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Wednesday, December 18, 2019 Lillian Gish Victor Sjostrom as Seastrom- ,

"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 actres 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

The daughter of ’s greatest director of Silent Film Silent Film, Victor Seastrom, has passed away during the beginning of 2019. Guge Lagerwall, Mary Pickford 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 director and actress Edith Erastoff and, according to Victor Sjostrom one of the reasons why he returned from the United States to Sweden. 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 Silent Film forming of Svenska Filmindustri, he marks their movie absence in cannon that has been widely familiarized, including the discourse of what he Scott Lord Mystery: Raymond Masse… 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 Silent Film Greta Garbo rivetted audiences, but for the directors of Greta Garbo Greta Garbo Sweden and Europe themselves. In an attempt to delineate Victor Sjostrom as a Swedish auteur, as Greta Garbo 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 Scott Lord on Silent Film company that was unsuccessful in preventing the

departure of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller Silent Film to America and a Hollywood which comprised 90% of all silent film being manufactured, easily and Scott Lord Swedish readily drawing the two monolithic directors away Silent Film: The from Sweden after they had established the Golden Phantom Carriage Age of Swedish Silent Film where stylistically, (Korkarlen,Victor often the character is analyzed against the Sjostrom, 1920) backdrop of his enviornment to deepen the film With the subtitles Sweden thematically. Strikes a Lyrical Note, In their article Film Studies In Sweden, The Garbo is Lost and Found, Past, The Present and The Future, authors Goran and Sweden Studio is Re- Bolan and Michael Forsmann add an interesting Born, in 1947 author perspective when crediting producer Charles Leslie Wood, in ... 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 Isabelle and Therese circulated on academia.org titled Tora Teje Teje, Reception and Swedishness wrote, “The Golden Age Scott Lord Erotic Film: Essy Persson … of Swedish Silent Film started with ’’ (Terge Vogel, Victor Sjostrom, 1917) reached its climax with ‘’ (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 Greta Garbo Greta Garbo historical dramas of Director John Brunius. Greta Garbo Greta Garbo Jespersen’s claim that Swedish Silenent Film

expressed a nationalism in its nostalgic, or Victor Sjostrom rural,subject matter and a resultant camera technique to fit the exigencies of exterior Scott Lord:Under the Red Robe(Victo… 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 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, Victor Seastrom Swedish but that director D.W. Griffith might also have a Silent Film More properly Morality not suited to the quickening pace of the the headlines should read, New Modern Woman, almost indicative in Lillian "Garbo Talks, Seastrom Gish having left to find and Victor Returns Home." Victor Seastrom, who had worked Sjostromas though both cinemas were to compete in the Swedish theater with a short-lived German Expressionism and before pioneering in French Poeticism. To keep the topic within a Swedish Film, returned to peer-reviewed frame, author Bo Florin dileneates Sweden with the advent of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film as 1917- the sound film, not to 1923. While reviewing Bo Florin’s volume direct, but to act. As in Transition and Transformation, Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood, the exterior of Hollywood 1923-1930 film critic Erik Hedling uses the Swedish landscape that had established Sjostrom, the same chronological yardstick, 1917-1923, to Stiller and Molander measure the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film, during the golden age of and adds,”These were characterized by elaborate Swedish Silent Film, had landscapes depiction, heavy influences from high taken the innovation of art, subtle acting, expressive lighting and a sound back to the focus on specific devices, such as the dissolve proscenium arc of the and systematic cuts across the 180-degree line.” interior with Molander managing the transition to With the grace of a footnote to the writing of dialogue centered films. Bengt Forslund, Bo Florin extends Helding’s summarization by also characterizing Victor Film Sjostromas an Auteur within Swedish Silent Film, characterizing his style as displaying a “lyrical Scott Lord The Moonstone 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 Victor Seastrom Silent reading of a Hollywood Film by Victor Sjostrom”, Film Florin notes Peter Cowie as having pointed out Greta Garbo that the film “consequently reflects the conflicts both within and between the characters Film in the narrative”, his adding that Fullerton “points to the dialectics in the relationship Scott Lord -the beautiful Virginia Bru… between human and landscape, which establishes analogies between them”, Fullerton having compared elements of “Terje Vigen” with those of “”. 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 Silent Film Greta Garbo the importing of film technique by Victor Sjostrom. He writes, “In Hollywood, Victor Film Sjostrom continued the Scandinavian tradition of reflecting upon the elements, the wind and and Scott Lord Art History: Rembrandt va… 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 Silent Film Greta Garbo Europe that drove the Puritan onward during the first Thanksgivings in a new colony while Scott Lord 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 online film classes Greatest Director in the World’ as well as the

chapter Mauritz Stiller and others, ‘They are a Greta Garbo. Translate Sad Looking people these Swedes’. Magnus Rosborn, archivist for the Swedish Film Greta Garbo 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. Greta Garbo emailed to the One silent film festival honoring Victor Sjostrom present author from and Mauritz Stiller organized and curated by Jon original negative by Mark Wengstrom, Swedish Film Institute archivist, at a A, Vieria European film museum not only included a

screening of the “In the Chains of Darkness” (I Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo Scanned from the case with the films of Victor Sjostrom and the original negative and Mauritz Stiller. emailed to the present author by Mark A Vieira Last year, John Wengstrom of the Swedish Film

