Friday, February 2, 2024

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 Sjsotrom 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.

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."

Actress Vilma Banky had in 1928 starred in the film "The Awakening" (Victor Fleming (nine reels), a film presently presumed to be lost with no surviving copies.
Victor Sjostrom

Victor Seastrom playlist Victor Sjostrom

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Ben Hur (Olcott, 1907)

Sidney OLcott directed the one reel "Ben Hur" (The Chariot Race) with Frank Oak Rose during 1907 for the Kalem Film Manufacturing Company. The photoplay was scripted by Gene Gauthier, who appears in the film with actor William S. Hart. Silent Film Silent Film

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Biblical Drama; Christus (Guilio Antamoro, 1916)

When first read the analytic interpretation of "Christus" (Guilio Antomoro, 1916) by Chandra Han, Pelita Harpan University in the paper Jesus in Film: Representation, Misrepresentation and Denial of Jesus' Agony in Gospels, is fascinating when pointing out the nature of Jesus is depicted as divine in the film in that the dove over him in the portrayal is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, Jesus as "fully God"; this is used to distinguish the divine and human natures of Christ in both the Canonical Gospels and the Apochryphal Gospels and the contrasting agaony of the Savior in both (the human form of Christ having suffered or experienced sorrow for the love of mankind, the divine nature implied to always have existed). silent film silent film

Scott Lord Silent Film: La Vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (1903)

silent film Noah's Arc

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Miracles of Jesus (Mogul Film Company, 1910)

silent film Scott Lord

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (Ali...

Silent Film Silent Film Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Adam and Eve (Vitagraph, 1912)

silent film Scott Lord

Monday, January 29, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Silent Film Studio Tour (M.G.M, 1925)

Silent Film



The 1925 Studio Tour of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, true to the extratextual discourse of its magazine advertisements that boasted of a firmament full of stars, featured a dozen of the studios directors that were then present on the backlot filming that year, inluding Victor Sjostrom, Dimitri Buchowerski, Monta Bell, Rupert Holmes, Eric von Stroheim, Fred Niblo, King Vidor, Joseph von Sternberg, Christy Cabanne, Tod Browning, William A. Wellman, Jack Conway, Edmund Goulding and Marcel de Sarno. Actors and actresses featured in the studio tour included Zazu Pitts, Roman Novarro, Aileen Pringle, Gertrude Olmstead, Norma Shearer, Mae Murray, Lew Cody, Estelle Clark, Conrad Nagel, and Lon Chaney

Silent Film

Early Scandinavian SIlent Film,: FIlmed Theater and the Cinema of Attractions

William Rothman writes that only one sixth of the silent film shot before 1907 had storyline. This can apparently refer to Sweden as well. Scholar Sandra Walker, University of Zurich writes, "At the time of Svenska Bio's first operations approximately 75% of the film produced in Sweden were nature films and journalistic reportage films. The journalistic films, such as the funeraof King Oscar II, in 1907, have been mentioned inconnection with the development of narrative techniques." It would be interesting to as if from the choice of these subjects we could infer a need or desire to view narrative on the screen or if the subjects were suggestive of real life stories that might be expanded into fictional fantasy, a deigesis that might be exotic or with which we were ordinarily familiar, causing us to wonder what would happen later, identifying with the subject for that reason. Silent Film Swedish Silent Film