Scott Lord Silent Film: The Great Train Robbery (Porter,1903)

In the autobiographical reminiscences William N. Selig printed in Photoplay Magazine during 1920, Selig, perhaps almost graciously, credits Edison with the "first single reel picture containing a story in continuity", although he adds that "The Great Train Robbery" was only 800 feet and that he was soon on Edison's coattails with films of his own of length equal to it. Interestingly, Selig recounts in the article director Frank Boggs as "the real pioneer in photographic reproduction", his during 1908 releasing a one reel film every week; Selig claims Boggs was assasinated on the Selig Studios during 1912. Vladimir Petric in A Visual/Analytical History of Silent Film (1895-1930), Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, notes Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" as a "primitive use of parralel editing to dramatize the narrative". Not only is this in sharp contrast to the earlier cinema of attractions that relegated storytelling to the act of display, but the film is significant as the first film made in the Western genre. It is uncanny that the closing shot, as a subjective shot, is an attraction, something static and something dispalyed, urging the spectatator to draw and shoot back. Patric Vonderau and Vinzenz Hedigar have written, "The visuality of the display, however, is still indispensible to its effect."- albeit their recent volume, Films That Work, is primarily concerned with international industrial films.

Author Nicholas A. Vardac opines that it was the films of Edwin S. Porter that D.W. Griffith aquired the technique of viewing the shot within its context as a "syntax for the melodrama". Whether crosscutting began with Edwin S. Porter and "The Great Train Robbery", a film which is attributed as having used croscutting in the volume The Film Idea, written by Stanley J. Solomon, or whether it was more properly developed by D.W. Griffith around 1908, as with the parallel editing in the 1907 films "The Greaser's Gauntlet" and "The Fatal Hour" (Phillipe Gauthier, Harvard University), author Stanley Solomon points out that crosscutting was intrinsiclly cinematic, rather than dramaturgical or theatrical by describing it as "a technique suitable to the form of cinema but unnatural to the form of nineteenth century stage drama, which was at that time a significant influence on the new media." A recent online film class on how to "read" a film from described the film as being comprised of "seperate shots of non-continuous, non-overlapping action" while being careful to designate the film as an early example of crosscutting. Of "The Great Train Robbery", author Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "The movement, as well as the narrative, was carried over from one scene to another." Cowie mentions the film "Runaway Match", directed in 1903 by Alf Collins as being an early narrative silent in which "camera movements and positions are exploited to advantage". The film is fast paced, depicting a couple hurriedly en route to their betrothal, but includes a close up insert shot of their wedding rings.

After having defined a seminal theory of the cinema of attractions to fit early examples of pioneer cinema, Tom Gunning goes further to see it surplanted by a cinema of narrative integration-during a discussion on early Biograph films Gunning mentions that the films "A Trip to the Moon" and "The Great Train Robbery" are in fact narrative by virtue of being storytelling, but lack the characterization involved in later films. Tom Gunning goes further to imply that a cinema of narrative integration began with D.W. Griffith, leaving out Edwin S. Porter, Gunning citing two of Porter's films, "College Chums" (1907) and "Cupid Pranks" (1908), which employed a split screen, as having lacked the "articulation of the dramatic content through filmic means." Gunning writes that even Porter's later films, "Although narrative films, they seem more related to the cinema of attractions' display of technological novelties." Athur Knight, as early as 1957 in his volume The Liveliest Art, matter of factly records that Melies' 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" antedated "our own" "The Great Train Robbery" of 1903 in having "demonstrated the narrative powers of the new medium",but credits the cinema of attractions with adding the novelty of seeing real things in motion, ie. locomotives thundering down the track and ocean waves crashing towards the audience. Knight then credits Edward S. Porter as having eclipsed Melies as a director by his film having "revealed for the first time the function and the power of the cut in telling a story on the screen.....No less important to the success of 'The Great Train Robbery' was its freshness of camera placement." D.W. Griffith would be credited with breaking the standard distance between the actor and authorial camera's view of the actor as seen by the audience, the Vitagraph nine foot line, by changing the placement of the camera mid-scene, as when cutting to a closer angle- characterization integrated with narrativity. It should be noted that prior to 1908, the director at Biograph was Wallace McCutcheon, who directed with Edward S. Porter and was responsible for two Westerns filmed during 1903, "The Pioneers" and "Kit Carson" and the 1907 film "Daniel Boone". With its pedestrian lack of plot, the 1906 film "A Winter Straw Ride", filmed by Edward S. Porter with Wallace McCutheon for Edison, features the attraction of movement within the frame, diagnol movement from the background of the shot to the foreground, which intentionally or unintentionally, reverses screen direction from left screen to right to right screen to left and then later in fact reverses screen direction from background to foreground to foreground to background. The entirety of the one reeler is kept in exterior long shot. Tom Gunning has written, "The cinema of attractions, rather than telling stories, bases itself on film's ability to show something". Gunning almost goes so far as to describe it as exhibitionist rather than voyueristic and this nearly accounts for the characters in McCutheon's film quickly approaching the camera and quickly retreating from it. It would be D.W. Griffith that would pioneer the cinema of narrative integration.

Film historian Charles Mussur, looking at "The Great Train Robbery" in Before the Nickelodeon :Edwin S. Porter, writes, "Porter's film meticulously documents a process...The film's narrative structure, as Gaudreault notes, utilizes temporal repetition with an overall narrative progression." As narrative it was essentially a reenactment film. He adds that "Porter exploited procedures that heighten the realism and believabilty of the image" (David Levy).

It is apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" was filmed not only in the studio, but on actual locations, including in fact a train Porter had borrowed in New Jersey; it also apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" released during 1904 by Sigmund Lubin also combined scenes filmed both outdoors and inside the studio, the film also concluding with a close up of an outlaw. Catalougues "free upon request" featuring "Lubin's Latest Hits" list Lubin's "The Great Train Robbery" as running 600 ft, there being sixteen seperate scenes to the film. The 1903 Edison Manufacturing Company catalougue lists the running legnth of Edison's "The Great Train Robbery", a "sensational and highly tragic subject", as 740 ft, the film divided into fourteen scenes.

