Scott Lord on the Silent Film of Greta Garbo, Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjostrom as Victor Seastrom, John Brunius, Gustaf Molander - the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film........Lost Films in Found Magazines: Victor Seastrom directing John Gilbert and Lon Chaney, the printed word offering clues to deteriorated celluloid, extratextual discourse illustrating how novels were adapted to the screen; the photoplay as a literature, a social phenomenon; how it was reviewed, audience reception.
Scott Lord on Silent Film
Gendered spectatorship notwithstanding, in a way, the girl coming down the stairs is symbolic of the lost film itself, the unattainable She, idealized beauty antiquated (albeit it being the beginning of Modernism), with the film detective catching a glimpse of the extratextural discourse of periodicals and publicity stills concerning Lost Films, Found Magazines
Monday, February 2, 2026
Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1929)
Mordant Hall writing in 1929, recounts his purported assignation with the 'Hollywood Hermit', "Soon the door of Miss Garbo's apartment was flung open and the sinuous figure of the alluring actress appeared as if from a ray of sunlight. In a low-toned voice that suited her beauty, she greeted the caller, whose eyes fell from her face to a bouquet of flowers on a table, and then to a carpet. 'Won't you sit down?', she asked." He continues to describe her pink, silk sweater and black velvet skirt, claiming that of all her films, 'A Woman of Affairs' was Greta Garbo's favorite. She evidently recounted preparing for a role on the Stockholm stage and having had studied the part, but later having decided against appearing in the theater. "She repeated, 'Delighted to have met you.'"
Biographer Rita Page Palmborg, author of The Private Life of Greta Garbo, wrote,”Garbo was anxious to make ‘A Woman’s of Affairs’. It was to be her first portrayal of a modern American girl. While the story had romance running through it, it was not filled with the passionate, exotic type of love-making that had been seen all through her other pictures. Garbo and Gilbert had several scenes heavy with romance. But the fact that their own relations were in a perpetual state of turmoil seemed to detract from the glamour of their love-making. The public seemed to sense that the Garbo-Gilbert romance was coming to an end. Hollywood could not keep track of the affair.It was a case of ‘off-again, on-again’.” Biographer Norman Zierold, in his volme Garbo, evaluated the off screen romance and on screen commodity of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, The public demanded every scrap of news about the teeter-totter romance, which extended over two years and three films...By the time of 'A Woman of Affairs' in 1929, the romance was over and Garbo alledgedly said, "God, I wonder what I ever saw in him. Oh, well, I guess he was pretty."
The titles of movies that Greta Garbo had signed under contract to appear in were subject to change during the end of the the silent era. On March 31, 1928, Exhibitor's Herald World ran an announcement titled, "Clarence Brown's Next To be Greta Garbo Production", which read, "Clarence Brown will again direct Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The picture that brings the two together again is 'The Sun of St. Moritz' by Oskar Houeker."
Photoplay Magazine announced, "Rumor has it that Clarence Brown and Dorothy Sebastian are married." Of her playing against Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs, Sebastian was thought to "present an interpretation, brief but classic." It reviewed the performance of John Gilbert as having played, "the difficult role of lover with dramatic repression." It went on, "Miss Garbo's interpretation is all the greater because she puts it all over without a single clinging dress or a single Garbo slink." Of the intertitles, or subtitles, Photoplay Magazine was exact in its estimation of their "devastating effect" as continuity- "When Miss Cummings wants to think of something sweet for John to murmur to Greta, she orders up a flock of chocolate sodas from the studio lunchroom. Miss Cummings wrote the titles for A Woman of Affairs and there wasn't a spoonful of ice cream left in Southern California." The magazine later reviewed the film with, "Why waste space urging you to drop everything to see this one." Film Daily credits Bess Meredyth as having written the scenario and Mariona Ainslee and Ruth Cunningham as having provided the titles, "Greta Garbo does her best work of her career in a part that all women will rave over. John Gilbert has a very secondary role....Director Clarence Brown has done a masterly job. He cunningly dodged the censor stuff by treating the many-lover episodes as a series of photos taken from a newspaper's files...Synchronized sound effects."
