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, among them 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;how it was reviewed, audience reception perhaps actor to actor.
During 1911, Pauline Brunius acted on stage at the Svenska Teatern. After directing and acting in film, Pauline Brunius, wife of Swedish Silent Film director John Brunius, went on to become manager of the Royal Dramatic Theater, Stockholm.
The first adaptation based on the novel written by Bjornstjerne Bjornson in 1857, the film was co-scripted by John Brunius and Sam Ask, John W. Brunius having directed the film. It starred actresses Lisa Holm, Ingrid Sandahl, Ellen Dall as well as Karin Molander and Lars Hanson, who eventually married in 1922. Author Peter Cowie describes Karin Molander as being "evanescent" in the film. During 1919, John Brunius and Sam Ask also collaborated on the script to the film “Ah i, Morron Kvall”, which Brunius directed.
Mauritz Stiller directed "Karleck och Journalista", a comedy based on the writing of Harriet Bloch, in 1916. The film stars Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Stina Berg, Gucken Cederberg and Karin Molander.
The most widely known films directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1916 were "The Ballet Primadonna" (Balletprimmadonnan), starring Lars Hanson, and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson and "The Wings" (Vingarne), a film in which both photographer Julius Jaenzon and director Mauritz Stiller appear on screen, starring Lars Hanson and Lilli Bech.
The film "The Ballet Primmadonna" was phtographed by Julius Jaenzon and featured one of the only two photoplays written for Svenska Biografteatern by Djalmer Christophersen.
When "The Wings" was recently screened by curator Jon Wengstrom of the Swedish Institute, Mauritz Stiller was commended for his onscreen appearance by virtue of his adding a self-reflexive scene with the on the set filming of a film to the framing structure when adapting the original story written by Herman Bang. The film currently screened by Wengstrom at Silent Film Festivals is in fact a restoration of an incomplete print which includes the footage of Stiller and Jaenzon, which had been unpopular and neglected as a lost film sequence. Wengstrom writes, "The erotic drama, and the delightful play of ancient myth and urban modernity is framed by a prologue and epilogue where Stiller gets the idea to the manuscript, casts and shoots the film"
In outlining the initial differences between Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, the former having a propensity toward serious, artistic film, the latter making more comedic satires, Aleksander Kwaitkowski, in his volume Swedish Film Classics looks at the technique used by Mauritz Stiller as the film "Love and Journalism" unfolds, "Stiller's narration is purely visual (only twenty five intertiles in the whole picture), streamlined, lucidly carrying the plot forward."
Although there have been films directed by Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller that have been rediscovered, restored and preserved during the twenty-first century, the 1916 film "The Fight For His Heart" (Kampen om hans hjarta) directed by Maurtiz Stiller and starring actresses Karin Molander and Anna Diedrich is lost with no surviving copies or fragments. Also directed that year by Stiller and also lost is the film "The Lucky Brooch" (The Lucky Pin/Lyckonalen), photographed by Hugo Edlund and satrring Greta Almroth and Stina Berg.
In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines, according to Peter Cowie, author of the volume Scandinavian Cinema, the film "Love and Journalism" directed by Mauritz Stiller, taken with Stiller's film "The Wings", is one that has "miraculously survived", the bulk of the films made by Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom before 1916 now lost with no surviving copies existing.
Suprisingly, the screenplay of "Lieutenant Tophat" (Gyurkoriscarna) is credited to Pauline Brunius and Gosta Ekman, who star in the film with Gucken Cederberg and Jessie Wessel in her first on screen appearance in film.Directed byJohn Brunius in 1920, the film was photographed by Hugo Edlund.
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