The sequel to "The Great Train Robbery", titled "The Little Train Robbery" (1905) although directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Company, is a parody, and features an all child actor cast.

Silent Film Silent Film D. W. Griffith

Scott Lord Silent Film: Linda Arvidson in The Adventures of Dollie (D.W....

Actress Linda Arvidson, writing in the periodcial Film Fun during 1916, includes the "now historic" film "The Advntures of Dollie" (one reel) directed by D.W Griffith for the Biograph Film Companyin 1908. Arvidson wrote under the name Mrs. D.W. Griffith. In one installment she reminisces about travelling to film exterior scenes, claiming they hadn't automobiles yet and visited locations by train or by boat. In a later installment she dicusses her salary for the film, "How much money I made! Twenty eight dollars in two weeks, enough for a whole spring outfit." What is more enjoyable is the autobiography of Mrs. D.W. Griffith, When Movies Were Young, published in 1925. Much of the material from the Film Fun periodical is repeated, worded similarly, as she gives an account of D.W. Griffith the actor being offered a provisional chance to direct his first film, "The Adventures of Dollie", given that he could return to acting if necessary. Mrs. D.W. Griffith exlains Griffith having been accepted as a director for Biograph, "For one year now, those movies so covered with slime and so degraded would have to come first to come first in his thoughts and affections....agonizing days when he would have given his life to be able to chuck the job." She includes not only the studio on East Fourteenth Street but the theaters on Third and Ninth Avenues as places into which one would not be seen going.

Author Edward Wagenkneckt, in his volume The Films of D.W. Griffith, chronicles that 'The Adventures of Dollie", filmed in July of 1908, was the first of 450 films directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company before leaving in September of 1913 all but eleven having been one reelers. Author Roger Manvell, in his sixty page introduction to the anthology "Experiment in the Film" credits "The Adventures of Dollie" as the first film in which D.W. Griffith had used the flashback.

Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, notes that it was in 1908, in the film "For Love of Gold", that D.W. Griffith had first used the close up shot in film.

In regard to my webpage series "Lost Films, Found Magazines", begun at a time when film preservation was unearthing many unseen masterpieces from the silent era, author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the origins of American Narrative Film, lends a caution that supports the premise of needing a film history detective while dismissing the perfect accuracy of historiography and the endeavor. "The accounts of Griffith's biograph films given by Lewis Jacobs, George Sandoul and Jean Mitry are filled with descriptions that do not correspond with the actual films. Based primarily on written descriptions rather than on the films themselves, these eroors are recycled in textbooks on film history." Gunning cites in particular the autobiography of the wife of D.W. Griffith, Linda Arvidson. According to Gunning, the point of departure used by Lewis Jacobs was primarily the editing that Griffith employed; while looking at Terry Ramsaye and his analysis of shot structure, Gunning adds the phrases "screen grammar" and "pictorial rhetoric" to the familiar "syntax of film narration". "For Sandoul, Griffith's stylistic innovation shattered the theatrical unity of space by introducing the ubiquity of the camera and a unity of action." Gunning also advances the semilogical analysis of Christian Metz as a review of Griffith at Biograph having brought a "liberation of film from theatrical tradition" with the creation of a "film language.", the cinema of attractions bringing new "codified constuctions" to accomadate the cinema of narrative integration, "syntagmas in which individual shots depend on their relation to other shots in the chain for their meaning." Tom Gunning writes, "Dollie's story forms a perfect match with Todorov's "minimal complete plot" although Griffith structures the story through a "spatial as well as narrative circuit". Gunning is referring to the writing of Tzvetan Todorov on narrative equilibrium, progress and resolution who places plot among the elements of narrative, which also include characters, point of view, setting, theme, comflict and style.

Arthur Knight, in his volume The Livliest Art gives one summary of the importance of D.W. Griffith, "He created the art of the film, its language, its syntax. It has often been said that Griffith 'invented' the close-up, that he 'invented' cutting, the camera angle, or the last minute rescuse...He refined these elements already present in motion pictures."

Silent Film D.W. Griffith D. W. Griffith

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Lonedale Operator (Griffith, 1912)

In her autobiography, Lillian Gish discusses D.W. Griffith's cutting between camera distances in "The Lonedale Operator" (one reel). The photoplay was written by Mack Sennett and photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company durin 1912. Linda Arvidson, writing as Mrs. D. W. Griffith, in her autobiography entitled "When the Movies Were Young" recounts the importance of "The Lonedale Operator" to the career of actress Blanche Sweet, "Mr. Griffith, as of yet unwilling to grant that she had any soul or feeling in her work, was using her for 'girl' parts. But he changed his opinion with 'The Lonedale Operator'. That was the picture in which he first recognized ability in Miss Sweet." Arvidson later phrases it as "screen acting that could be recognized as a portrayal of human conduct". In another account contained in the volume, Arvidson chronicles D.W. Griffith having met with Blanche Sweet "on the road" with an offer to film two reelers in Calfornia neccesitated by the departure of Mary Pickford to the IMP Studios.

Arthur Knight, in his volume The Liveliest Art, describes Griffith's use of the insert shot in "The Lonedale Operator" when Blanche Sweet uses a wrench that is thought to be a pistol. "It was the close up that let us in on the secret, when the director was ready to reveal it. Griffith discovered that one basic function of the close up was to emphasize the inanimate, to make tings a dynamic part of the worl through which the actors move. But the close up does more than emphasize what is in a scene, it elimantes everything else."

Magazine advertisements paid for by the Biograph Film Company described "The Londale Operator", reading: "With this Biograph subject is presented without a doubt the most thrilling melodramatic story ever produced." Silent Film

D.W. Griffith

Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lonely Villa (D.W. Griffith, Biograph, 1909)

In her autobiography, Lillian Gish discusses D.W. Griffith's use of shot length in "The Lonely Villa". Linda Arvidson wife of D.W. Griffith, in her autobiography "When the Movies Were Young" claims that "The Lonely Villa" was the second film in which Mary Pickford had appeared, her having made her motion picture debut in the earlier "The Violin Maker of Cerona". Mack Sennett had gleaned the plot to "The Lonely Villa" from a newspaper.

