Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film

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, among them 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;how it was reviewed, audience reception perhaps actor to actor.

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lady Godiva 1911

Motion Picture World Magazine reviewed the one reel film "Lady Godiva" directed by J.Stuart Blackton for the Vitagraph Company of America with Julia Swayne Gordon in the titular role, "There are many dramatic situations in this picture, especially where the appearance of of Lady Godiva is anticipated as she is about to start upon her journey...This climax touches our sympathy and we grasp the refinement and culture dispalyed by Miss Swayne in acting this part part so admirably and sucessfully, a matter not easy to accomplish." Scott Lord Scott Lord Scott Lord Silent Film

Monday, September 8, 2025

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in Amarilly of Clothes Line Alley (Neilan, 1918)

During 1918, Mary Pickford starred in the five reel film "Amarilly of Clothesline Alley", directed by Marshall Neilan with a photoplay scripted by Frances Marion and Bellek Maniates. Actress Margaret Landis also appears in the film. Photoplay Magazine likened the the acting of Mary Pickford in the film to her work in Stella Maris in its being a "remarkable" character study. "All this is done in Mary Pickford's blithest vein, reminding us once more that she is the greatest of all screen actresses." The competition, Picture Play Magazine, afforded the view of a different angle. "This is Mary Pickford's latest, and it contrasts strongly with that highly dramatic subject, "Stella Maris". It is almost entirely in a humorous vein, though there are times when one catches a glimpse of pathos in the character of Amarilly. But there are more laughs than tears."

In a later photocaption, Photoplay Magazine again revealed that this was for Mary Pickford, recognizable commodity, the portrayal of a new character. (Mary Pickford is shown looking at the rushes with director Marshall Neilan, who evidently would have been joining the War to end all wars in Europe had an armistice not occurred.) Silent Film Mary Pickford

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Seastrom Swedish Silent Film More properly the headlines should read, "Garbo Talks, Seastrom Returns Home." Victor Seastrom, who had worked in the Swedish theater before pioneering in Swedish Film, returned to Sweden with the advent of the sound film, not to direct, but to act. As in Hollywood, the exterior of the Swedish landscape that had established Sjostrom, Stiller and Molander during the golden age of Swedish Silent Film, had taken the innovation of sound back to the proscenium arc of the interior with Molander managing the transition to dialogue centered films.

Victor Sjostrom

Several of the films directed by Victor Sjostrom use artistic experiments in camera technique conducive to conveying symbolic meaning and dramatically charged images, among them being Masks of the Devil, with John Gilbert, and the earlier Kiss of Death, made in Sweden. Victor Sjostrom had begun on stage as an actor in Sweden and appears both on screen as well as from behind the camera. it is an obvious tribute to The Phantom Carriage that Ingmar Bergman includes the actor Victor Sjostrom in a symbolic scene during Wild Strawberries. In his autobiography Images, Ingmar Berman regrets that his workbook to the screenplay to Wild Strawberries had been lost, but he continues to acknowledge the influence of Sjostrom as a director while he moved "spontaneously between different planes-time-space,dream-reality....the hearse that overturns with the coffin bursting open." Silent Film Victor Sjostrom