Victor Sjostrom, Swedish Silent Film- Svenska Biografteatern, Scandia and Svensk Filmindustri

On January 22, 1922, Victor Sjostrom and Swedish Silent Film actress Edith Erastoff were wed.

In a letter to Edith Erastoff he mentioned that screenwriter June Mathis was one person that had seen the silent films he had made in Sweden and had recommended that he make silent films in the United States. Writing from the United States he mentioned that it was there that he had met with his younger sister, Lillie, it uncertain to the present author if they had there attended a movie together.

During 1923, Sjostrom wrote from the United States that he thought that 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 succed 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.

During 1924, Carl Sandburg reviewed Victor Sjostrom's film Name the Man (eight reels), his remarking upon Sjostrom's use of lighting, which whether or not it may have been realism or naturalism, seemed underplayed to Sandburg and based on the enviornment rather than made more elaborate or as being artificial. "He was an actor once, rated as Sweden's best, and his voice leads his actors into slow, certain moods." Victor Sjostrom, in a letter to Swedish silent film cameraman Julius Jaenzon apologizing for his absence, if fact, noted the value of using shadow rather than filling the scene with more light than necessary. The film was to pair Conrad Nagel and Mae Busch. Also commending Sjostrom on his use of lighting during the film, Bengt Forslund compares the film to the Swedish silent film The Girl From Marshcroft in that Sjostrom adds a depth to the character development while reworking the plotline of the novel by Sir Thomas Hall Caine; he likens the fiction of the novelist to that of Selma Lagerlof . Sjostrom adds an interest to the images by which the characters are brought into the storyline, particularly a romantic interest. The Swedish author and film director Forslund notes the use of exteriors in the film. Charles Van Enger not only photographed the 1924 film Name the Man, 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 Willima Beaudine.

During 1924 Lasse Ring directed the film Bjorn Mork, scripted by Carl Hilmers and starring Vera Olsson and Anna Wallin. The film was produced by Hasse W Tullbergs Filmindustri.

Among the events of 1924 was a visit by silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to Stockholm, Sweden. The two had appeared together that year on the September cover of Motion Picture Magazine in the United States.

During 1925, Victor Sjostrom brought Lewis Stone and Alice Terry to the screen in the film Confessions of a Queen.

In Sweden, Olaf Molander directed Lady of Camellias (Damen med kameliorna 1925), starring Ivan Hedqvist and Hilda Borgstrom and photographed by Gustav A Gustafson. Gustaf Edgren in 1925 directed Mona Martensen in the film Skeppargatan 40 for Skandias Filmbyra. Starring with her were Einar Hanson, Magda Holm and Huldra Malm. Also starring in the film was Karin Swanstrom, who in 1925 directed and starred in two films of her own, Flygande hollandaren for Scandinavisk Film and Kalle Utter with Linnea Hillberg for Svenska Filmkompaniet, both films having been scripted by Hjalmar Bergman. Hjalmar Bergman that year would also write the script for the film Karl XII, directed by John W. Brunius and starring Mona Martenson and Augusta Lindberg. The film was shot on location and released in two parts, it being quite possible that John W. Brunius is overlooked when the tradition of Swedish Silent Film and its use of the landscape and enviornment is written about in that the historical drama was one of the most expensive of Swedish silent films to make and as a historical drama it involves its characters in the sweeping events of the period by filming them where the history itself had been made-more importantly John W. Brunius, had continued to film historical dramas so as to include them into the cannon of Swedish silent film, most notably Gustav Vasa (1928), filmed from a screenplay by Ivar Johansson. The production cost of the 1925 film directed by John W Bruinius was more than any other Swedish film up to that time, excepting Benjamin Christensen's Witchcraft through the Ages (Haxan).

Gustaf Molander during 1925 directed Gucken Cederberg and Stina Berg in the film Costable Paulus' Easter Bomb (Polis Paulis' paskasmall). Photographed by Axel Lindblom, the film also stars Edvin Adolphson and Lili Lani. Eric Petschler in 1925 directed and starred in Oregund-Osthammer written by Manne Gothson. He appears in the film with Gerda Gronberg-Rove, Marta Claesson, Julia Cederblad and Bibi Jantze. Director Carl Barklind that year filmed Tre Lejon, starring Georg af Klercker.Olaf Molander that year directed the film Lady of the Camellias (Damen med kameliorna) starring Ivan Hedqvist and Hilda Borgstrom and photographed by Gustav A. Gustafson.