Author Stanley J. Solomon, in his volume The Film Idea sees "The Lonely Villa" as only the beginning of the development of new film techniques by D.W. Griffith, almost intimating that there would be a synthesis of Griffith as an autuer and new developments in filmmaking would combine. "Although Griffith was working now with materials that could not be effectively duplicated onstage, 'The Lonely Villa' was not really totally cinematic. Griffith's understanding of spatial relationships was still limited; to get a person from one point to another, Griffith shows him moving there in stages." The passage is particularly refreshing because through it Solomon imparts to us where the title of his volume The Film Idea comes from and how it is his point of departure. He writes,"But Griffith learned quickly that a meaningful narrative must be embedded in a total film idea. Otherwise, when the surface movement is the whole film idea, the camera functions simply as a recording device and most of its expressive possiblilities are relegated to either unimportance or mere technique."

In her volume her volume D.W. Griffith, American film master, Iris Barry sees the film technique used by D. W. Griffith developed quickly during a short period of time, "In The Lonely Villa many scenes begin quietly with the entrance of the characters into the set, significant action follows this slow-paced start only belatedly. In The Lonedale Operator there is no leisurely entrance, the characters are already in mid-action when each shot begins and there is no waste footage- no deliberation in getting on with the story when haste and excitement are what is needed." Barry adds, "At no time did he use a scenario. But there was considerable protest when, quite early in his directorial career, he insisted on retaking unsatisfactory scenes and succedded in gaining permission to do so in The Lonely Villa. Bitzer and others were aghast at his extravagence with film."

Film historian Arthur Knight explains in his volume The Liveliest Art, "the legnth of time a shot remained on the screen could create very real psychological tensions in the audience: the shorter the shot, the greater the excitement. As early as 1909, he introduced this principle to build a climax of suspense in 'The Lonely Villa'....By cutting back and forth, from one to the other, making each shot shorter than the last, Griffith heightened the excitement of the situation."
Author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the Origins of Ammerican Narrative Film points out that D.W. Griffith had brought another innovation to film while at the Biograph Film Company, "The Lonely Villa" was comprised of a total of 52 seperate shots, compared to European film d'art that may have contained under 10.

Adventures of Dollie: D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company D. W. Griffith Biograph Film Company Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Deluge (Vitagraph, 1911)

Exhibitor's Trade Review lured projectionists to screen a Bible series during 1922 by promising the distribution of "direct propaganda" to ministerial bodies and schools. Perhaps a modern account would prefer the term "hype".

Little is known as to whether the films based on the Holy Bible exhibited during the 1920's are entirely lost films, with no surviving copies or not. It is often noted that the cinematic depiction of Jesus Christ was not entirely allowed during the silent film era. Not incidently, Vitagraph during 1910,not long after the cinema of attractions and Nickelodeon , questioned the venue available to the flanneur for theatrical release of film, remotely querying as to audience reception in spectatorship, by asking while advertising in the periodical The Film Index, "Have you written to your exchange to engage the series for extra exhibitions in churches and halls?" The advertisement also offerred a printed lecture and "elaborate beautiful posters" for the "greatest drawing card for an entire entertainment, the greatest since the Passion Play", Vitagraph's five reel biblical drama series,"Life of Moses". The studio advertised that all five reels were to be released in early Lent.

Previously, Vitagraph studios, during 1909 had produced versions of "Jeptha's Daughter", and "Solomon's Judgement", the advertising for which highlighted its costumes and scenery. Both films were directed by J. Stuart Blackton, the former having starred actress Annette Kellerman, the latter actress Florence Lawrence. Universal followed with a three reel version of "Jeptha's Daughter" in 1912 directed by J.Farrell MacDonald and starring actress Constance Crawley.



"The Deluge", "Vitagraph Portrayal of the Great Flood" was reviewed with a synopsis and publicity stills by the periodical The Film Index in February of 1911 and appears in advertisements placed in French periodicals. "This indescribably beautiful release is not a mere phantasy; it is a matter of careful research and Biblical record. Its costumes are designed from Tissot."

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Noah's Ark (Vitagraph, 1911)

Adam and Eve (Vitagraph, 1912)

Scott Lord Silent Film Biblical Drama: Flight into Egypt

"The Flight into Egypt" appears in The New Testament in the scriptural passage Matthew 2:13-23.

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Noah's Arc

Shadow of Nazareth

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Shadow of Nazareth (1913)

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Flight to Egypt
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Scott Lord Silent Film: Biblical Drama, Sign of the Cross (Frederick A T...

Silent Film The Bible Biblical Drama

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

When first read the analytic interpretation of the biblical drama "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: Biblical Drama; Jesus of Nazereth (From The Manger to the Cross,...

It has been noted that "From The Manger to the Cross", directed by Sidney Olcott for the Kalem Company and shot on location in Egypt and Palenstine in 1912 and scripted by actress Gene Gauthier who played The Virgin Mary in the film, owes a debt visually to a Bible illustrated by Joseph Jacques Tissot. Accordingly, the expository intertitles preceding each scene from the Holy Bible introduce the passage with quotations from scripture cited by their respective chapter and verse.

Author W. Barnes Tatum, in his volume Jesus at the movies, a guide to the first hundred years, differentiates between Jesus story films and Christ figure films, Sidney Olcott's biblical drama "From the Manger to the Cross" belonging to the former, the cinematic Jeusus, a visual form dating back to the passion play. Tatum expands his analysis by conveniently differentiating between the Synoptic portrayal of Christ and the Johannine portrayal. He names the film to be a "silent pageant".

Linda Arvidson, wife of D.W. Griffith, remembers Gene Gauthier in her autobiography "When Movies Were Young". She explains that Gauthier had been a "location woman" for D.W. Griffith who "dug up locations and wrote scenarios." Arvidson writes,"Miss Gauthier's aptitude along the location line did not satisfy her soaring ambition, so she left Biograph for Kalem."

