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
Directing in 1912, Louis Mercatan had filmed stage actresss Sarah Bernhardt for four reels using only long static shots; there are twenty three scenes in the film and of twenty two intertitles, only three are interpolated. Most summarize the dialogue and its consequence to the action untill the exclamation in scene twenty one, “May God forgive you, I never will.” While discussing the advent of sound film and its acceptance by French filmmakers, the periodical Exhibitor's Daily Review abjured its readers that the would be "reminded that Sarah Bernhardt was the first star of the first movie drama ever produced."
A year later, in 1913, D.W. Griffith, having already adopted the practice of making two-reelers, directing the first American four-reel narrative, “Judith of Bethulia”, starring Blanche Sweet. Louis Mercanton directed Sarah Berhardt again duriing 1913, reverting back to a two reel running length with the film "Adrienne Lecourver, An Actress's Romance", the film presently presumed to be lost,with no surviving copies.
All five or six reels of the 1915 film "Jeanne Dore", starring Sarah Bernhardt and written and directed by Louis Mercantan are presumed to be lost. It mas included among many of the Bluebird Photoplays during the company's brief existence during the first decade of the twentieth century.
Greta Garbo is quoted by Sven Broman as having said, "I know that he courted Sarah Bernhardt and wanted to write plays for her...but Strindberg still managed to get Sarah Bernhardt to do a guest performance in Stockholm in La Dame aux Camelias at the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
There are reports of surviving existing copies of the one reel 1909 film "La Tosca" starring Sarah Bernhardt and Eudourdo Max.
Sara Bernhardt plays herself, as do Sir Basil Zahrof and Maurice Zahrof in the two reel "Sara Bernhardt a Belle Isle" from 1912.
"Mothers of France" (1917) would be the last film to feaure the The Divine Woman, Sarah Bernahrdt.
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