Institute was kind enough to reply to my letter Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo scanned from rhetorically based on the view of the Library of orifginal negative and Congress that every film of its age has been emailed from author of placed in the public domain, specifically all Greta Garbo, A Cinematic those filmed before 1926. Wengstrom begged to Legacy differ, noting that in Sweden, although Mauritz Stiller died in 1928, it had not been seventy Greta Garbo 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 Scanned from Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson, the new version the original negative and lasting 200 minutes on screen. It is to be emailed to the present presented with 10 other restored silent films, author by Mark A Vieira among them being a previously unseen 1929 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. My former Greta Garbo 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, Greta Garbo Scanned from Victor Sjostrom, John Brunius and George Af the original negative and Klercker and with them the camerman Julius emailed to the present Jaenzon, It was refreshing to find that author author by Mark A. Vieira Astrid Soderberg Widing tries to agree with film

critic Leif Furhammar that Georg af Klerker, who Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo Scanned from utmost importance is an appreciation of film, the original negative film as a visual literature. film as the narrative image, and while any appreciation of Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo from original melodramatic, that bring that interest to the negative character when taken scene by scene by the audience." The study of silent film is an Greta Garbo 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 emailed by Mark A. Vieira, Sjostrom author of Greta Garbo, A Ingmar Bergman’s daughter Lena has noted that Cinematic Legacy even late in life Bergman watched film extensively, his own cinema named “The Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo scanned from his work or concieved of nature as a mystical as original negative, emailed well as a physical force in terms of film by author of Greta Garbo, language.” It added, “The tumult that threatens Cinematic Legacy his heroes’ psyche corresponds, says Cowie, to the majestic power of nature and while Sjostrom’s Greta Garbo 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 emailed to the present reconstruct their shot structure, comparing them author by Mark A AVieira, to stills from several films to insure the author of Greta Garbo, A director's sense of compostition, his also Cinematic Legacy recommending the searching for of all material on

the film, including a synopsis of the plot and Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo Scanned from were landscapes devoid of actors. Actually, shots the original negative and without actors were very rare. Almost every shot emailed to the present included an actor involved in some obvious author by Mark A Vieira situation. The film told its story with pictures,

but they were pictures of actors." It is with Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo original restored was one of the most difficult in that it negative emailed from was a Danish detective film that lacked author of Greta Garbo, A intertitles. Particularly because I found the Cinematic Legacy cutting on the action of the actor leaving the

frame of interest, if I can connect the quote to Greta Garbo 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 Greta Garbo from original negative two seperate spatial locations within the scene." It is now difficult to overlook the importance of Greta Garbo 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 Scanned from the original birthday of Gosta Werner by crediting him with negative and emailed to identifying an existing fragment from Stiller’s the present author by Mark A Vieira film “Ballettprimadonna” (1915). The fillm “Ballettprimadonna”, directed by Mauritz Stiller, Greta Garbo 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. 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." Greta Garbo Scanned from It may be fitting that, although a film version original negative, emailed of the novel the Atonement of Gosta Berling had by the author of Greta Garbo, A Cinematic Legacy been planned by Skandinavisk Film Central, a company that had merged the Danish Silent Film Greta Garbo 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, Greta Garbo in Wild written by Stiller and photographed by Henrik Orchids scanned from Jaenzon, which starred Lili Bech, Stina Berg and original negative Emmy Elffors, and the 65 minute film Madame Thebes, written by Mauritz Stiller and Greta Garbo photographed by Julius Jaenzon, which starred Ragnar Wettergren, Martha Hallden and . 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 "More to have fun with", of Ingmar Bergman, Journalist Linn Ullmann, Scanned from the original included the historical place of Swedish negative and emailed to Filmmaking in her second novel, Stella the present author by Mark Descending. "The once thriving ostrich farm in A Vieira Sundbyberg was sold, taken over by two rival companies, Svensk Bio and Skandia, who joined Greta Garbo 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 among the photos emailed from the author of Greta part of the audience that evening in February Garbo, A Cinematic Legacy 1934 to see When We Dead Awaken."

Greta Garbo

among the photos Of Greta Garbo emailed by the author of Greta Garbo, A Cinematic Legacy

Greta Garbo

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 emailed from author of interesting". "'Yes, Greta Garbo, A Cinematic this is Stiller's room, Legacy I know for sure.' After Greta Garbo took Greta Garbo off her glasses to show Ingmar Bergman what she looked like, her watching his face to measure the emotion of the director, she