Author Leslie Wood, in her volume The Miraacle of the Movies, claims that Sidney Olcott had decided to direct an account of the life of Christ after the copyright to hia film "Ben Hur" had been contested by the author of the novel. "Ben Hur" had been a one reel film of sixteen scenes and the indignant Olcott, in need of a cooyright free story, saw the New Testament produce a more epic drama and travelled to Jerusalem, where he built a temporary studio, to shoot on an authetic location.

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Scott Lord Silent Film: The Water Nymph (Sennett, Keystone, 1912)

The 1912 directorial debut of Mack Sennett for the Keystone Film Company, "The Water Nymph" starred actress Mabel Normand. Film historian Arthur Knight, in his volume The Liveliest Art, "At first Sennett was Keystone's director, star, idea man, and sometimes he even helped out on the camera. Stories were improvised on the spot...The key scenes, the scenes involving incident, would be caught almost on the fly...Before long Sennett, like Ince, was forced to withdraw from direct participation in his comedies and become producer." Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith, Biograph 1912)

The year 1912 was to mark the first film with Lillian and Dorothy Gish, “An Unseen Enemy” (one reel), directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company. Lillian and Dorothy Gish appeared in a dozen two reel films together during 1912 and several more during 1913. In The Man Who Invented Hollywood, the autobiography of D.W. Griffith, published in 1972, Griffith outlines his arriving at the Biograph Film Company and adding actors, including Mary Pickford,to his ensemble. Griffith recalls, "One day in the early summer of 1909, I was going through the dingy, old hall of the Biograph studio when suddenly the gloom seemed to disappear. The change was caused by the prescence of two young girls sitting side by side and on a hall bench...They were Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Of the two, Lillian shone with an extremely fragile, ethereal beauty...As for Dorothy, she was lovely too, but in another manner- pert, saucy, the old mischief popping out of her." Actress Lilian Gish, in her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me writes,"Mr. Griffith had rehearsed 'The Unseen Enemy' with other actresses, but after meeting us, he decided we would be suitable for the leads and changed the plot just enough to fit us."
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Lillian and Dorothy Gish Biograph Film Company The Adventures of Dolly: D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Film Company

Scott Lord Swedish Silent Film: The Phantom Carriage (Korkarlen,Victor Sjostrom, 1920)

With the subtitles Sweden Strikes a Lyrical Note, Garbo is Lost and Found, and Sweden Studio is Re-Born, in 1947 author Leslie Wood, in her book Miracle of the Movies, note the contribution of Victor Sjostrom and his Film “The Phantom Carriage” to the aesthetic of silent filmmaking at a time when both he and Mauritz Stiller saw film mostly as an artistic expression rather than a money-making machine consisting of “angles” and formulas. “Made In 1920, the film was instrumental ink making countries outside of Sweden aware of the artistic scope of the Svenska Biograph organization. Their screen work was particularly brilliant. Natural light, even on interior settings was far ahead of the work achieved on open air stages elsewhere. Their technicians had the happy thought of building the sets on locations which would provide fine vistas of natural scenery when glimpses through open doors and windows and the shafts of sunlight falling into a room would be the real thing. With motes and breathtakingly beautiful because of its naturalness. Seastrom’s direction sometimes strained a little too much to include the beautifully simple and the simply beautiful- slow sheep toddling away at the approach of lovers, or the graceful movements making a servant in performing the everyday, ordinary rites of preparing breakfast in a sunlit kitchen.” Wood provides a thematic synopsis of the film with, "with an eerie forcefulness and an abscence of the macabre, an unconscious man sees the misery he has wrought".
The Victor Sjostrom film “The Phantom Carriage” was the first movie made at the Filmstaden studios at Rasunda, Sweden and it is evident that the Studio was designed for filming; the Little Studio, newly renovated and open to the public for tours, was comprised of rehearsal rooms and filmstudios, one on the top floor having a roof and walls made of glass to use daylight when filming, as well as a rotatating stage. A small cinema on the bottom floor has been named after Ingmar Bergman and has been kept as a screening room. Leslie Wood notes, "The Svensk studio, beside a lake at Rasunda and twenty minutes by train from Stockholm, was a large but simply arranged wooden building set amongst pine trees,,,its cloistered atmosphere."

Filmstaden was used by director Ingmar Bergman to make the images of silent film, and their extratextual context, come to life while filming “The Imagemakers” (“Bildmarkarna”) for Swedish Television during 2000. Also included within the play is a screening of “The nPhantom Carriage”, it being an adaption of the writing of Per Olaf Enquist that transpires as interaction between Victor Sjostrom, novelist Selma Lagerlof, cameraman Julius Jaenzon and actress Tora Teje during the making of the film. One theme of the film is artistic authenticity, a theme well articulated by Ingmar Bergman during his films of the 1950’s. Actress Anita Bjork starred as Selma Lagerlof and actress Elin Klinga starred as Swedish Silent Film actress Tora Teje.

Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian film, praises the contribution of cameraman Julius Jaenzon to the film, "Julius Jaenzon's work for 'Korkarlen' helped both to enrich the director's expression of his theme and to bring international recognition to the technical achievement of the Swedish films."

Anthony Battalgia recently for Film Comment explained the spatio-temporal structure of the film directed by Victor Sjostrom ,”It is hard to overstate the storytelling sophistication at work here: flashbacks fork off from stories in the act of being told, mixing tenses untill all Time seems in The here and now.”, which is fitting for the re-enactment of what he labels to be “nominally, a ghost story”. Directed by Victor Sjostrom from his own screenplay, "The Phantom Chariot" has often been compared to the opening symbolic sequence of the film "Wild Strawberries", directed by Ingmar Bergman; Victor Sjostrom stars in both films.

