bio to Svenska Filmindustri, and in doing so it is important to Florin that both transitions were from quantity to quality when involving Victor Sjostrom.
Bo Florin sees the transition of silent to sound film as one that depicts both off screen and onscreen space through the use of diegetic sound.

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Seastrom playlistVictor Sjostrom

Lon ChanneySilent FilmLon Chaney

Lon Chaney, as well as having starred in the seven reel silent film “False Faces”, during 1919 starred under the direction of Tod Browning in the seven reel film “Wicked Darling”.

Silent Film

Lon Chaney

.Lon ChaneyLon Chaney