Motion Picture Classic magazine favorably reviewed the film, "The picture has been carefully plotted, so much so that it is filled with subtle asides in its scenes and titles. This procedure was necessary to pass muster. But the original meaning is incorporated in the central ideas and it is fully emphasized by Garbo's finely shaded performance. There are some gorgeous settings. The atmosphere gives it quality, too...It is Greta Garbo's work that makes it enjoyable. John Gilbert is nothing much more than a figure-head here." Motion Picture magazine reviewed the film by viewing Garbo and Gilbert, "Perhaps I'm getting old. Or perhaps it is just that Jack Gilbert finds a full dress suit happening to his style of lovemaking. At any rate, something was missing in the high-powered scenes where he and Greta Garbo show what sex can be at its best...the tempo of the picture is decidedly slow and episodic."
Author Richard Corliss looked at the directing of the film, "Faced with a plot as convoluted and predestined as a Chinese ballet, what can Clarence Brown do but direct actors like traffic. He simply discards the flamboyant eroticism of Flesh and the Devil and concentrates as much as possible on elaborately paired shots, some half a film apart, which suddenly reinforce, or undedrcut, the story's plodding ironies." He, maybe importantly to the study of the photoplay, notes that one character dies "at the exact moment" when Greta Garbo and John Gilbert are consummating their love affair, illustrating the effect of pacing the action and timing in plot exposition during the photoplay- in fiction, in classical narrative, not only can plotlines structured on character development intersect and intertangle, as counterpunctal or counterpoint, but they can occur simultaneously, editing to serve a delineating purpose of narrative structure. Screenland Magazine offered to its readers Greta Garbo's neglgee, or her "boudoir gown" rather, which would be given to the contestant who wrote the best letter on the tragic roles of the actress. The Garbo Nile robe worn in A Woman of Affairs was to be sent to the writer of the most interesting letter along with a Christmas greeting from the actress herself. Screenland asked, "How do you feel after a sad ending?" It also, two pages earlier had offered to its readers John Gilbert's Gruen Swiss wristwatch for the most intelligent letter. "Write your opinion. Does a picturesque costume add to the glamour of romantic roles or is there more interest in a modern lover? Why?" It claimed, "The watch which John Gilbert has offerred for your Christmas is an exact duplicate of the one he wore in the scenes with Greta Garbo. We asked for his watch but he said he had given it very hard wear and the winner should have a new one."
During the first run of the film appeared the article "There is a Style Trend Inspired by the Graceful Garbo. Can Every Woman Follow". The article was subtitle, "What the Garbo Girl should Wear", but the writer, Gilbert Adrian, as well as having included three costume sketches and an exclusive photograph of himself with Greta Garbo during a fashion conference, also added how the Garbo Girls present during 1928 in the circulation of Screenland Magazine should wear their hair, and should not wear their hair being a Garbo Girl type. Adrian wrote, "In following Miss Garbo, one realizes that simplicity is the key note to her smartness, as it should be of all women of taste. her natural aloofness and manner of bearing make it possible for her to put meaning into simple clothes. The girl who feels she is the Garbo type should be truthful and analyze her nature to find out whether the appearance is only skin deep, or if her mental qualities and manner can carry, with the same dignity and charm, the simplicity that Garbo knows how to handle. Garbo's flair for and understanding of drama is coupled closely with the clothes she wears...without being clothes conscious, the most conscious kind of clothes..The girl of the Garbo type should wear pajama ensembles; geometric designs in vivid colors; scarfs wrapped around the head...should NOT wear negligees of taffeta with ruffles or hand-made flowers, dainty pinks or blues, or bandea with ribbon streamers...I remember that I designed a two-piece sports costume in Boi de rose duvet even, made with a sleeveless jacket and a short skirt with roomy kick pleats for Miss Garbo to wear in A Woman of Affairs. A tucked in blouse with boyish collar and leather belt, further carried out the athletic type of costume in this instance. Topping this was a trench coat of the same material finished with a bright plaid tuxedo collar...One of Miss Garbo's favorite costumes is a two piece dress of dark green camel's hair jersey."
