Scott Lord: Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (1928, Victor Sjostrom)

"The Divine Woman" directed in the United States during 1928 featured three Swedish Silent Film stars from the Golden Age of Swedish Silent film, two of whom, Victor Sjostrom and Lars Hanson, would soon return to Sweden to mark the advent of sound film. Sjostrom would return to act and only act, in front of the camera rather than behind it. Only one reel of the film survives, it being presumed lost with no other footage of the film surviving other than the fragment.

Bo Florin, Stockholm University, in his volume Transition and Transformation- Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood 1923-1930, looks as a film detective not only to film critics and magazine articles printed during the first run of the film, as I have, this webpage in fact subtitled "Lost Films, Found Magazines", (please excuse the trendy contemporary use of subtitles during peer review) but also to the the cutting continuity script, his finding a specific sequence where Sjostrom uses "a combination between iris and dissolve", one which, as an iris down, fulfills the "classic Sjostrom function of an analogy". There are two other dissolves in the same sequence that are used as transitions, spatial transitions, yet both are taken from different camera distances. It is a contonuity cutting script from which author Bo Florin has found fifty four dissolves that were used in the film. Again, no footage from the scene or the reel it is from survives. One can ask if double exposures were only infrequently published in magazines or advertisements as publicity stills, or even as lobby cards or posters and if modern audiences have ever seen photographs from the scene.

Greta Garbo biographer Norman Zierold writes, "Garbo asked for, and got, Victor Seastrom as her director in 'The Divine Woman'." Journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, in The Private Life of Greta Garbo fulfills the search for Lost Film, Found Magazines when giving an account of being on the set of 'The Divine Woman' for a rare interview with Greta Garbo, giving a description of what what on film in a film we at presenent no longer have. "There came a shy little French girl and a young officer walking slowly down the street. They paused in a doorway. The officer asked a frowsy inkeeper for lodgings. The girl looked up shyly at the officer. She hesitated a moment, raised up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Then she hurried past him up the stairs. 'Cut' shouted the director." The director was in fact Swedish Silent Film director Victor Sjostrom, Greta Garbo leaving the set in a high collared cape to bring journalist Rilla Page Palmborg to her dressing room. The commodity Garbo at that time? The journalist had obtained the interview not to ask about Lars Hanson, Victor Sjostrom or the upcoming film "The Divine Woman", but was admittedly there to ask Garbo about her tabloid romance with actor John Gilbert. The dressing room was small and on wheels and Garbo politely expressed concern if they both would fit into it. Greta Garbo answered the question regarding her intentions of marriage with "it is only a friendship. I will never marry. My work absorbs me. I have time for nothing else. But I think Jack Gilbert is one of the finest men I have ever known." There would seem a contradiction between the onscreen Garbo who 'nearly invented the torrid love scene' and the extratextural discourse of pursuing the reclusive hermit Garbo everywhere- oddly enough Palmborg claims that the relationship between Garbo and Lars Hanson and his wife Karin Molander was more professional than social although Hanson and Garbo arrived from Sweden at the same time with Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. Swedish Silent Film actress Karen Molander explained, " 'Garbo never had any friends with whom she chummed around in Stockholm.' said Mrs. Hanson. 'When we knew her she was devoted to Mauritz Stiller. He seemed to be the only person with whom she would associate.' "

Paul Rotha, in his volume The Film Till Now, commented on the topic that would be taken up by Bo Florin during this century, the artistic differences between the films made by Victor Sjostrom for Svensk Filmindustri, Stockholm and for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Hollywood. "But Sjostrom has ceased to develop. He remains stationary in his outlook thinking in terms of his early Swedish imagery. He has recently made little use of the progress of cinema itslef. 'The Divine Woman', although it had the Greta Garbo of 'The Atonement of Gosta Berling' had none of the lyricism, the poetic imagery of the earlier film."

Victor Sjostrom and Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Temptress

Greta Garbo in The Torrent
Silent Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo before Hollywood- Einar Hanson

Motion Picture News explained that Corrinne Griffith would begin filming "Into Her Kingdom", based on a nobel by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, upon the completion of the film "Mllo. Modiste" of which she was then currently on the set.

