Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film: Biograph and Svenska Bio; D.W. Griffith and Victor Sjostrom: Scott Lord on Film: Mary Pickford in Kiki (Sam Taylor, 1931)

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Scott Lord on Film: Mary Pickford in Kiki (Sam Taylor, 1931)

The 1931 sound film "Kiki" starring Mary Pickford is a remake of the nine reel silent film with Norma Talmadge as the titular character directed by Clarence Brown and scripted by Hans Kraly. Although, not a lost silent film it has been restored and only exists as incomplete.

Mary Pickford Mary Pickford

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Lost Silent Film

Gary Carey, writing about his book Stills From Lost Films for the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 addresses use of stills to supplement the lack of existing celluloid, “Stills of course are handy as illustrations or references, but are far from dependable. Most stills are shot by a photographer after the scene has been completed on the set. The actors are asked to repeat bits of action for the still cameraman. There little that the still photograph bears resemblance to the scene of the film.”

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.

Swedish Silent Film: 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