| Swedish Film 1909-1917 Swedish Silent Film Directed by Carl Barcklind was the film En un mans vag Sidney Franklin in 1919 would again direct Norma Talmadge, her starring in the six reel film The Heart Of Wetona. Conrad Nagel appeared in his first films, The Lion and the Mouse (Tom Terriss, five reels), Redhead and Little Women (H. Knoles, six reels), with Dorothy Bernard, Isabel Lamon and Lillian Hall. Ingmar Bergman has said, "I think Stiller with his Erotikon and Herr Arne's Treasure is alot of fun. And his Atonement of Gosta Berling, too, is a fresh, powerful, vital film." Of the film, Robert Payne writes, "he employed every trick known to cinema: close ups, dissolves, masks, superimposed images, sudden changes of tempo- a slow dreamy pace for the visionary scenes and an unbelieveably fast pace for the scenes of fighting...The film was tinted, thus giving it a heightened sense of reality." Wanda Rothgardt also appears in the film. Particularly interested in the interrelated components of each film being part of the film in its entirety, David Bordwell writing with Kristin Thompson, also regards the emotion of the spectator during any sequence of a film as being related to the viewing of the film in its entirety; seperate scenes that are tinted belong to the film in its entirety- the film after it has been edited. Narrative and stylistic elements in film form are often interrelated. Long before Bordwell, Raymond Spttiswoode had written, "The film director is continually analysing his material into sections, which, in a great variety of ways, can be altePred to suit his purpose. At the same time he is synthesizing these sections into larger units which represent his attitude toward the world, and reveal the design he finds displayed in it. The analysis is an analysis of structure; of the filmic components which the director discerns in the natural world." Lucy Fischer in fact remarks upon the narrative unity with Jacques Feyder's The Kiss, noting that to view the film as an entirety, the spectator must combine different events from seperate sequences, connecting the plot events centered around Garbo's character. Oddly, she later discusses the background to narrative as conveying the thematic, not in as much as man's relationship to nature can depict the emotion inherent within storyline, as often in the films of Stiller and Sjöström, but in that the mise en scene of the silent films of Greta Garbo, in its being dramatic, provides an embellishment of the narrative through its spatial composition of the image- it being Garbo that is crossing the set and sitting into the shot, it being a melodrama taking place within a world in which she can be otherworldly. Raymond Spottiswoode, writing in 1933, as well saw film as being comprised of its component parts. The sequence is seen as a series of shots that taken as part of the film as a whole add to its untiy. Spottiswoode describes there being implicational montage, where the sequences are seen in their entirety, their then containing within them content that has a relation to the film as a whole through implication, a series of shots producing its effect, creating its significance, in combination with other sequences in the film. |
To add to any new look at marriage that was taking place as Hollywood peered through the keyhole into a modernity of what was being shown of the bedroom, DeMille in 1919 directed Why Change Your Husband (six reels), Male and Female (nine reels) with Lila Lee and For Better or Worse (seven reels), his having begun a series of films on marital relations in 1918 with Old Wives for New (six reels), each film scripted by Jeanie Macpherson. Macpherson, who had begun writing screenplays fmor DeMille with the 1915 film The Captive, starring Blanche Sweet, in 1920 continued with the director by scripting the film Something to Think About (seven reels), starring Gloria Swanson. Fred Niblo directed the film The Marriage Ring (five reels) in 1918. It has been offered that the films of DeMille are not only erotic comedies but reflect the becoming a commodity of matrimony and the reification of married life through the exchange values employed within suture and the syntax of shot reverse shot, the commodification of female sexuality within gendered spectatorship; within a model of the new woman a female subjectivity is constructed that is a result of consumerism. The Phantom Carriage(Korkarlen) was filmed by Arne Mattsson in 1958. Danish film director Lau Lauritzen directed five films in Sweden in 1920 En hustru till lans with Karen Winther, Flickorna i Are, with Kate Fabian, Karleck och bjornjakt with Si Holmquist, Vil de vare min kone-i morgen and Damernes ven. In 1920, Greta Garbo would begin watching the silent films of Clara Kimball Young, Charles Ray and Thomas Meighan- it was also that year that she would espy the actor, later to become director, Sigurd Wallen at a performance of his, there also being an account of her having had a brief conversation with the actor Joseph Fischer. The films of Clara Kimball Young were the springboard for scriptwriter Lenore Coffee, whose first films as a screenwriter, The Better Wife (William Earle, 1919,five reels) and The Forbidden Woman (1920) had starred the actress. Finnish silent film director Erkki Karu directed two films for Suomen Biografi in 1920 both photographed by Finnish cinematographer Frans Ekebom, War Profiteer Kaikus Disrupted Summer Vacation (Sotagubishi Kaiun Hairitty Kesaloma) and Student Pollovaara's Betrothal (Ylioppilas Pollovaaran kihlaus). Clarence Brown directed his first film, The Great Redeemer (five reels) with Marjorie Daw and John Gilbert in 1920 Lowell Shermann, who appeared with Greta Garbo in the film The Divine Woman began in film in 1920 with Yes and No (Roy W. Neill, six reels) with Norma Talmadge and in 1921 with The Gilded Lady, (seven reels) Molly O (eight reels) and What No man Knows (six reels). Covergirl for Photoplay Magazine, Norma Talmadge was also that year directed by Roy W. Neill in the film A Woman Gives (six reels). A Daughter of Two World (James Young, six reels) and She Loves and Lies were also to star Norma Talmadge that year. Norma Shearer appeared in films in the year 1920, among them being The Sign On the Door ( Herbert Brenon, seven reels), The Flapper (Alan Crosland, five reels), The Restless Sex (six reels) written by Frances Marion and The Stealers (seven reels, William Christy Cabanne). Lillian Gish writes about Garbo's later asking her to introduce her to Griffith, which she did, and of Garbo's asking her how she should dress. Garbo had said to her, "It would be nice to have dinner at your house." 