Author Forsyth Hardy compliments director Victor Sjostrom own onscreen acting, its having been less historionic than in other films. “The exaggerated guestures of some of the early films had gone, but the intensity of feeling was still there.” Hardy characterizes the film as being "memorable".
The film stars actresses Hilda Borgstrom, whom had appeared in the films “Ingeborg Holm” (1913) and ”Domen Icke” (1914), both directed by Victor Sjostrom, Concordia Selander, who appeared in the film “Torsen Fran Stormyrtorpet” (1917), directed by Victor Sjostrom, Lisa Lundholm and actress Astrid Holm. Charles Magnusson produced the film. The multiple or layered double exposures were developed by cameraman Julius Jaenzon. Author Lars Gronkvist notes that after taking eight days to finish the script, Director Victor Sjostrom delivered, read and performed the script for two hours in front of novelist Selma Lagerlof before the two of them had dinner.


The film having being remade twice, first by Julien Duvivier in 1939, and by Swedish Film director Arne Mattson in 1958, author Aleksander Kwiatkoski, in his volume Swedish Film Classics, compares the subsequent versions to Victor Sjostrom's original adaptation of "Korkarlen", "None of the subsequent screen versions of Selma Lagerlof's novel has reached the power of expression of this one. Sjostrom's film is not as inventive in its psychological stratum but his social and moral interests are curiously interwoven with his personal experiences."

Actor Tore Svennberg, who appears in "The Phantom Carriage", went on to become manager of the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten), Stockholm, between 1922-1928. Other managers have included Pauline Bruinius, Olof Molander, Ingmar Berman and Erland Josephson. Greta Garbo and Victor Seastrom


Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller

Victor Sjostrom Playlist

Scandinavian Silent Film playlist

Under the Red Robe (Victor Sjostrom, 1937)

Advertisements placed in the Motion Picture Herald during 1937 noted the film "Under The Red Robe, directed by Victor Sjostrom as having been adapted from the "unforgettable novel" written by Stanley T. Whyman and the play by Edward Rose. The Review of Reviews section of World Film News during 1937 quoted the Birmingham Mail. "The period film, we are continually being told (by people in the industry, not the public) is dead. And the period film, hardier than the prophets, continues for the delight of the romantically inclined in an unromantic age...This is a film to enjoy if you have a heart for swashbuckling."

From the letters to his wife during the summer of and autumn of 1936 we can very well follow the work of the script, the planning and the shooting of "Under The Red Robe". Bengt Forslund chronicles the film's direction by Victor Sjostrom.
The novel "Under the Red Robe", written by Stanley J. Weyman in 1894, had been filmed on two previous occaisions, once in Great Britain in 1915, directed by Wilfred Noy and again in the United States in 1923, directed by Alan Crosland. The work had already appeared on stage as dramatized by Edward Ross.

Scholar Bo Florin mentions that although while directing in Sweden, Victor Sjostrom spearheaded the Golden Age of Silent and brought international recognition to a Scandinavian cinema that situated its narrative in the literature and landscapes or rural Sweden, in regard to characters and plots, the dramas depicted by Sjostrom would have fit into any international context, perhaps this evolving from Sjostrom's beginnings on the Swedish stage and in the theater.

"Under the Red Robe" was the last film directed by Victor Sjostrom, who returned to appearing on screen as an actor during 1939 in the films "Mot ny Tider" (Towards New Time, Sigurd Wallen) and "Gubben Kommer".

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo

Victor Sjostrom playlist
Victor Sjostrom

Scott Lord: Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (1928, Victor Sjostrom)

"The Divine Woman" directed in the United States during 1928 featured three Swedish Silent Film stars from the Golden Age of Swedish Silent film, two of whom, Victor Sjostrom and Lars Hanson, would soon return to Sweden to mark the advent of sound film. Sjostrom would return to act and only act, in front of the camera rather than behind it. Only one reel of the film survives, it being presumed lost with no other footage of the film surviving other than the fragment.

Bo Florin, Stockholm University, in his volume Transition and Transformation- Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood 1923-1930, looks as a film detective not only to film critics and magazine articles printed during the first run of the film, as I have, this webpage in fact subtitled "Lost Films, Found Magazines", (please excuse the trendy contemporary use of subtitles during peer review) but also to the the cutting continuity script, his finding a specific sequence where Sjostrom uses "a combination between iris and dissolve", one which, as an iris down, fulfills the "classic Sjostrom function of an analogy". There are two other dissolves in the same sequence that are used as transitions, spatial transitions, yet both are taken from different camera distances. It is a contonuity cutting script from which author Bo Florin has found fifty four dissolves that were used in the film. Again, no footage from the scene or the reel it is from survives. One can ask if double exposures were only infrequently published in magazines or advertisements as publicity stills, or even as lobby cards or posters and if modern audiences have ever seen photographs from the scene.

Journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, in The Private Life of Greta Garbo fulfills the search for Lost Film, Found Magazines when giving an account of being on the set of 'The Divine Woman' for a rare interview with Greta Garbo, giving a description of what what on film in a film we at presenent no longer have. "There came a shy little French girl and a young officer wlaking slowly down the street. They paused in a doorway. The officer asked a frowsy inkeeper for lodgings. The girl looked up shyly at the officer. She hesitated a moment, raised up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Then she hurried past him up the stairs. 'Cut' shouted the director." The director was in fact Swedish Silent Film director Victor Sjostrom, Greta Garbo leaving the set in a high collared cape to bring journalist Rilla Page Palmborg to her dressing room. The commodity Garbo at that time? The journalist had obtained the interview not to ask about Lars Hanson, Victor Sjostrom or the upcoming film "The Divine Woman", but was admittedly there to ask Garbo about her tabloid romance with actor John Gilbert. The dressing room was small and on wheels and Garbo politely expressed concern if they both would fit into it. Greta Garbo answered the question regarding her intentions of marriage with "it is only a friendship. I will never marry. My work absorbs me. I have time for nothing else. But I think Jack Gilbert is one of the finest men I have ever known." There would seem a contradiction between the onscreen Garbo who 'nearly invented the torrid love scene' and the extratextural discourse of pursuing the reclusive hermit Garbo everywhere- oddly enough Palmborg claims that the relationship between Garbo and Lars Hanson and his wife Karin Molander was more professional than social although Hanson and Garbo arrived from Sweden at the same time with Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. Swedish Silent Film actress Karin Molander explained, " 'Garbo never had any friends with whom she chummed around in Stockholm.' said Mrs. Hanson. 'When we knew her she was devoted to Mauritz Stiller. He seemed to be the only person with whom she would associate.' "

