Sven Gustafson screenwriter, Europa 1942-1948

Fan magazines continued to supply short biographies of Greta Garbo well into the 1940's, retelling how she was discovered and repeating stories with which the public was already familiar, it continually meeting John Gilbert and Mauritz Stiller as well as Lars Hanson. Modern Screen magazine, most certainly a periodical from only the sound film era, excerpted The True Life Story of Greta Garbo by William Stewart. "The second disaster to occur during the filming of 'The Temptress' was the death of Greta's sister. It was the crowning heartbreak of a picture that had been ill fated for Greta since the starting crank of the camera." Alva Maria Gustafsson, Alva Garbo, died in 1926 at the age of twenty six years old. While Alva, apart from appearing as an extra with sister Greta for the Swedish Silent film director John Brunius, only made one screen appearance, that of a part in the film "Two Kings" ("Tva Kongungar", Elis Ellis,1925), the brother of actress Alva Gustafson and actress Greta Garbo, Sven Gustafson, infrequently billed as Sven Garbo, although the elder of the three siblings, went on to become a screenwriter after his brief foray into acting. It would usually seem reasonable to say that both Greta Garbo and brother Sven retired during the same period in light of Sven Gustafson having later visited the United States before his death if it were not for Greta Garbo having at that time having completely become a recluse to the public, only contemplating a return to making films.

     The wife of Sven Gustafson, Emy Owandner, made only one screen appearance, that of a role in the film "Sun Over Klara" ("Sol over Klara"), directed by Emil A. Lingheim and written by Erik Lundegard, which lists her role as uncredited. The Swedish Film Institute, rather lists her as appearing in two earlier comedies for Europa, one in which she appeared with Sven Gustafson.

     Swedish director Gustaf Edgren co-wrote the screenplay to the 1929 film "Kongstjorda Svensson" in which Sven Garbo appeared with actresses Brita Appelgren and Karen Gillberg. The film was photographed by Hugo Edlund.

     Edvin Adolphson had directed "When Roses Bloom" ("Na rosorna sla ut"), starring Sven Garbo during 1930. The film was scripted by Gosta Stevens and also stars Karin Swanstrom, Margita Alven, and Anna-Lisa Baude. Else Marie Hansen was given her first appearance on screen in with the film. Greta Garbo visited her brother, Sven Gustafson, while in Stockholm. The Private Life of Greta Garbo, published in Photoplay Magazine during 1930 is, much like the biography of Greta Garbo penned by Norman Zierold, an enjoyable, if not charming read; it includes a brief mention of Sven Garbo, "At one time Miss Garbo's brother, Sven, who has been quite successful abroad both on stage and screen, wanted to come to Hollywood. He even sent screen tests of himself to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer." Rilla Page PalMborg again mentioned that Sven Garbo had sent screen tests of himself to M.G.M the following year when publishing the biography The Private Life of Greta Garbo in book form during 1931. While giving an account of Garbo's activities while filming the silent film "The Kiss" it relies heavily on quotes of her housekeeper-valet Gustaf, according to whom she kept a large portrait of her brother in her living room, arranged upright on a table. "Garbo was all upset the day she received a letter from her brother saying that the motion picture company for whom he was working wanted to change his name to Garbo. She said that she made the name of Garbo herself, that it was her name and there should be no one else using it. She called her brother not to allow the motion picture company to use it....but he answered that it was too late."

     To complement whispers that Sven Gustafson would have like to film in America, when in actuality it was Greta Garbo that travelled between the two countries, Screenland Magazine related,"Everyone says there is only one Garbo in pictures, but the Swedish cyclone's brother Sven has been signed to Paramount for talkies. Sven Garbo is tall and handsome and reported to be a good bet for pictures." Yet, without dispelling this, Photoplay Magazine during 1931 translated the title of Edvin Adolphson's film "Na Rosarna Sla Ut" as "Hole in the Wall" and listed it as being produced by Paramount. Photoplay later added,"Sven Gustafsson, brother of Gret Garbo, makes his American debut in it. He's a tall, limp, black-haired boy with a moustache and doesn't beT the faintest resemblance to his famous sister. And he's a punk actor, if this is a sample. The picture tells a light, chatty love story. There's one good actor in the troupe- an ugly gentleman named Uno Henning." Inches above a synopsis of the Greta Garbo film "Inspiration", Photoplay magazine again looked at the film in brief, "Swedish talkie brings us Sven Gustaffson, Garbo's brother, but nothing like his famous sister. Light and chatty love story."

Photoplay magazine during 1934, in an article entitled "Greta Garbo Wanted to be a Tightrope Walker, by Leonard Clairmont, mentioned Sven Garbo as being Greta Garbo's agent in Sweden for the pruchase of an estate called Dyvik which afforded a two mile long beach.


During 1943, Sven Gustafson co-wrote the screenplay to the film "A Girl Fir Me" (En flicka mej) for Europa with director Borje Larsson, it having been photographed by Harald Bergland and having starred actresses Sickan Carlsson, Gull Natorp, Hilda Borgstrom and Kerstin Lindahl.

The periodical New Movies, The National Board of Review during November 1945 listed the film "Skepper Jansson" to Sven Gustafson co-wrote the screenplay with director of Sigurd Wallen. "Humorous and warm hearted in tone, and lovingly photographed, the film should please Swedish speaking audiences."