As soon as 1930, A Woman of Affairs was reported in hardcover as a film on which dramatic and thematic limitations were imposed. The volume Censored, The Private Life of the Movies directed it's scrutiny on the film and went so far as to imply there was a cutting of the film before release "in order to avoid showing a scene intimating that mePn and women love out of wedlock and cited other films that contained "information and dialouge infinitely more suggestive than the dropping of a ring from the hand of Greta Garbo" and yet it still went on to note that the aegis of the time period would only release the film, as with a rating, if the director was to "shorten to flash of five feet scene of Diana and Holderness on couch, embracing and kissing and eliminate view of Diana's hand except after she has dropped the ring." Close Up magazine during 1928 also referred to the film's reputation and the publicity that had preceded it, "Michael Arlen's The Greet Hat, done in celluloid, under the direction of Clarence Brown is M.G.M.'s latest vehicle for Greta Garbo. to placate the moralists who have registered objections to the screening of the story, the picture will be released under another name- A Woman of Affairs. This simple device will no doubt prove effective here as it did with the protested Rain, which under the film info into of Sadie Thompson, successfully satisfied the American puritanical conscience." Motion Picture News during 1928 addressed the quickly growing reputation of the film, as though there were something more sinister in the new sexuality of Garbo, rather than a young woman only immoral due the the inexperience of a vamp, or its new incarnation, vamping flapper, "A Woman of Affairs illustrates the fallacy of official bans on stage plays that are regarded in stage form as too daring or immoral for screen production. A Woman of Affairs proves that questionable or objectionable things in stage plays can be treated from other angles without the least offence to decency or good taste...A Woman of Affairs hasn't the slightest offensive situation."
The Film Spectator objected to the film. It’s reviewer thought to explicitly describes the mechanics of the licentious kissing of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert onscreen. “They could not call it ‘The Green Hat’ for it is supposed to be an immoral book, but they put things in the picture more filthy and disgusting than Arlen ever dreamed of.”The titles of movies that Greta Garbo had signed under contract to appear in were subject to change during the end of the the silent era. On March 31, 1928, Exhibitor's Herald World ran an announcement titled, "Clarence Brown's Next To be Greta Garbo Production", which read, "Clarence Brown will again direct Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The picture that brings the two together again is 'The Sun of St. Moritz' by Oskar Houeker."
Photoplay Magazine announced, "Rumor has it that Clarence Brown and Dorothy Sebastian are married." Of her playing against Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs, Sebastian was thought to "present an interpretation, brief but classic." It reviewed the performance of John Gilbert as having played, "the difficult role of lover with dramatic repression." It went on, "Miss Garbo's interpretation is all the greater because she puts it all over without a single clinging dress or a single Garbo slink." Of the intertitles, or subtitles, Photoplay Magazine was exact in its estimation of their "devastating effect" as continuity- "When Miss Cummings wants to think of something sweet for John to murmur to Greta, she orders up a flock of chocolate sodas from the studio lunchroom. Miss Cummings wrote the titles for A Woman of Affairs and there wasn't a spoonful of ice cream left in Southern California." The magazine later reviewed the film with, "Why waste space urging you to drop everything to see this one." Film Daily credits Bess Meredyth as having written the scenario and Mariona Ainslee and Ruth Cunningham as having provided the titles, "Greta Garbo does her best work of her career in a part that all women will rave over. John Gilbert has a very secondary role....Director Clarence Brown has done a masterly job. He cunningly dodged the censor stuff by treating the many-lover episodes as a series of photos taken from a newspaper's files...Synchronized sound effects."