Paul Rotha, in his volume The Film Till Now, commented on the topic that would be taken up by Bo Florin during this century, the artistic differences between the films made by Victor Sjostrom for Svensk Filmindustri, Stockholm and for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Hollywood. "But Sjostrom has ceased to develop. He remains stationary in his outlook thinking in terms of his early Swedish imagery. He has recently made little use of the progress of cinema itslef. 'The Divine Woman', although it had the Greta Garbo of 'The Atonement of Gosta Berling' had none of the lyricism, the poetic imagery of the earlier film."

Victor Sjostrom and Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo in The Temptress

Greta Garbo in The Torrent
Silent Greta Garbo

Scott Lord Scandinavian Silent Film: The Gardner (Tradgardsmastanen, Vic...

Banned in Sweden during 1912, "The Gardner", written by Mauritz Stiller and directed by Victor Sjostrom was thought to be lost untill a surviving copy was found sixty eight years later in the Library of Congress. The film stars Victor Sjostrom with Lilli Bech, Muaritz Stiller, Gosta Ekman and John Ekman. It was the directorial debut of Victor Sjostrom, unscreened during his lifetime. Actress Karin Alexandersson who appears in the film that year also appeared in the film "Froken Julie", directed by Anna Hofmann-Uddgren..

Was the film Scandinavian sensationalism made in response to Asta Neilsen starring in the film "The Abyss"? The film did successfully premiere in Denmark and Norway, during 1912 and 1913 respectively. (To modern auiences the film's theme of incest/seduction is depicted before both the Suffragete movement for women's voting rights and before much of Frued's writing on the Electra Complex- there remains an ostensible theme of Seduction, or perhaps an element of exploitation in the film.) Marina Dahlquist, in her article "The Best-Known Woman in the World", chronicles, "Charles Magnusson published the booklet "Nagra om Biografcensuren (A few remarks on film censorship) in the name of Svenska Bio regarding its appeal of the ban against three films, among them "Tradgardsmastaren/Varldensgrymhet" (The Broken Springrose/The Gardner [1912]). Even though the importance of censorship was acknowledged by Magnusson and others, the over zealous ambition to protect even an adult audience met with irony."


Also that year Victor Sjostrom directed the film "A Ruined Life" (Ett hemligt giftermal) co-scipted with Charles Magnusson and starring Hilda Bjorgstrom, Einar Froberg, Anna Norrie, and Greta Almroth in the first film in which she was to appear.

Author Peter Cowie, in his volume Swedish Cinema, Ingeborg Holm to Fanny Alexander notes the numerous location shots employed to showcase Victor Sjostrom's future wife, Lilli Beck during the film. Peter Cowie quickly references that Lilli Bech and Victor Sjostrom were formerly married between 1914-1916. The actress starred with Victor Sjostrom onscreen under the direction of Mauritz Stiller the following year, during 1913 with a script written by Stiller and photographed by Julius Jaenzon with "Vampyren", a film presently presumed to be lost, with no existing surviving copies. That year Victor Sjostrom and Lilli Bech were also paired onscreen by Mauritz Stiller in the film "Barnet", with Einar Froberg and Anna Norrie, photographed again by Julius Jaenzon. The film is also presumed lost with no existing surviving copies.



Actor John Eckman, who appeared on screen in a score of films between 1912 and 1950 before his appearing with Victor Sjostrom in the Ingmar Bergman film "Till Joy" (Till gladje,1950), directed only one film, it also being the first film in which he was to appear. Before having appeared during 1912 in the film "Tradgardsmasteren", under the direction of Victor Sjostrom and during 1912 in the film "De Svarta Maskerna" under the direction of Mauritz Stiller, Ekman directed the film "The Shepherd Girl" (Saterjantan,1912), starring actress Greta Almroth, Carlo Weith and Stina Berg in her first onscreen appearance, the film having had been photographed by Hugo Edlund for Svenska Biographteatern. Victor Sjostrom would direct John Ekman, Lilli Bech and himself from his own script during 1914, adding the actress Greta Almroth in the film "Daughter of the High Mountain" (Hogfallets dotter), photographed by Julius Jaenzon. The film is presumed to be lost, presently there being no surviving existing copies.

Apparently the film "Den Svarte Doktorn" filmed for Stora Biografteatern by Frans Lundberg is not only a lost film, with no surviving copies exusting, but was also banned at the time of production by Swedish Censorship. The film starred actress Olivia Norrie, Einar Zangenberg, and Holger-Madsen. "Anfortrodda medel", also made by Frans Lundberg in 1911 is also presumed to be a lost film with no surviving copies existing and was also banned by Swedish censorship. The film starred actresses Phillipa Fredricksen and Agnes Nyrup Christensen.

Interestingly enough, Swedish Silent Film cinematographer camerman Julius Jaenzon brought his equipment aboard the S.S. Lusitania during 1912 to make the film "Tva Svenska Emigranters Afventyr i Amerika", starring actresses Lisa Holm and Lilly Jacobsson under the direction of Eric Malmberg. It might be worth noting before continuing to the dynamic between the four horsemen of Swedish Silent Film, Victor Sjostrom, Mauritz Stiller, Julius Jaenson and Charles Magnusson, that another director was there at Svenska Biografteatern during 1912, director Eric Malmberg. Seemingly overlooked, Malmberg directed six films for Svenska Biografteatern during 1912, including films presumed to be lost with no surving copies photographed by Julius Jaenzon and starring actress Lilly Jacobsson, among them "Det Grona Halsbandet", "Stolen Happiness" (Branniger eller Stulen lycka) and "Kolingens Galoscher".