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The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters, D.W. Griffith

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The Photoplay: Silent Film Lobby Cards, D.W. Griffith

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Scott Lord: The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjostrom, 1918)

After having appeared in “The Outlaw and His Wife”, actress Edith Erastoff starred with Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth In “The Flame of Life” (1919), directed by Mauritz Stiller And “Let No Man Put Asunder” (“Hogre Andamal”, 1921) directed by Rune Carlsten.
In Sweden, Victor Sjostrom continued directing in 1922 with the film “Vem domer”, starring Jenny Hasselqvist, which he co-scripted with Hjalmer Bergman.

Victor Sjostrom had written four hundred letters to Edith Erastoff, his co-star from the film “The Outlaw and His Wife”, their eventually having married during 1922.

The historiography of the film criticism that delineates the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film was perhaps easily formulated while the films were still being screened internationally in theaters if we heed the review placed in the periodical Picture Show magazine during 1919 that astutely notes "On stage it is easy to calculate the effect of limelights....a glance at the top photographs of Seastrom (left) in 'Love the Only Law' and (right) 'A Man There Was' well illustrates how the one appealing figure dominates the immense landscape around him". The magazine quotes Victor Sjostrom explaing his liking screen adaptation over stage adaptation almost propheticly in regard to the film criticism, if not film theory, that would later follow. "One has to deal with more people', he says, 'and also with grande, terrible landscapes, with shifting effects of shade and shadow'".

Author Forsyth Hardy, in the volume Scandinavian Film written in 1952, explains the film of Victor Sjostrom as having established Sjostrom as an auteur of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film by his work having created a poetic cinema. Hardy writes, “There was a greater freedom of movement, an assured sense of rhythm and a fine feeling for composition. In ‘The Outlaw and His Wife’ Sjostrom used landscape with a skill which was to become part of the Swedish Film tradition. He found a way of filming the tree-lined valleys and wide arched skies of his country so that they became not merely backgrounds but organic elements in the theme in the theme. There was still, however, a lingering tendency to melodrama in the acting....the end of the film especially was marred by melodramatic excess, but despite this fault, Berg-EJvid was memorable because of its theme, and its demonstration in the earlier sequences of the film medium's affinities with poetry." During 1960, Charles L. Fuller, writing for Films in Review, succinctly described the films motifs, "Its theme was that no man escapes his fate 'though he rides faster than the wind' ".

Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, explains, "But apart from his assured use of flashbacks, Sjostrom was the first Swedish director to realize the importance of landscape in the cinema. The solicitude and predicament Berg-EJvind and his wife speak through images with the clouds and mountains expressing a life of vigor and simplicity."

About the film, Einar Lauritzen wrote, “But Sjostrom never let the drama of human relations get lost in the grandeur of the scenery.” To this can be added that Jean Mitry, in his work The Aesthetics and Psychology of Cinema, writes of the mountain in "The Outlaw and His Wife", up to the tragic ending, is a symbol of granduer and isolation, as well as a symbol for the effort of the man and woman to reverse their fate. The snow, in Mitry's interpretation symbolizes not only purity but alao redemption.

Peter Cowie writes, "Prominent too in this masterpiece is the Scandinavian approach to the seasons. Summer is recalled in short, wrenching spasms, as the outlaw sits starving in his mountain hut toward the end; but winter, equated inthe Swedish arts with death, destroys the spirit and whips the snow over the couple's bodies with inexorable force."

"The Outlaw and His Wife" was reviewed in the United States during 1921 under the title "You and I". Motion Picture News concluded, "The picture is marred by an utterly irrelevant prolougue and epilougue which should be dispensed with immediately. It has no place in advancing the drama and really spoils the good impressions of the picture."

When Bluebook of the Screen in 1923 introduced Victor Sjostrom as then currently filming his first feature made in the United States, "Master of Men" as Victor Seastrom it related, without quoting him directly, that Sjostrom felt that his "tragedy of Iceland", "The Outlaw and His Wife", was his est work and that to him it "would not be understood or appreciated in England or America".

David Bordwell, in his paper French Impressionist Cinema, Film Culture, Film Theory and Film Style, supports the idea that "The Outlaw and his Wife" had helped mark the incipience of a Golden Age of Swedish Silent FIlm. Bordwell notes, "'The Outlaw and his Wife' had begun an "influx" of Swedish Silent Films into France by Gaumont to complement a growing avaunte garde movement of French Impressionistic films, "In one week in 1921, no fewer than eight Swedish Films were playing in Paris, nearly all by Sjostrom and Stiller. Again, the Swedes use of flamboyant lighting effects and occaisional spatial distortion (e.g. the superimpositions of Sjostrom's 'The Phantom Carriage') probably reinforced and encouraged certain tendencies in French filmmakers work." Borwell described the Swedish camera techniques as "narturalistic" when compared to other European markets. Bordwell writes that Cinea, one of the magazines founded by Louis Delluc, proponent of the French Impressionist avaunte garde film movement, devoted a large amount of space to the reviewing of the films of Sjostrom and Stiller and their having been revered in France by critics and filmmakers, which is evident by the numerous appearances of Victor Seastrom on the cover. The volume Experiment in Film, edited by Roger Manvell in 1949 opined that while the films of Victor Sjostrom inspired the film of the French Avant-Guarde movement when it "set a fashion for dreams and superimposition", German silent cinema, with Nosferatu produced "deplorable experiments in composition."

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