----------------:-- Danish Silent Film director A. W. Sandberg in 1920 wrote and directed two films for the Nordisk Films Kompagni in which the actress Clara Wieth starred, House of Fatal Love (Kaerlighedsvalen) and A Romance of Riches (Stodderprinsessen), in which she starred with Gunnar Tolnaes. Sandberg also that year directed the film Adrift (Det dode Skib), with Valedmar Psilander, Stella Lind and Else Frolich. Klaus Albrecht during 1921 directed Lili Ziedner in the film The Bimbini Circus (Cirkus Bimbini). Tyra Ryman was introduced to her later costar Greta Garbo in 1922 at PUB by Eric Petschler, who directed both in Luffar-Peter Carl Th. Dreyer in 1921 directed the silent film Leaves from Satan's Book (Blade af Satans Bog). That year Sjöström also directed The Surrounded House (Det omringade huset), starring Wanda Rothgardt and Hilda Forsslund. ++++++++++++++++++ That year Ragnar Ring wrote and directed En Vikingafilm, with Harald Wehlnor and Sigrid Ahlstrom. Karin Boye, the Swedish poet began publishing in 1922 with the volume Clouds. She continued in 1924 with Hidden Lands and in 1927 with The Hearths. Swedish poet Birger Sjoberg in 1922 published Frida's Songs. Writing about the 1922 Finnish Silent Film, Tytta Soila notes, "Perhaps one might say that the fortune of Suomi-Filmi, and thus the future of Finnish cinema, was established by portraying the lives of two strong female characters: Anna-Liisa and Hannah. Subsequently, many Finnish films were to have a strong female character at the center of the action. Filmed in Sweden by Danish silent film director Benjamin Christensen, 1922 saw the release of the long awaited film Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages). The film, recently included in the films of Janus Films and in the silent film from Criterion, in the United States, was photographed by Johan Ankerstjerne and written by Christensen, who appears in the film with Ella la Cour, Emmy Schonfeld, Kate Fabian, Elisabeth Christensen, Astrid Holm and Elith Pio. Notably Alice O Fredricks and Tora Teje also appear in the film. In a film that to Sweden was to be its Intolerance, Christensen numerously uses the iris in to punctuate the end of a particular scene and the iris out in the subsequent shot to begin the adjacent scene; he goes so far as to use both during the same shot. Raymond Sptossiwoode remarked upon the fade in and fade out, along with the dissolve and wipe, as being something that was to "produce a softening effect, an indeterminate space between successive shots", his delegating it to being "the mark of the termination of an incident or of a defined period of time". If as though to either to complement or to counter the use of mise en scend Vitor Sjöström's use of landscape in early Swedish cinema, Molander is a director of the interior scene. Tytti Soila writes, "Particularly in the melodramas, Molander used the composition of the image with the purpose of showing something essential about the existential situation of the characters. The pictures are 'tight' and on the verge of being claustrophobic, as props and other details of the set fill the frame, competing for room with the characters." ---------- William Larsson, directed Jenny Tschernichin, Jessie Wessel and Frida Sporrong in his first film Halsingar during 1923. Halsingar was also to be the first of many films photgraphed by Swedish cinematographer Henning Ohlson. --------------Bror Abelli in 1923 directed his first two films, including the film Janne Modig. Danish actress Olga d'Org starred in three films for Nordisk Films Kompagni, all of which were directed by A.W. Sandberg, including the 1923 film The Hill Park Mystery (Nedbrudte nerver). Finnish film director Karl Fager in 1923 brought the film The Old Baron of Rautakyla (Rautakylan Vanha Parooni) to the screen. Ragnar Ring that year directed Bjorn Mork and Nar millionera rulla. Rune Carlsten in 1924 wrote and directed The Young Nobleman (Unga greven tar flickan och priset). Silent Film SILENT Film SILENT Film SILENT FILM Danish Silent Film |