Silent Film Victor Sjostrom Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller

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

Before Charles Magnusson, who became manager of Svenska Bio during 1909, had initiated the beginning of the classic period of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film, while Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller were involved with acting and theater production on the stages of Sweden, Sweden was not far behind other nations in producing one reel news footage and actualities. Documentary like news footage of royalty, Presidents and poltical personages was not uncommon during the transnational cinema of attractions and, notably, while under N.E. Sterner of Svenska Kinematograf, Charles Magnusson had photographed "Konung Haakongs mottanging i Kristiana" (1906), a short film on the King of Norway's visit to Kristiania, almost as though to presage that it would be there rather in the later Rasunda that the groundwork of his beginning the Swedish film industry would be laid, his also having directed the films "Gosta Berlingsland Bilder fran Frysdan" (1907), "Gota elf katastafen" (1908) and Resa Stockholm-Goteborg genom Gota och Trollhatte kanalor" (1908). Peter Cowie notes that despite the weather conditions of thick fog, Magnusson had shot the most professional footage of the event when compared to other Swedish cameramen of the time.

Photographer Robert Olsson is listed as having worked on the filming of King Oscar in Kristianstad, his having filmed several of the earliest films photographed in Scandinavia before working with Carl Engdahl, among them "Pictures of Laplanders" (Lappbilder, 1906), "Herring Fishing in Bohuslan" (Sillfiske i Bohuslan, 1906) and "Equal to Equal" (Lika mot lika, 1906), directed by Knut Lambert and starring Tollie Zelman.

During 1897, Ernest Florman photographed Oscar II, King of Sweden, in a one minute film, "Landing of the King of Siam at the Logardtrappen", featuring the Crown Prince Gustaf. Author Peter Cowie, in his volume Scandinavian Cinema, credits Ernest Oliver Florman with having directed Sweden's first fiction film, "The Village Barber". During 1903 Florman directed actress Anna Norrie in the short film "Anna Norrie".

Jan Christopher Horak typifies the cinema of attractions as a "fascination with movement within the frame". William Rothman writes that only one sixth of the silent film shot before 1907 had storyline. Author Charles Musser maintains that no more than four fifths of the films made by the Edison studios between 1904-1907 were narrative, or stage fiction. It is not suprising that Kenneth Magowan writing as ealy as 1965 in Behind the Screen divides early silent film into three periods: 1896-1905; 1906-1915 and 1916-1925. Form and content in film technique seem to have developed together. 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 funeral of 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.

Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film mentions cameraman Julius Jaenzon as having been in the United States durin 1907 to make a film of Teddy Roosevelt (Report from the United States on President Theodore Roosevelt).

The periodical Nickelodeon in 1909 chronicled the Swedish National Moving Picture Company, headed by Ture Marcus, as having exhibited footage showing "scenes from the life of King Oscar" and his funeral to audiences in the United States.

Laura Horak, in The Global Distribution of Swedish Silent Film notes that before 1910 the film made by Charles Magnusson and Svenska Bio did not circulate widely outside Sweden, the first widely popular Swedish export, "To Save a Son" (Massosonns offer), it having had been directed by Alfred Lind for Frans Lundberg in 1910. The film features actress Agnes Nyrup Christensen in the first of a handful of appearances as a Swedish Silent film actress.

Swedish Silent Film producer Frans Lundberg in 1910 filmed "The People of Varmland" (Varmlandinggarna) directed by Ebba Lindkvist, photographed by Ernst Dittmer and starring actresses Agda Malmberg, Astrid Nilsson and Esther Selander.

In Kristianstad, Sweden, Svenska Biografteatern released the film "The People of Varmland" (Varmlannigarne)directed by Carl Engdahl during 1910, the film having starred actresses Ellen Stroback, Kattie Jacobsson, Ellen Hallberg and Frida Greiff.

With an onscreen running time of over a half hour, the film "Entrusted Funds" (Anfortrodda medel), directed in 1911 by Frans Lundberg brought actresses Phillipa Fredrikssen and Agnes Nyring Christensen to the screen. The film is presumed lost with no surviving copies existing. "The Black Doctor" (Den Svarte Doktorn), also directed that year for Stora Biografteatern by Frans Lundberg, held theatergoers in their seats for three quarters of an hour. Actress Olivia Norrie stars in the film, which is presumed lost, with no surviving copies existing.


In 1911, Gustaf Linden directed the film "The Iron Carrier" (Jarnbararen) photographed Robert Olsson and starring Ana-lisa Hellstrom and Gucken Cederborg. Scholar Mattias Lofroth, Stockholm University, includes the film among early Swedish Silent fiction films that illustrate an intermediality in an early Swedish cinema that "depended on their association on other media" in regard to "pictorialism and literary presentation", an intermediality that perhaps paved the way for audiences to find themselves no longer viewing a cinema of attractions, but a cinema of narrative integration.

While chronicling the move of Svenska Biografteatern from Kristianstad to Stockholm, then, during 1911, comprised of Julius Jaenzon and Charles Magnusson, author Forsyth Hardy in his volume Scandinavian Film, describes Swedish Silent Film prior to its Golden Age, "The camera remained static and the action was artificially concentrated in a small area in front of it." Hardy is describing the exingencies of the cinema of narrative integration after the theatricality of the novelties and actualities of the cinema of attractions, the second hand filmed theater left over from the camera technique of earlier news and travel footage.

Author Bo Florin, Stockholm University, mentions that Julius Jaenzon's brother, Henrik Jaenzon, was also present at Svenska Bio in Lindingo. Among the first films for Svenska Biografteatern to which Henrik Jaenzon was assigned cinematographer were two directed by George af Klercker during 1912, "Jupiter pa Jordan" and "Musikas makt", starring Lilly Jacobsson. Both films are presumed to be lost, with no surviving copies existing.