The photo caption beneath Einar Hanson's photograph Picture Play Magazine read, "Einar Hanson, who, made his debut in Corinne Griffith's Into her Kingdom is romantic adventurous, much more like a Latin than Scandinavian." In the article Two Gentlemen from Sweden, Myrtle Gebhardt relates about having dinner with him, her having at first hoped to interview Lars Hanson and Einar Hanson together in the same room. "For it appeared that Einar was working not for Metro, but for First National...Two evenings later I ringed spaghetti around my fork in a nook of an Italian cafe with Einar Hansen...Prepared for a big, blond man, whose bland face would be overspread with seriousness, I was startled by his breathtaking resemblance to Jack Gilbert. "Ya," he admitted, "Down the street I drive and all the girls call, 'Hello Yack' and I wave to them."

Motion Picture News announced the decision for the directorial assignment to the film with Director or Interpreter, "Svend Gade, the Danish director now making Into Her Kingdom is wondering whether he is engaged as a megaphone weirder or interpreter. In directing Miss Griffith, of course, he uses English; but Einar Hanson receives his instructions in Swedish" Meanwhile it also introduced Griffith's co-star, "Einar Hansen, 'The Swedish Barrymore' has arrived in Hollywood to appear opposite Corinne Griffith in her newest First National starring vehicle, Into Her Kingdom, by Ruth Comfort Mitchell." it had been announced by the magazine during early 1926 that, "Corinne Griffith is already planning to start work the first week of March on Into Her Kingdom though now she is only now finishing Mlle. Moditte, both of which are to be First National releases. It is uncertain whether a viewable copy of "Into Her Kingdom" exists, it has appeared as a lost film among films listed as not surviving made by First National, and it seems omitted on lists of lost silent films as either being missing or as being surviving, but at any rate locating a copy held by a museum which preserve films seems beyond public access.

During 1926, Einar Hanson also starred in the eight reel silent comedy "Her Big Night" (Brown).

There is also every indication that there is no existing copy of the lost silent film "The Lady in Ermine" (seven reels, James Flood) in which Einar Hanson starred with Corinne Griffith during 1927. The photoplay to the film was written by Benjamin Glazer . Two weeks before the film went into production, the periodical Motion Picture News announced that Einar Hanson and Frances X. Bushman has been assigned important roles in the film. The periodical Motion Picture World explained, "While the idea is rather sensational and treads perilously close to the risque in its inferences there are no objectionable scenes and the solution is clever and satisfactory." It neglected mentioning Einar Hansen but noted that Frances X. Bushman had been given a "thankless role". Not incidentally, a print of the film "Three Hours" in which James Flood directed actress Corrine Griffith during 1927 does exist.

Motion Picture Magazine in 1927 published an oval portrait of Einar Hansen with the caption, "In Fashions for Women, Einar is the first man to be directed by Paramount's first woman director. How's that for a record? Incidentally, Einar has become a popular leading man as quickly as anyone that ever invaded Hollywood." The caption to the somber portrait published in Picture Play magazine that year held a more sundry description, "Einar Hansen, the young man from Sweden who looks so like a Latin has fared well during his year in this country. he is now under contract to Paramount and has the lead opposite Esther Ralston in Fashions For Women." The film was the first directed by Dorothy Azner, who had worked uncredited with Fred Niblo on Blood and Sand. Gladys Unger, who a year later worked on the scenario to the film "The Divine Woman" (Victor Seastrom), wrote the screenplay to the film "Fashions for Women". The running length of the film consisted of seven reels. The periodical Exhibitor's Herald explained that it was the first starring vehicle for actress Esther Ralston and the first venture weilding the microphone" for director Dortohy Arzner.

Einar Hanson appeared with Anna Q. Nilsson in the lost silent film "The Masked Woman" (six reels) during 1927. The film is presently presumed to be lost with no known surving copies existing.