Swedish silent film actress Mary Johnson travelled from Sweden to Germany, her films made for Ufa and Essem Film including the 1925 film Haus der Luge, Telfondamen (1926), The Strange Case of Captain Ramper (Ramper der Tiermensch, 1927) and Sex in Fetters (Geschlecht in Fessein, 1928). In addition to appearing on screen under the direction of G. W. Pabst, Danish silent film actress Asta Nielsen in Germany during 1925 appeared in the film The Sunken (Die Gesunkenen), directed by Rudolf Walther-Fein and also starring Olga Tscechova. Presently a lost film, the trailer to the film has been recently screened at the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Early Danish sound film director Alice O'Fredricks appeared as an actress in two Danish silent film in 1925, Sunshine Valley (Solskinsdalen) with Karen Winther, directed for Nordisk Film by Emmanuel Gregers, and Lights from Circus Life (Sidelights of the Sawdust Ring/Det Store Hjerte, with Ebba Thomsen, Margarethe Schegel and Mathilde Nielsen, directed by August Blom. She had appeared earlier with Clara Pontoppidan in a film produced by Edda Film, Hadda Padda, directed by Gudmundar Kamban and also starring Ingeborg Sigurjonsson.

Danish film director Carl Th. Dreyer in 1925 filmed Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife (Master of the House, Den Skal Aere din Hustru), which the director co-wrote with Sven Rindholm. Photographed by George Schneevoigt, the film stars Astrid Holm, Karin Nellemose and Mathilde Nielsen. In his book Transcenedental Style in Film, the director Paul Schrader (Autofocus) characterizes Dreyer's early film by their use of mise-en-scene, likening them in particular to the Intimate Theater of Strindberg in their use of mise-en-scene. Dreyer, in a foreward to a collection of four of his screenplays , writes, "I am convinced that presently a tragic poet of the cinema will appear, whose problem will be to find, within the structure of the cinema's framework, the form and style appropriate to tragedy." Interestingly, and maybe stirringly, while writing about the silent film of Victor Sjostrom, Carl Th. Dreyer added, "In all art the human being is the decisive element. In artistic films it is the human beings whom we wish to see and it is their spiritual experiences that we wish to share." During the film Master of the House, Dreyer stylisticly uses the iris shot while cutting between close and medium interior shots, including an iris shot filmed over the shoulder of a character exiting through a doorway and an iris shot of her entering again later in the scene, and, more notably, the director during the middle of a scene uses iris shots while cutting between a close up and a medium closeshot; during the latter a second character, that of the protagonsist's wife in the film, can be seen entering the frame of the shot from the right of the irised screen and then reentering during the legnth of the shot. Husband and wife are both shown in intercut iris closeups during a dialouge sequence within the middle of a prolonged interior scene, the exceptional beuaty of the actress held by the camera as her eyes silently wait for her husband to speak.

In Sweden, before his having written his series of five novels centered around the protagonist Morten Torpane as introduced in Avske till Hamlet (Farewell to Hamlet, 1930), Swedish author Eyvind Johnson had penned five earlier novels beginning with his first, Timan och rattfadiheten (Timans and Justice, 1925). He continued with Stad in Morker (Town in Dark), published in 1927 and Town iin Light (Stad i ljus, published in 1928. 1925 in Sweden also saw the post-humous publication of The Land Which Is Not (Landet som icke ar), authored by Edith Sodergren.

In her book Lulu in Hollywood, Louise Brooks compares Victor Sjostrom to Lillian Gish by writing that he, "in his direction, shared her art of escaping time and place. Sjostrom and Gish were made for each other." While Brooks compliments the director on connecting the character to an onscreen background, Gish, who had appeared in Orphans of the Storm, after having seen Stroke at Midnight (The Phantom Carriage, Korkarlen, 1920-21) in her book, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, wrote, "It seemed to me he had Mr. Griffith's sensitivity to atmosphere." Victor Sjostrom wrote to his wife that Charlie Chaplin had in fact thought that the film Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness was among the best films that he had seen.

Lillian Gish also remembered having held a screening of Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson together in The Saga of Gosta Berling and from that gave her approval of Lars Hanson as her co-star in The Scarlet Letter (Den roda bokstaven, nine reels), directed by Victor Sjostrom. Gish adds, "Lars Hanson played his scenes in Swedish, I in English, neither of us understanding the other." Frances Marion had adapted Olive Higgins Prouty's novel Stella Dallas for director Henry King the year before Lillian Gish had asked that she write the screenplay to Victor Sjostrom's The Scarlet Letter in 1926; Gish wrote, "I worked with Frances Marion on the script, and we made a successful film that is regarded as a classic to this day." Bengt Forslund relates that Lillian Gish complimented Victor Sjostrom who "had everything in his mind and knew precisely what he wanted-- as opposed to Griffith, who kept rehearsing untill the final outcome." Sjostrom had been apprehensive about filming with Lillian Gish, his having thought that she was too "cool and reserved".