Silent Film

Swedish Silent Film
Swedish Silent Film

Greta Garbo before Hollywood- Lars Hanson

The 1927 article "Swedish Hospitality featured in Motion Picture Magazine gave an account of journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, author of "The Private Life of Greta Garbo", being entertained by actor Lars Hanson and his wife, Swedish actress Karin Molander. It began, " 'And now we shall see if you like real Swedish cooking,' said Lars Hanson as he escorted us across the velvety green lawn of his walled garden, where for the past hour we had sat enthralled by the tales he and his charming wife had told us of their native land...This was a Sunday supper to which we had been invited. 'My wife prepared everything when I her that I had promised you real Swedish cooking.' Said Mr. Hanson as we took our places at a long refectory table in a long, rather narrow and dignified dining-room."

Fact may be just as exiciting as fiction to historians when we think that the events of the nineteenth century, depicted in the twentieth, are already culturally different from ours, especially in film the show the humanity that we still do have in common, or rather psychological insights about characters in moral dilemas; in fact Moving Picture World contrasted the character portrayed by Lars Hanson in John Robertson's film with a "more straitlaced" character that Hanson had played earlier for Victor Sjostrom in his depiction of Puritan Colonialism, "The Scarlet Letter". Photoplay reviewed the film. "A well knit drama is this story of how the gospel ship came into being." A ship embarks from the Boston waterfront and is saved from shipwreck off to become apparently a then "floating church" The film might be historically inaccurate about the date triangular trade hade ended in regard to the War of 1812. Motion Picture News subtitled their review with a "Rugged, Well Acted Story of the first Gospel Ship" while the periodical Motion Picture News subtitled their review with "Lars Hanson and Pauline Starke in Gripping Drama of Founding of First Gospel Ship". The subtitles used in Motion Picture World were directed more toward the jazz age- one page announcing the film "Flesh and the Devil" in which Lars Hanson, starred with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, as being busy "Cleaning Up" at the box office, while "Captain Salvation" was in production for Cosmopolitan with "Wild Crew Now Sails the Main". Motion Picture World announced that the seventy five actors of the studio were filming exterior scenes ar Catalina Island, the "dramatic action" filmed after having "set sail" on the "high seas".

Picture Play magazine during 1927 featured stills from the eight reel film "Captain Salvation", starring Lars Hanson. They were captioned with, "Lars Hanson has another intensely dramatic role in 'Captain Salvation', that of a young New Englander whose heart is in the sea, but who is forced his uncle to go onto the ministry...Marceleine Day as the girl who waits for him at home." Motion Picture News Booking Guide during 1927 provided a brief synopsis of the film, "Theme: Melodrama of the sea. Adaptation of the novel by Fredrick William Wallace, Divinity Student forsakes the pulpit for the sea, forgets his faith and becomes aide of a much feared skipper. His regeneration is brought about through an unfortunate girl he befriends. After her death he is reunited with his sweetheart." The cameraman to the film is listed as William Daniels and the scenarist as Jack Dunningham. Photoplay Magazine reviewed the eight reel silent film, "Pauline Starke is Excellant as the waterfront derelict." In a photo caption to a full page portrait of Pauline Starke, Picture Play magazine introduced her upcoming film, "If you saw 'Captain Salvation' you have no doubt of Pauline Starke's dramatic gifts. If you did not, you will find proof of them in 'Fallen Angles'". Magazine advertisements published by the studio announced that "Captain Salvation" was a Cosmopolitan production for M.G.M. "on a lavish scale" ephasizing that the novel by Frederick William Wallace was soon to be serialized for millions of readers and an "unprecedented promotion campaign" would be launched by Hearst newspapers.

Scott Lord Silent Film: A Little Princess (Neilan, 1917)

Silent Film Scott Lord

Marshall Neilan during 1917 directed actress Mary Pickford with actresses Kathleen Griffith, Zazu Pitts, and Ann Schraeder in "The Little Princess" (five reels) with a photplay written by Frances Marion. The film was photographed by Charles Rosner and Walter Strandling.

The periodical Picture Play magazine during 1917 came in with a very straitforward announcement, "Mary Pickford, after a short rest following the completion of 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm'is now hard at work in 'The Little Princess' under the direction of Marshall Neilan."

Silent Film Mary Pickford

Sweden Talks, Waiting in Vain for Greta Garbo; Victor Sjostrom the actor

Author Jon Wengstrom has noted that as early as October of 1933 director Gustaf Molander and cameraman Julius Jaenzon were among the founding members of the Swedish Film Society (Svenska Filmsamfundet), a body which eventually let to the forming of The Swedish Filminstite (Svensk Filminstitutet), established by the critic Bengt Idestram-Almquist who wrote for Stockholms Tidningen. Other members included Vilhelm Bryde, Arne Bornesbusch, Eyvind Johnson and later Einar Lauritzen. Einar Lauritzen chronicles his having been persuaded to head the Swedish Film Archive by Idestram-Alquist in 1940 and the archive not only having stored film, but also posters and stills. While Goran Bolin and Michael Forsman add Gosta Werner, crediting him with having helped found the cinematic society in Lund during 1929, to the company of Begnt Idestam-Almquist and Rune Walderkranz, they specifically note the contributions made by author Tytti Soila for having analyzed the "function of images of femininity" in early Swedish sound films from between 1929-1939. The authors point out that in addition to the silent era, recent concerns of Film Studies have been historiography, neoformalistic narratology and autuer criticism.

Edvin Adolphson directed his first film, it having been the first film made in Sweden to include sound, "The Dream Waltz" ("Sag debt I toner") co-directed by Julius Jaenzon and starring Jenny Hasselquist and Eric Malberg.  per Olov Quistad and Peter Von Bagh specify the place of the film in chronological history, "It had no talking parts, just a soundtrack with music and sound effects on disc, but it's immediate success convinced the direction board to continue." Archivist and author Jon Wengstrom, Swedish Film Insttitute, in his paper Preserving, restoringand accessing silent and early sound films from existing elements in the Archival Film Collection of the Swedish Film Institute, writes that "The Dream Waltz" "contained no spoken dialougue whatsoever, but but music and sound effects for the duration of the film. The film survives but no sound recordings." A score sheet to the film survives.