Of the film "Children of Divorce", Motion Picture News wrote, "It is a picture which is easy to guess the denoument...Frank Lloyd, the director, has overcome much of the plot shortcomings with his lighting and other technical efforts. he provided some charming settings and gotten every ounce of dramatic flavoring from the story." Joseph Von Sternberg's work on the film is uncredited.

     

     Essayist Tommy Gustafsson almost besmirches Einar Hanson by claiming him to have a Bohemian image, that while carrying with it a "soft masculinity", appeared "unsound" when part of his after hours social life, although the author doesn't specifically include Gosta Ekman, Mauritz Stiller or Greta Garbo leaving it only a generic impression. He noted that there was a posthumous "negative attitude" toward Hanson due to "considerable media exposure he received for 'Pirates of Lake Malaren' and 'The Blizzard' as well as great commotion surrounding the trial following his car accident the same year...This is an example of a new connecting link, a kind of intertexuality, that was created between the real people and the characters they played." Gustafsson stops there, only to infer, without making an obvious conclusion and before speculating that Stiller had brought Garbo and Sjostrom to the United States to avoid having been placed in any nocturnal subculture or artistic society of artists that may not have been entirely accepted in Sweden or Europe.

The six reel lost silent film "The Woman on Trial", directed by Mauritz Stiller was released in October of 1927, more than three months after the death of Einar Hanson. The film which starred actress Pola Negri is presumed lost, with no surviving copies.
The body of Einar Hanson was crushed between the steering wheel and a ten inch drainpipe along the highway. Photoplay Magazine reported, "Here is a tragedy- and a mystery. Einar Hansen was found fatally injured, pinned beneath his car on the ocean road. Earlier in the evening, he had given a dinner party for Greta Garbo, Swedish Silent Film director Mauritz Stiller and Dr. And Mrs. Gistav Borkman...Hanson was unmarried and he is survived by he parents in Stockholm."

Hanson had filmed in Europe before coming to the United States. In his native Denmark, he had appeared in the Danish silent film So "Bilberries" ("Misplaced Highbrows", "Takt, Ture Og Tosser", Lau Lauritzen, 1924) and "Mists of the Past" (Fra Plazza del Polo, Anders W. Sandberg, 1925), the latter having starred Karina Bell.

In Sweden, Einar Hanson starred with Inga Tiblad in "Malarpirater", written and directed by Gustaf Molander in 1924 and with Mona Martenson in "Skeppargatan 40", directed by Swedish Silent Film director Gustaf Edgren in 1925.

Before travelling to Turkey with Mauritz Stiller and Greta Garbo, Einar Hanson appeared under the direction of G.W. Pabst with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen in "The Joyless Street" (1925). Greta Garbo biographer Norman Zierold gives an account of Garbo having been offered a second film for Pabst of which Garbo had neglected to inform Stiller who learned of it from Einar Hanson. When Stiller accused Garbo of betraying him she broke off negotiations with Pabst. It had been Stiller who had arranged Greta Garbo's appearance in "The Joyless Street", demanding that Einar Hanson appear with her.

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Danish Silent Film

Remade by Greta Garbo

Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Asta Nielsen as Hamlet (Sven Gade, 1920)

"Hamlet" filmed by Georges Melies as "Hamlet and the Jester's Skull" in 1907 is a lost film with no surviving copies. The first screen version of "Hamlet" appears to have been directed by Will Barker in 1904, which inspired a French version in 1909 directed by George Bourgeois.

It is inevitable that if we ask about audience reception, the individual spectator inevitably experiences and internalizes Hamlet's soliloquy from Act III directed and performed by Laurence Olivier subjectively, but just as inevitably might be drawn to the character by the graveyard scene and Yorik from Act V when directed by Tony Richardson and performed by Nicol Williamson, "the audience as a postulated construct" simultaneously a subjective viewer; and yet the conflict between characters that might bring an immediate response is peripheral.

Sven Gade came to the United States to direct actress Jacqueline Logan during 1925 in the film "Peacock Feathers" before turning screenwriter.

Danish Silent Film

Asta Nielsen in The Abyss