Victor Sjostrom had cautioned Bergman "Film actors from the front; they like that and its best way. In The Scarlet Letter (Den roda bokstaven, 1926, nine reels), Sjostrom introduces Lillian Gish by filming her frontally in medium shot, frequently using dissolves during the film. After her leaveing a mirror shot of her deciding which hat to war. it is almost as though Sjostrom uses reverse screen direction between two characters when, after structuring the film by reintroducing Gish with a dissolve, she on moment is crossing the screen from right to left, the next moment Lars Hanson crossing from left to right. Charles Affron writes, "Sjostrom redefines the space of the town square, making it an area successively filled and emptied, now a formal pattern with paths cleared, then serried with ranks of extras. The church, the town hall and the scaffold are other spatial elements that constititute the dynamics of the public drama." Remarking upon Sjostrom's "sensitivity to landscape and texture", Affron looks to their being a "stylistic unity" to the film. Lillian Gish, in her book writes of her having seen The Story of Gosta Berling and that, "Mr Mayer sent to Sweden for Lars Hanson, let me have Victor Sjostrom, the great Swedish artist, as director and put it into my hands. I worked with Frances Marion on the script, and we made a successful film that is regarded as a classic to this day. Ingmar Bergman has said that when directing Sjostrom it had in fact been that he "drew his attention to the fact that he was playing to the gallery."

The author Anthony Slide devotes an entire chapter to Frances Marion in his volume The Silent Feminists. "Undoubtedly one of the most important screenwriters of all time" (Slide), Marion had begun as a script girl and actress in 1914 and wrote five novels; Minnie Flynn, Valley People, Molly,Bless Her, Westward the Dream and Powder Keg. She penned her autobiography in 1972.

In The Scarlet Letter, Victor Sjostrom introduces Lillian Gish by filming her frontally in medium shot, frequently using dissolves during the film. After her leaving the frame, the camera cuts to a medium shot of her in profile and back to filming her frontally in a mirror shot of her deciding what hat to wear. When the film was reviewed in the United States, Sjostrom was seen as "painstaking in his studying his charcters" and that there were "some cleverly pictured scenes in the church and the sights of the crowds betray(ed)imaginative direction both in the handling of the players and in their arrangement to the shades of their costumes."

The films camerman, Hendrik Sartov had used tinted light during the filming of the Victor Sjostrom film The Scarlet Letter, his also using panchromatic stock, which had been used earlier during the shooting of the Lillian Gish film La Boheme (1926)

When the film was reviewed in the United States, Sjostrom was seen as being "painstaking in his studying his characters and that there were "some cleverly pictured scenes in the church and the sights of the crowds betray(ed) imaginative direction both in the handling of players and in thier arrangement to the shades of their costumes."

Screenwriter Frances Marion had written the early revision to the photoplayThe Mysterious Lady, which was rewritten by screenwriter Bess Meredyth. During the time in between it had been elaborately reworked by screen by Danish silent film director Benjamin Christensen. Upon first arriving in the Untited States, the danish silent Benjamin Christensens had sold the scenario to The Light, his remarking later that "writers were let loose on my script and altered the whole tone and message." The first film Christenson had directed in the United States, The Devil's Circus (seven reels) with Norma Shearer and Chrles Emmet Mack, the script having been one that Christensen himself had written. That same year Shearer was also to appear with William Haines in the film Tower of Lies (1927, seven reels), directed by Victor Sjostrom.

In Sweden Klerker directed the 1926 film Flickorna pa solvik, starring Wanda Rothgardt. That Mordbrannerskan, directed by John Lindlof, photographed by Gustaf A. Gustafson and starring Greta Garbo's alluring companion Vera Schmiterlow and Brita Appelgren, was the first film in which the actress Birgit Tengroth was to appear. Ester Julin that year wrote and directed the film Lyckobarnen, photographed by Henrik Jaenzon and starring Marta Claesson.

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 expressed through the symbolic had been used earlier in the poetry of Vilhelm Ekelund.

Danish silent film director Carl Th. Dreyer was in Norway during 1926 shooting the film The Bride of Glomdal (Glomsdalbruden), photographed by Einar Olsen and starring ove Tellback. The Norwegian Film Institutet recently announced the restoration of the film The Bridal Procession (Brudeferden i Hardanger, also filmed in Norway in 1926; the films stars the very beautiful Ase Bye and was directed by Rasmus Breistein.