Motion Picture Classic magazine favorably reviewed the film, "The picture has been carefully plotted, so much so that it is filled with subtle asides in its scenes and titles. This procedure was necessary to pass muster. But the original meaning is incorporated in the central ideas and it is fully emphasized by Garbo's finely shaded performance. There are some gorgeous settings. The atmosphere gives it quality, too...It is Greta Garbo's work that makes it enjoyable. John Gilbert is nothing much more than a figure-head here." Motion Picture magazine reviewed the film by viewing Garbo and Gilbert, "Perhaps I'm getting old. Or perhaps it is just that Jack Gilbert finds a full dress suit happening to his style of lovemaking. At any rate, something was missing in the high-powered scenes where he and Greta Garbo show what sex can be at its best...the tempo of the picture is decidedly slow and episodic."
Author Richard Corliss looked at the directing of the film, "Faced with a plot as convoluted and predestined as a Chinese ballet, what can Clarence Brown do but direct actors like traffic. He simply discards the flamboyant eroticism of Flesh and the Devil and concentrates as much as possible on elaborately paired shots, some half a film apart, which suddenly reinforce, or undedrcut, the story's plodding ironies." He, maybe importantly to the study of the photoplay, notes that one character dies "at the exact moment" when Greta Garbo and John Gilbert are consummating their love affair, illustrating the effect of pacing the action and timing in plot exposition during the photoplay- in fiction, in classical narrative, not only can plotlines structured on character development intersect and intertangle, as counterpunctal or counterpoint, but they can occur simultaneously, editing to serve a delineating purpose of narrative structure. Screenland Magazine offered to its readers Greta Garbo's neglgee, or her "boudoir gown" rather, which would be given to the contestant who wrote the best letter on the tragic roles of the actress. The Garbo Nile robe worn in A Woman of Affairs was to be sent to the writer of the most interesting letter along with a Christmas greeting from the actress herself. Screenland asked, "How do you feel after a sad ending?" It also, two pages earlier had offered to its readers John Gilbert's Gruen Swiss wristwatch for the most intelligent letter. "Write your opinion. Does a picturesque costume add to the glamour of romantic roles or is there more interest in a modern lover? Why?" It claimed, "The watch which John Gilbert has offerred for your Christmas is an exact duplicate of the one he wore in the scenes with Greta Garbo. We asked for his watch but he said he had given it very hard wear and the winner should have a new one."
During the first run of the film appeared the article "There is a Style Trend Inspired by the Graceful Garbo. Can Every Woman Follow". The article was subtitle, "What the Garbo Girl should Wear", but the writer, Gilbert Adrian, as well as having included three costume sketches and an exclusive photograph of himself with Greta Garbo during a fashion conference, also added how the Garbo Girls present during 1928 in the circulation of Screenland Magazine should wear their hair, and should not wear their hair being a Garbo Girl type. Adrian wrote, "In following Miss Garbo, one realizes that simplicity is the key note to her smartness, as it should be of all women of taste. her natural aloofness and manner of bearing make it possible for her to put meaning into simple clothes. The girl who feels she is the Garbo type should be truthful and analyze her nature to find out whether the appearance is only skin deep, or if her mental qualities and manner can carry, with the same dignity and charm, the simplicity that Garbo knows how to handle. Garbo's flair for and understanding of drama is coupled closely with the clothes she wears...without being clothes conscious, the most conscious kind of clothes..The girl of the Garbo type should wear pajama ensembles; geometric designs in vivid colors; scarfs wrapped around the head...should NOT wear negligees of taffeta with ruffles or hand-made flowers, dainty pinks or blues, or bandea with ribbon streamers...I remember that I designed a two-piece sports costume in Boi de rose duvet even, made with a sleeveless jacket and a short skirt with roomy kick pleats for Miss Garbo to wear in A Woman of Affairs. A tucked in blouse with boyish collar and leather belt, further carried out the athletic type of costume in this instance. Topping this was a trench coat of the same material finished with a bright plaid tuxedo collar...One of Miss Garbo's favorite costumes is a two piece dress of dark green camel's hair jersey."
