| "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 |
The daughter of Sweden’s greatest director of Silent Film, Victor Seastrom, has 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 director and 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. 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. 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 Silenent 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 flannels 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. One 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. 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." 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." While visiting Stockholm during 1938, Garbo asked 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 |
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”
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 ascinating 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.
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 ascinating 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's The Divine Woman (En Gudomlig Kvinna). 'The film closes with its most emphatic equation of romance and war as a close up of a kiss between Anna and Almay fades to the images of marching troops.' Mauritz Stiller, when invited to a private screening of Hotel Imperial for Max Reinhardt had said, 'Thank you. But if not for Pola, I could not have made it.' Photoplay Magazine reviewed the film favorably, "Here is a new Pola Negri in a film story at once absorbing and splendidly directed...Actually, "Hotel Imperial" is another variation of the heroine at the mercy of the invading army and beloved by the dashing spy. This has been adroitly retold here, untill it assumes qualities of interest and supspense...Miss Negri at last has a role that is ideal..."Hotel Imperial" places Stiller at the 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 fairl |