Swedish film director Gustaf Molander during 1927 filmed Sealed Lips (Forseglade lappar) with Wanda Rothgart Karin Swanstromn and the eceptionally beautiful Mona Martenson, and His English Wife (Hans engelska fur), with Margit Manstad, Wanda Rothgart, Lili Dagover and Margit Rosengren in what was to be her first appearance on screen and what was to be the first film photographed by Swedish cinematographer Ake Dalquist. When reviewed in the United States, it was written that His English Wife/Discord was a film in which "the acting is of the school that believes in tapping fingers and clenced hands" and when Sealed Lips was reviewed it was written that "the direction goes back to the stand-gaze-and-hark acting days".

In Sweden, during 1928, Erik XIV, written and directed by Sam Ask and starring Sophus von Rosen, Eva Munck af Rosenchold, Lisa Ryden Prytz and Gosta Werner, appeared in theaters to Swedish audiences. That year Gustaf Molander continued directing with the films Sin (Synd starring Lars Hanson, ragnar Arvedson, and Ellisa Landi and Woman of Paris (Parisiskor), with Ragnar Arvedson and Karin Swanstrom and photographed by Julius Jaenzon.

Evidently some of the scenes in which Eva von Berne had appeared were refilmed after the shooting of the film Masks of the Devil (Victor Seastrom, 1928, eight reels) had concluded. New to film, Eva von Berne was to star opposite John Gilbert under the direction of Victor Sjostrom.

After her having appeared with Edvin Adolphson in the film Brollopet i branna (1927), directed by Erik Petschler, actress Mona Martenson starred in Norway with Einar Tveito in People of the Tundra directed by George Schneevoigt for Lunde-fil (Viddenesfolk, 1928), written and directed by Ragnar Westfelt for Lunde-film, in Germany starred with Aud Egede Nissen in the film Die Frau in Talar, again in Norway starred in the film Laila (1929) directed by George Schneevoight for Lund-film from a script adapted from a novel by Jens Anders Friis, and in Denmark starred in the film Eskimo (1930), also directed by George Schneevoight- it had not only been Greta Garbo and Victor Sjostrom that would soon be making the transition from silent to sound. Edvin Adolphson directed his first film in 1929, it having been the first film made in Sweden to include sound, The Dream Waltz (Sag det i toner), co-directed by Julius Jaenzon and starring Jenny Hasselquist.

Playwright Sidney Howard penned the photoplay to the first sound film by Victor Sjostrom, A Lady to Love (1930, ten reels), starring Vilma Banky. It was to be his ninth film directed in the United States before his returning to Sweden to direct The Markurell Family (The Markurells I Wadkoping) (1931). Vilma Banky had previously starred with Ronald Colman in The Night of Love (George Fitzmaurice), a film made in 1927, the year she was married to film actor Rod La Rocques, and The Dark Angel, filmed a year earlier.

Forslund, almost agreeing with Sjostrom, notes "His final films in the United States had not been successful. However much they valued his at MGM, they were not exactly eager for his to return."

Although photographed by Swedish cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, The Markurell Family was filmed in Sweden after the departure of Charles Magnusson from Svenska Filmindustri. It having been filmed as both as silent and sound film, Bengt Forslund sees the film as one that Sjostrom had directed mostly out of friendship, its script having had been being based on a novel written by Swedish playwright Hjalmer Bergman first considered by Svenska Filmindustri shortly after its publication in 1919. Bergman followed it with the novel Herr von hancken, published in 1920, the anthology Eros's Burial Eros begravning), ad the semi-autobiographical novel Jag, Ljung och Medardus), published in 1923.

In a 1978 documentary, Ingmar Bergman was quoted as having said, "Experienced actors always sense if the camera is well posititioned." Of Sjostrom, Ingmar Bergman remarked that he had advised him to be aware of the tradition of filmmaking and not "'make a fuss when your direct'" (Aghed) and not to "'create difficulties'" (Aghed). Sjostrom had cautioned Bergman that blocking and stage sets should be kept as minimal. In his autobiography, Images, Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman remebers being asked for by Stina Bergman in regard to her commisioning him to write for the script department at Svenska Filmindustri, his including his giving her a compliment on the experience she acquired in Hollywood in which he outlines the technique of Hollywood filmaking and "classical narrative" scriptwriting. "When Victor Sjostrom had moved to Hollywood in 1923, the Bergman's followed." Stina Bergman of the Swedish Film Institute reviwed Hjalmer Bergman's novel while chronicling its history after he and his wife had returned to Sweden, her quoting him as having said, "And he chose as a central figure of this novel a person who for all his faults and virtues was still a living human being, no better and no worse tha you and I." She outlines the novel having become a radio play at the request of Per Lindberg before it having had been being adapted for both film and the stage. The novel The Baron's Will (Hans Nads Testamente) was dramatized for radio during 1929.