Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film: Biograph and Svenska Bio; D.W. Griffith and Victor Sjostrom: Scott Lord Silent Film: Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927)

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927)

William Nigh directed Lon Chaney in "Mr. Wu" costarring actresses Louise Dresser, Gertrude Olmstead and Renee Adoree. "Mr Wu" was photographed by cameraman John Arbold. The periodical Moving Picture World, during 1926, announced the film as having been adapted for the screen by Lorna Moon from a novel by Louise Jordan Miller. The periodical Moving Picture World, later, in 1927, credited the film as having been adapted from a play by Maurice Vernon and Harold Owen. The periodical introduced the film with a description of the work of Lon Chaney. "Acknowledged as the master of make up, Lon Chaney adds another to his list of unusual characterizations in Metro Goldwyn Mayer's 'Mr. Wu', a chinese drama in which he depicts two members of the household at various ages, from young manhood to decrepit old age."

To convince us that Lon Chaney brought to the screen not only characterizations but "creations, biographer Robert G. Anderson, in his volume Faces, Forms and Films writes, "The novel by Louise Jordon Miln, based on the stage play Mr. Wu, gives scant description of the character. The old mandarin is described in such scattered phrases as "eighty" and "guant, withered and pockmarked." Motion Picture Magazine during 1927 called Mr. Wu a "venerable Chinese gentleman" while giving his daughter, played by Renee Adoree, the appellation of "A Flapper in the House of Wu".

During 1927, Lon Chaney also starred in the films "The Unknown" and "London After Midnight", both directed by Tod Browning and "Mockery", directed by Benjamin Christensen.
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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