Swedish Silent Film Stars on the Theater Stage

Maurtiz Stiller

During 1911, Mauritz Stiller acted on stage at the Lilla Teaten.

Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Swedish Silent Film Stars

The Abyss (Urban Gad, Afgrunden, Denmark 1910)

Urban Gad directed Asta Nielsen in her first film "The Abyss" (Afgrunden, 1910) in Denmark, a film often written about due to her popularity and to a scene contained in it in which she dances erotically. Uli Jung and Martin Lorperdinger, editors of Importing Asta Nielsen, the international filmstar in the making 1910-1914, see the rise of Asta Nielsen as meteoric with her first appearance on screen, "she became a well-known and popular actress in many countries on the continent in the 1910/11 season." The film is described by Casper Tybjerg as her "breakthrough film". Scholar Casper Tybjerg, University of Copenhagen/online instructor, notes that "The Abyss" was promoted as an art film, a drama in two acts. Author Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scaninavian Film, sees the principal stars that had brought international recognition to the country's cinema as having been Asta Nielsen and Valdamar Psilander, " It was an immediate success and audiences everywhere responded to a sensitive, expressive acting style of scting which contrasted clearly with the grimmacing antics of her contemporaries."

Film historian Marguerite Engberg, in her article, The Erotic Melodrama in Danish Silent FIlm, chronickes the cienam of narrative integration having emerged from the cinema of attractions by discussing the significance of running legnth and the advent of longer narrative films. In 1910, Fotorama had released a Danish Silent Film that was more than a half hour in running legnth, "Den hvide Slavenhandel" (The White Slave Traffic), it being notable that it was shown in one sitting. "The transition to multireels was a very important step in the evolution of film art. For now, with longer films, it became possible to go into details within a single scene." The longer legnth of the film allowed "The Abyss to become a "fully fledged erotic melodrama, the drama which was to become a Danish speciality" with its then sexually explicit dance scene and "long drawn out kisess, a Danish invention in films." Engeby describes erotic melodrama as a love story with a conflict between the ckasses, or economic backgrounds and notes that it often included a love triangle, as did the films "The Abyss", "Den Sorte Drom" (The Black Dream" and "Balletdanserinden" (The Ballet Dancer".
It was also that year that Urban Gad and Asta Nielsen would travel to Germany to film for Duetsche Bioscop. Asta Nielsen appeared on screen under Urban Gad's direction with cinematographer Karl Fruend behind the camera that year in the films "Moth" (Nachtfaler) and "The Strange Bird"" (Der Frerde Volgel). Asta Nielsen would later star with Greta Garbo for G.W. Pabst in "The Joyless Street" and in a silent version of "Hamlet" (1920). Scholar Isak Thorsen, University of Copenhagen, in his paper,Nordisk Film Kompagni and Asta Nielsen, explains that director Urban Gad had signed a contract with Kunst Films Kompagni (Copenhagen Art Film) which allowed his to direct film abroad, with a similar contract for wife Asta Nielsen stipulating that she play as many parts as permissable; Nielsen who had already gained international recognition in regard to transnational cinema. Peter Cowie, in his volume Scandinavian cinema adds, "Marrying Urban Gad in 1912, she widened her range of expression to embrace comedy as well as vampish roles."

Janet Bergstrom, in her paper Asta Nielsen's Early German Films, chronicles Asta Nielsen asking Urban Gad if he would write a film for her. "Afgrunden" not only secured an international audience for her but it heralded the film itself becoming an art form. Bergstrom notes Nielsen having written that she aspired to improve her acting ability by watching herself on the screen.