As soon as 1930, A Woman of Affairs was reported in hardcover as a film on which dramatic and thematic limitations were imposed. The volume Censored, The Private Life of the Movies directed it's scrutiny on the film and went so far as to imply there was a cutting of the film before release "in order to avoid showing a scene intimating that mePn and women love out of wedlock and cited other films that contained "information and dialouge infinitely more suggestive than the dropping of a ring from the hand of Greta Garbo" and yet it still went on to note that the aegis of the time period would only release the film, as with a rating, if the director was to "shorten to flash of five feet scene of Diana and Holderness on couch, embracing and kissing and eliminate view of Diana's hand except after she has dropped the ring." Close Up magazine during 1928 also referred to the film's reputation and the publicity that had preceded it, "Michael Arlen's The Greet Hat, done in celluloid, under the direction of Clarence Brown is M.G.M.'s latest vehicle for Greta Garbo. to placate the moralists who have registered objections to the screening of the story, the picture will be released under another name- A Woman of Affairs. This simple device will no doubt prove effective here as it did with the protested Rain, which under the film info into of Sadie Thompson, successfully satisfied the American puritanical conscience." Motion Picture News during 1928 addressed the quickly growing reputation of the film, as though there were something more sinister in the new sexuality of Garbo, rather than a young woman only immoral due the the inexperience of a vamp, or its new incarnation, vamping flapper, "A Woman of Affairs illustrates the fallacy of official bans on stage plays that are regarded in stage form as too daring or immoral for screen production. A Woman of Affairs proves that questionable or objectionable things in stage plays can be treated from other angles without the least offence to decency or good taste...A Woman of Affairs hasn't the slightest offensive situation."
Recently, Scholar Carmen Guiralt, writing in Film History, an International Journal, has added what may be an important source to the distinctions of diegetic and non-diegetic discourse and of textural and extra-textural discourse involved in the thematic and metaphorical rendering of content within context and its exhibition in the public sphere, almost to where we might revisit the theory of a cinema of attractions and reconsider it within a pre-code public sphere. The author looks at the censored image with discourse- particularly when those images are used to transpose the discourse of the novel during its adaptation. Greta GarboThe central premise of the paper Self-Censorship in Hollywood during the Silent Era : A Woman of Affairs (1928), is almost too direct to not be stunning. An abstract reads," This article studies, from a historical view as well as an aesthetic point of view, the constraints placed... On the production and on Clarence Brown's use of visual images to convey the full content of the novel. As a result, A Woman of Affairs presents two contradictory story lines, the narrative revealed by the images and the difficult speech supervised by the censors and featured in the intertitles of the film." The film had been vastly altered by the censors in regard to its screenplay and a corresponding new plot had to be devised.
Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Swedish Silent Film, Scott Lord on Danish Silent Film
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Scott Lord Silent Film: Silent Film Studio Tour (M.G.M, 1925)
Silent Film
The 1925 Studio Tour of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, true to the extratextual discourse of its magazine advertisements that boasted of a firmament full of stars, featured a dozen of the studios directors that were then present on the backlot filming that year, inluding Victor Sjostrom, Dimitri Buchowerski, Monta Bell, Rupert Holmes, Eric von Stroheim, Fred Niblo, King Vidor, Joseph von Sternberg, Christy Cabanne, Tod Browning, William A. Wellman, Jack Conway, Edmund Goulding and Marcel de Sarno. Actors and actresses featured in the studio tour included Zazu Pitts, Roman Novarro, Aileen Pringle, Gertrude Olmstead, Norma Shearer, Mae Murray, Lew Cody, Estelle Clark, Conrad Nagel, and Lon Chaney
Silent Film
The 1925 Studio Tour of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, true to the extratextual discourse of its magazine advertisements that boasted of a firmament full of stars, featured a dozen of the studios directors that were then present on the backlot filming that year, inluding Victor Sjostrom, Dimitri Buchowerski, Monta Bell, Rupert Holmes, Eric von Stroheim, Fred Niblo, King Vidor, Joseph von Sternberg, Christy Cabanne, Tod Browning, William A. Wellman, Jack Conway, Edmund Goulding and Marcel de Sarno. Actors and actresses featured in the studio tour included Zazu Pitts, Roman Novarro, Aileen Pringle, Gertrude Olmstead, Norma Shearer, Mae Murray, Lew Cody, Estelle Clark, Conrad Nagel, and Lon Chaney
Silent Film
Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Swedish Silent Film, Scott Lord on Danish Silent Film
Swedish Silent Film: The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjostrom, 1918)
After having appeared in “The Outlaw and His Wife”, actress Edith Erastoff starred with Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth In “The Flame of Life” and "Song of the Scarlet Flower" (Sangen om den eldroda blommen) directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1919 and “Let No Man Put Asunder” (“Hogre Andamal”, 1921) directed by Rune Carlsten. Stiller had directed Edith Erastoff in a 1914 production of August Strindberg's work "Storm" at the Intima Teatern, where she had witked mostly with Einar Froberg. Swedish Silent Film director Rune Carlsten had directed her twice on the stage of the Intima Theatern before her having appeared in Sjostrom's "The Outlaw and his Wife".
In Sweden, Victor Sjostrom continued directing in 1922 with the film “Vem domer”, starring Jenny Hasselqvist, which he co-scripted with Hjalmer Bergman.
Victor Sjostrom had written four hundred letters to Edith Erastoff, his co-star from the film “The Outlaw and His Wife”, their eventually having married during 1922.
The historiography of the film criticism that delineates the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film was perhaps easily formulated while the films were still being screened internationally in theaters if we heed the review placed in the periodical Picture Show magazine during 1919 that astutely notes "On stage it is easy to calculate the effect of limelights....a glance at the top photographs of Seastrom (left) in 'Love the Only Law' and (right) 'A Man There Was' well illustrates how the one appealing figure dominates the immense landscape around him". The magazine quotes Victor Sjostrom explaing his liking screen adaptation over stage adaptation almost propheticly in regard to the film criticism, if not film theory, that would later follow. "One has to deal with more people', he says, 'and also with grand, terrible landscapes, with shifting effects of shade and shadow'".
Author Forsyth Hardy, in the volume Scandinavian Film written in 1952, explains the film of Victor Sjostrom as having established Sjostrom as an auteur of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film by his work having created a poetic cinema. Hardy writes, “There was a greater freedom of movement, an assured sense of rhythm and a fine feeling for composition. In ‘The Outlaw and His Wife’ Sjostrom used landscape with a skill which was to become part of the Swedish Film tradition. He found a way of filming the tree-lined valleys and wide arched skies of his country so that they became not merely backgrounds but organic elements in the theme in the theme. There was still, however, a lingering tendency to melodrama in the acting....the end of the film especially was marred by melodramatic excess, but despite this fault, Berg-EJvid was memorable because of its theme, and its demonstration in the earlier sequences of the film medium's affinities with poetry."
Peter Cowie, in his volume Scandinavian Film, nodded to the cinematography that Victor Sjostrom and Julius Jaenzon had already developed together, "The everyday rythmn of pastoral life and the pleasures and pains accompanying it merge in a charged brilliance in the cinematography of Julius Jaenzon. The interiors in the farm at the beggining of the film look quite authentic...."
During 1960, Charles L. Fuller, writing for Films in Review, succinctly described the films motifs, "Its theme was that no man escapes his fate 'though he rides faster than the wind' ".
Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, explains, "But apart from his assured use of flashbacks, Sjostrom was the first Swedish director to realize the importance of landscape in the cinema. The solicitude and predicament Berg-EJvind and his wife speak through images with the clouds and mountains expressing a life of vigor and simplicity."
