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: 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, a social phenomenon; how it was reviewed, audience reception.
Scott Lord on Silent Film
Gendered spectatorship notwithstanding, in a way, the girl coming down the stairs is symbolic of the lost film itself, the unattainable She, idealized beauty antiquated (albeit it being the beginning of Modernism), with the film detective catching a glimpse of the extratextural discourse of periodicals and publicity stills concerning Lost Films, Found Magazines
Director Robert G. Vignola adapted "When Knighthood Was In Flower" (twelve reels) from a work by Charles Major. The 1922 film stars Marion Davies with actresses Ruth Shepley, Theresa Maxwell Conover and Flora Finch. In her autobiography WHen Movies Were Young, Linda Arvidson, D.W. Griffith's wife, includes a publicity still from "When Knights Were Bold", a "tabloid version" of the play, claiming that Cosmopolitan and Marion Davies had produced a remake with "When Knighthood was in Flower", a remake which she noted had "a remarkable cast of eighteen principal characters representing the biggest names in the theatrical and motion picture world.", Arvidson seeing it as a compliment that Hollywood had returned to the subjects of theater from before Hollywood had moved from the East Coast. The Best Moving PIctures of 1922-1923 gave its account of the writing of the film's scenario as an early example of its genre. "Charles Major's novel 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' was obtained by Mr. Hearst only after a death struggle with Mary Pickford, who controlled the rights. Miss Pickford wanted to produce it herself, but finally relinguished her hold, and it became a vehicle for the hitherto unrecognized art of Marion Davies".
Silent Film Robert Vignnola
Three years before the premier of "Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916), author Eustace Ball, in the volume "The Art of the Photoplay" advised, "Put one plot at a time; the single reel picture lasts only eighteen minutes and only one line can be worked out well in this time. This is another important detail in which the photplay differs from the drama."
David Bordwell sees cinematic history as a "Basic Story" and that within this approximation, D.W. Griffith is attributed with having invented "cinematic syntax". This syntax is apparent in what Raymond Spottiswoode referred to as the "grammar of film", or shot structure and perhaps in what is expanded later into semiotics and the "grande syntagmatique". While crediting Edwin S. Porter with the use of crosscutting two simultaneous actions, Bordwell notes the crosscutting of four historical periods (seperate storylines, which thematically merge) in Griffith's film Intolerance, filmed thirteen years later. Susan Jean Craig, The City University of New York, in her dissertation "Skin and Redemption-Theology in Slent Films 1902 to 1927 describes the editing of motifs as film technique, "Filmmakers learned that they could use simple shorthand of now widely recognized filmic devices to amplify characterization and backstory: creating metaphoric links between seemingly unrelated storylines by shifting the action betwen them, called intercutting, underscoring human behavior and emotion through high-contrast lighting of scenes and subjects; and stressing subtle psychological shifts in motivation simply by moving the camera closer to the actor's faces. Thus, when D.W. Griffith wanted to introduce a prostitute in his 1916 epic "Intolerance, Love's Struggle through the Ages (Triangle Film Corp.) he didn't need to showa young woman trading sexual favors for payment. Instead he cut from a simple two second shot of a woman dressed too elaborately for her station in life to an intertitle that dubbed her "The Friendless One" to make his point crystal clear. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier sees crosscutting as a programmed languague and dismisses the need to view D.W. Griffith as its inventor, but rather as his "method of film construction", which having previous existed, he "developed and systemized", specifically that editing used in chase scenes and last minute rescue scenes to meet the exingencies of his narrative technique. While properly evaluating the work of D.W. Griffith and the canonical structuring of editing through a "suspensefull call for help, the proximity of the threat and the last minute rescue", Phillipe Gauthier finds early examples of the origins of film technique neglected by earlier prominent film historians. The director of the 1908 Pathe film "A Narrow Escape", if nothing else, certainly does quite often cut on the action of the character leaving the frame.
Author Stanley J. Solomon, in The Narrative Structure of the Film, from his volume The Film Idea eescribes the use of simultaneuous threads of action to climax thematically, "The last two reels (of the total thriteen in extant circulating versions) are among the most exciting sequences in all cinema. As the four stories head toward their conclusions, Griffith begins to cut back and forth much more quickly than he did earlier- mainly without the interference of the image of the rocking cradle...delaying the outcome of each story and building up a tremendous amountof suspense." Solomon looks to Iris Barry often. Iris Barry herself, author of D.W. Griffith, American film master, notes "Intolerance" directed by D. W. Griffith as being seminal. "The film Intolerance is of extreme importance to the history of the cienema." She singles out shots that use only part of the screen's area, tracking shots and rapid crosscutting as techniques used by Griffith in extraordinary combinations with his camera angles. Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema implies that the storyline to "Intolerance" was entirely improvization on the part of D.W. Griffith; not only is there no credit for the photodramatist that wrote the photoplay, but there was originally no scenario to the film. Peter Cowie adds, "Like all Griffith's work, 'Intolerance' has a didactic ring that makes the captions seem pompous. But it lives up to the director's dictum 'Art is always revolutionary, always explosive and sensational."
Stanley J. Solomon in turn finds a thematic continuity in the film, "The four stories demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between individual acts and broadly calamitous events....That concept held in that the peculiarly suggestive medium of film, visual information should consist of fragments which, when carefully chosen and sensitively edited, would produce the idea of a completed action."
Both Lillian Gish and Paul Rotha write of Griffith having found lines in a poem by Walt Whitman that were to connect the stories thematically, Gish appearing at intervals throughout the film to contrast the dramatic quickening of the pace of the film and lending it a symbolism, "Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film." Motion Picture World during 1916 popularized the film as bringing Griffith to a pantheon by subtitling its review with, "Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form are Successfully Revolutionized." Paragraph subtitles were to include, "Original Method of Construction", "Human Interest in Abundance" and "Marvelous Spectacular Effects".
In her book entitled Screen Acting, Mae Marsh explains the differences between the acting required for each camera distance. She begins with telling us that during a long shot facial expressions register indifferently and need to be compensated by body movement. She allows that most dramatic action is filmed in three quarters legnth, from the face to the knees, intermediate shots that require both facial expressions and body movement.
It is thought that the later films of D. W. Griffith, including "The White Rose" (1923) with Mae Marsh, more elaborately presented theme as being intertwined with the drama in which the characters were situated.
D. W. Griffith Victor Sjostrom
At the time Motion Picture Magazine began publishing publicity stills from the film "Thief of Bagdad" during 1923, actress Evelyn Brent was the only player other than Douglas Fairbanks announced as being included in the cast, the studio having purchased ten acres to be used as sets fir the film.
The periodical Exhibitors Herld during 1924 announced that the film "The Thief of Bagdad", produced by Douglas Fairbanks came with a story written by Elton Thomas, the scenario editor Lotta Woods, "'The Thief of Bagdad' is a conglomeration of every impossible situation that could be dug out of every 'Arabian Nights' tale ever written, interspersed with a few that do not cause a stretch of the imagination to be what might have happenned." Included with the autobiography of Douglas Fairbanks, Laugh and Live, is a biographical sketch that refers to Fairbanks occaisionally being called "Doug"; the pseudonym of Douglas Fairbanks was Elton Thomas. SILENT FILM
