Scott Lord on Film: A Lady To Love (Victor Seastrom, 1930)

Scholar Bo Florin gives us a point of departure when seeking to analyze the ten reel film “Lady to Love” and the transition from silent to sound film by placing director Victor Sjostrom as part of the M.G.M. Studio, adding that Sjostrom had ushered in the beginning of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film with his adapation of Ibsen’s poem Terje Vigen and effected the transition which would be carried through the merger of Swedish film companies that had changed Svenska Bio to Svenska Filmindustri, and in doing so it is important to Florin that both transitions were from quantity to quality when involving Victor Sjostrom- Florin notes not only coming to the United States as having had consequences to Victor Sjostrom the film director but also includes the speedy advent of sound despite whatever reasons for Sjostrom's return to both Sweden and to acting and only acting.

Bo Florin sees the transition of silent to sound film as one that depicts both off screen and onscreen space through the use of diegetic sound. Florin sees the film "Lady to Love" as important when analysizing "the intersection of different cultures" and "the consequences of the transition to sound for an individual director who was frequently using visual 'sound effects' in his films during the silent era."

Edward G. Robinson starred in both versions of the film, the English languge and the German, as did his co-star actress Vilma Banky, who in 1928 starred in the film "The Awakening" (Victor Fleming (nine reels), a film presently presumed to be lost silent film with no surviving copies. Bo Florin reminds us that "Lady to Love" was formerly considered a lost silent film and only recently unearthed to be included in the historiography of criticism on the development of the filmmaking of Victor Sjostrom; it remains difficult to find documentation of "A Lady to Love" ever having been a lost film, leading us to wonder if it is an over sight on the part of the author and besseching us to look for ehere the film may hsve been mentioned in between its first run and now.

Bo Florin, Stockholm University, in his volume Transition and Transformation, Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood, 1923-1930, writes, "The making of multi-language versions remains on the side of diversity; here, concrete dialects, accents, and sociolects in different spoken languages enter the public sphere through sound recording, but the concept of the film as a unified work with a potential for universalism is also challenged." There were some "minor changes in camera angles" between the two versions and some alternative filming of a bedroom scene to accomodate the American censors, although Florin sees a metonymy that is suggestive through ellipsis.

Victor Sjostrom would soon return to Sweden, not to direct Swedish Sound Film, but to step into the proscenium arc with the blocking of an actor in front of the camera and under the lights. Bo Florin writes that it had been considered that returning to Sweden would have been only a sabbatical and that he could film for M.G.M. there, on location. Florin mentions that Begnt Forslund viewed "A Lady to Love" as "in some sense unworthy of Sjostrom as a director" without directly attributing the Hollywood production system as a reason for Sjostrom's departure, although it may be recurring that Hollywood methods differred from those of Svenska Bio.

Victor Sjostrom
Victor Seastrom playlist Victor Sjostrom