About the film, Einar Lauritzen wrote, “But Sjostrom never let the drama of human relations get lost in the grandeur of the scenery.” To this can be added that Jean Mitry, in his work The Aesthetics and Psychology of Cinema, writes of the mountain in "The Outlaw and His Wife", up to the tragic ending, is a symbol of granduer and isolation, as well as a symbol for the effort of the man and woman to reverse their fate. The snow, in Mitry's interpretation symbolizes not only purity but also redemption.
Peter Cowie writes, "Prominent too in this masterpiece is the Scandinavian approach to the seasons. Summer is recalled in short, wrenching spasms, as the outlaw sits starving in his mountain hut toward the end; but winter, equated inthe Swedish arts with death, destroys the spirit and whips the snow over the couple's bodies with inexorable force."
Bo Florin sees the landscape as metaphorical in the films of Victor Sjostrom, often representing conflict between characters and within characters after establishing the relation of man to nature, "Fullerton points to the dialectics in the relationship between human and landscape, which establishes analogies between them." Bo Florin then almost suprisingly goes further to stimulate the reader by entering into the effect of enviornment, ie. atmosphere as trope, on plot and whether it is part of the storyline, "The shape of the landscape in the film functions as a series of presages, which to the spectators forbode the dark conclusion of the narrative." Florin often sees Victor Sjostrom continuing his work from the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film as Victor Seastrom in Hollywood, his having analysized Sjostrom's work on both continents in his paper "Confronting the Wind".
Tom Milne sees the film as being an example of a director "articulating the sense of space and liberty in the use of landscape which was already one of the distinguishing marks of the Swedish cinema".
"The Outlaw and His Wife" was reviewed in the United States during 1921 under the title "You and I". Motion Picture News concluded, "The picture is marred by an utterly irrelevant prolougue and epilougue which should be dispensed with immediately. It has no place in advancing the drama and really spoils the good impressions of the picture."
When Bluebook of the Screen in 1923 introduced Victor Sjostrom as then currently filming his first feature made in the United States, "Master of Men" as Victor Seastrom it related, without quoting him directly, that Sjostrom felt that his "tragedy of Iceland", "The Outlaw and His Wife", was his est work and that to him it "would not be understood or appreciated in England or America".
David Bordwell, in his paper French Impressionist Cinema, Film Culture, Film Theory and Film Style, supports the idea that "The Outlaw and his Wife" had helped mark the incipience of a Golden Age of Swedish Silent FIlm. Bordwell notes, "'The Outlaw and his Wife' had begun an "influx" of Swedish Silent Films into France by Gaumont to complement a growing avaunte garde movement of French Impressionistic films, "In one week in 1921, no fewer than eight Swedish Films were playing in Paris, nearly all by Sjostrom and Stiller. Again, the Swedes use of flamboyant lighting effects and occaisional spatial distortion (e.g. the superimpositions of Sjostrom's 'The Phantom Carriage') probably reinforced and encouraged certain tendencies in French filmmakers work." Borwell described the Swedish camera techniques as "narturalistic" when compared to other European markets. Bordwell writes that Cinea, one of the magazines founded by Louis Delluc, proponent of the French Impressionist avaunte garde film movement, devoted a large amount of space to the reviewing of the films of Sjostrom and Stiller and their having been revered in France by critics and filmmakers, which is evident by the numerous appearances of Victor Seastrom on the cover. The volume Experiment in Film, edited by Roger Manvell in 1949 opined that while the films of Victor Sjostrom inspired the film of the French Avant-Guarde movement when it "set a fashion for dreams and superimposition", German silent cinema, with Nosferatu produced "deplorable experiments in composition."
Greta Garbo
Victor Sjostrom
Victor Sjostrom playlist
Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Swedish Silent Film, Scott Lord on Danish Silent Film
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