Dryer travelled to Sweden to direct the film "The Parson's Widow" in 1920. Peter Cowie addresses both genre and autuer theory, without giving away that genres develop parralel to the careers of specific directors, by noting "wherever he worked, he imposed his intensely recognizable signature on his material...Dreyer's choice of camera angle permits him to distort, and mock, the faces of his characters; he watches them from all sides as they speak with gripping intensity." Cowie recognizes an instance of the "split-screen effect" occuring in the film during the interaction of two characters, which he attributes to Dreyer's fascination with close-ups. Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film describes the film as an allegory, looking more for meaning created by the camera rather than experiments with technique, "this theme gave Dreyer a characteristic oppurtunity to lace his story with a moralistic flavor."
Danish Silent Film
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
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