Although many films from the time period were adaptations of theatrical plays, "The Abyss" has no dialougue intertitles, but rather insert shots containing written letters. Both insert shots of printed material and dialougue intertitles are part of the diegesis of a silent film, whereas expository intertitles that either summarize the action or prepare the audience for it are not part of the film's diegesis, insert shots of letters bringing a more first person authorial camera that provides identification with the character.
Bela Belazs, in his volume Theory of Film discusses Urban Gad's 1918 book on film criticism, "This wise and sound book makes no mention as of yet of the new form-language proper to the new art- at the time Urban Gad knew nothing of this. Hence he dealt chiefly with the specific new subjects suitable for film presentation. According to him, every film should be placed in some specific natural enviornment which must affect the human beings living in it and play apart in directing their lives and destinies. Thus a new personage is added to the dramatis personna of the photographed play: nature itself." Belaz continues aiming at genre theory, that genre is particular, it has exclusivity and allows specific backgrounds where tropes and metaphors can arise, ie. Westerns occur only where cowyboys can be found. The glaring problem is that the description offerred by Belaz, in the historiography of film theory, is precisely that of the description inordinately used to define the Swedish Silent FIlm, to the point where the camera technique of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller is delegated secondary to the relation of man to his overwhelming envirnment. And yet Belazs is discussing the writing of Danish filmmaker Urban Gad published at a time when Sjostrom had just finished the film "The Outlaw and his Wife", a stunning, but still early example of Scandinavian Cinema.

Scott Lord

Scott Lord Silent Film: A Narrow Escape (Pathe, 1908)

"A Narrow Escape" is evidently the only film in which both the doubling narrative, or bifidation narrative, used in crosscutting and the last minute rescue were present before their use in the films of D.W. Griffith. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier has noted that crosscutting had been present in the film "The One Hundred to One Shot" made by Vitagraph in 1906. D. W. Griffith used crosscutting frequently to depict the last minute rescue frequently during the beginning of 1909, particulalrly in the film "The Lonely Villa". The director at Biograph had been Wallace McCutcheon (Personal,1904) and it is him to whom, rightly or not, crosscutting has been attributed (Her First Adventure,1906;The Elopement,1907); on occaision directors were beginning to hint at cutting on action by 1907 and were also beginning to link scenes together, as when the same character appears in two scenes that are adjacent.

Author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the origins of Narrative Film, likens The Lonely Villa to "A Narrow Escape", only to descry D.W. Griffith's having developed its elementary techniques into a more narratively integrated work. "'A Narrow Escape' creates suspense through parallel editing, using the pattern tocreate an agonizing delay....which is a direct prefiguration of the narrator system." Gunning sees the techniques appearing in "The Lonely Villa" as only haing briefly appeared in "The Narrow Escape", included among those habing been a "three-pronged editing pattern" around which centered its principal characters. "Indebted although it may be, Griffith's film elaborates on the Pathe pattern through further articulation."

If within a cinema of attractions narrative exposition had previously used a discontinuous style, one of filming a single action within what was then an autonomous shot, it would acquire as form a continuous style; where there were to be juxtapositions within narrative from shot to shot, there would be decisions of editing used for the advancement of plot. Technique would become the ordering of images within an arrangement of shots that would bring seperate compositions into a relation with narrative-the film technique that would be later described by Christian Metz as consisting of syntagmatic categories, technique that would avail questioning whether a segment would be autonomous, chrological, linear, narrative or descriptive, chronological, linear, narrative or descriptive, continuous or whether it would be organized, was beginning to be decided. Metz in fact had viewed the narrative function in cinema as being what had brought about its development, it being more possible that the techniques developed by Ince and Griffith. Narrative would no longer need to be only linear in regard to its structure and the syntax of the film could include transitions between scenes: technique, in part could become the attraction. In fact, Roger Manvell quotes an author who credits Griffith with developing the "cinematic or conjunctive" method of narrative, where the tempo of "continuity movement" was accelerated.

During 1908, The Pathe studio, Societe Pathe Freres, founded by Charles Pathe in 1896, performed a magic trick exactly opposite of the break from non-narrative by the cinema of attractions and the temporalities being adapted by narrative form; while George Melies continued toward his 1912 Conquest of the Pole", Pathe invented the newsreel that was to be shown with cartoons and short subjects. Newsreels went to London during 1910 under the name Pathe's Animated Gazette. The temporality created by Segundo de Chemon in the Pathe film "The House of Ghosts" would become friendly competition for the immediacy of royal coronations being filmed as they happened, a diegesis of reality. Screen time transpired just outside the theater, based on an event, if not reverting to an earlier form of attraction. Perhaps at the core of the cinema of attractions are the actuality films of American Mutoscope and Biograph, despite Edison's choosing subjects which could be filmed theatrically indoors, including his film of Annie Oakley shooting. Crosscutting and D.W. Griffith Silent Film

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. "The suspenseful parallel editing of 'The Lonely Villa' yeilded fifty-two shots from the twelve camera set-ups".

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