Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film: 2023-09-03

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.

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Scott Lord Silent Film: American Aristocracy (Ingraham, Triangle Film, 1...

Motion Picture Review reviewed “An American Aristocracy” (five reels)in 1916. “The exhibitor knows the value of Douglas Fairbanks...We sincerely believe that Mr. Fairbanks can put this picture over with any audience whatsoever. It mixes comedy and thrills superbly. However, in the matter of construction it is not up to the standard of the best of his former pictures. It starts off with such a bang and such a rattling selection of uproarious subtitles that it cannot keep up the pace and as a consequence the action slowly up for a while during the middle of the picture. In the end, however, the thrills start again and takes the picture through to a glorious finish.”

"American Aristocracy" was directed by Lloyd Ingraham and photographed by Victor Fleming. During 1916, LLyod Ingraham also directed the film "Stranded" with Bessie Love for the Triangle Film Corporation. The film is presumed to be lost, with no existing surviving copies.

During 1916 Douglas Fairbanks also appeared in the five reel film "The Matrimaniac" (Paul Powell) scripted by John Emerson and Anita Loos for the Triangle Film Corporation and costarring actress COnstance Talmadge, as well as several five reel films directed by Alan Dwan, among which were "Manhattan Madness", "The Habit of Happiness", "The Good Badman" costarring Bessie Love, and "Reggie Mixes In", costarring Bessie Love.

For those interested in the screenwriting behind the photo play, which for this film was penned by Anita Loos, below is a magazine short story version, or novelization, of the Douglas Fairbanks Film.

Douglas Fairbanks Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Reaching for the Moon (Emerson, Loos, 1917)

Anita Loos coscripted the 1917 film "Reaching for the Moon" (five reels) with its director John Emerson. Douglas Fairbanks is paired in the film with actress Eileen Percy.
Doulgas Fairbanks appeared in several films during 1918, among those having been directed by Alan Dwan having been the lost five reel films "He Comes Up Smiling" with Marjorie Daw, "Mr. Fix It" with Marjorie Daw and Wanda Hawley, and "Bound in Morrocco" with Pauline Curley. Fairbanks also that year starred in the five reel films "Arizona" (Alan Parker) and "Heading South" (Arthur Rosen).

Silent Film Douglas Fairbanks Douglas Fairbanks SILENT 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.

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