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
Showing posts with label Silent Film 1922. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silent Film 1922. Show all posts
Director Robert G. Vignola adapted "When Knighthood Was In Flower" (twelve reels) from a work by Charles Major. The 1922 film stars Marion Davies with actresses Ruth Shepley, Theresa Maxwell Conover and Flora Finch. In her autobiography WHen Movies Were Young, Linda Arvidson, D.W. Griffith's wife, includes a publicity still from "When Knights Were Bold", a "tabloid version" of the play, claiming that Cosmopolitan and Marion Davies had produced a remake with "When Knighthood was in Flower", a remake which she noted had "a remarkable cast of eighteen principal characters representing the biggest names in the theatrical and motion picture world.", Arvidson seeing it as a compliment that Hollywood had returned to the subjects of theater from before Hollywood had moved from the East Coast. The Best Moving PIctures of 1922-1923 gave its account of the writing of the film's scenario as an early example of its genre. "Charles Major's novel 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' was obtained by Mr. Hearst only after a death struggle with Mary Pickford, who controlled the rights. Miss Pickford wanted to produce it herself, but finally relinguished her hold, and it became a vehicle for the hitherto unrecognized art of Marion Davies". Silent Film Robert Vignnola
Frank Lloyd directed and co-scripted with Harry Weil the film "Oliver Twist" for First National during 1922. Lon Chaney stars in the film with child actor Jackie Coogan. Robert G. Anderson, in his volume Faces, Forms, Films, the artistry of Lon Chaney gives an account of Chaney having frightened the child star as The Man of a Thousand Faces. Anderson places a description of Lon Chaney's portrayal of Fagin in a section concerned with with Age and Make Up. "The make up must indicate age as well as the physical characteristics...The actor must determine how he can reveal the personality and background of the character." Anderson explains the use of combinations of aluminum powder for grey or white hair, a lining pencil to delineate wrinkles, grease paint and putty.
Motion Picture News during 1922 provided biographical information about the director of the film, Frank Lloyd, "Having been raised in London, Mr. Lloyd early became a Dickens entusiast...He has, many and many a time, walked in spirit with the immortal Dickens through the London that Dickens decsribed and glimpsed suggestions of the evils which the great author did much to reduce and destroy through the vigor of his marvelous and living prose." "Oliver Twist" was photographed by cameramen Glenn McWilliams and Rober Martin.
In addition to starring in the film “Oliver Twist” (eight reels), during 1922 Lon Chaney appeared in two films that are now lost, “Blind Bargain” (Wallace Worsley) in which he starred with Jacqueline Logan and “Quincy Adams Sawyer” (Clarence G. Badger, eight reels), in which he starred with Blanche Sweet and Barbara LaMar. That year Lon Chaney also starred in "Shadows" (Tom Forman) with actress Margueritte De Le Motte and "A Light in the Dark" (Clarence Brown) with actress Hope Hampton.
"The Trap" (six reels) by directed by Robert Thorby featured both actors Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr. The scenario of "The Trap" was written by George C. Hull from a story by Lon Chaney. The film was photographed by cameraman Virgil Miller.
Lon Chaney.
Swedish Silent Film director John W. Brunius during 1923 directed actresses Karin Alexandersson and Linnea Hillberg with beautiful Norwegian actress Lilla Bye in her only Swedish Fim "Iron Wills" (Harda Viljor). Cowritten by Brunius and Sam Ask, the film was photographed by cinematographer Hugo Edlund.
Silent FilmSwedish Silent Film: John Brunius
In Sweden, during 1922, Victor Sjostrom directed Jenny Hasselqvist in “Love’s Crucible”, co-scripted by Hjalmer Bergman and photographed by Julius Jaenzon. Nils Asther and Gosta Emmanuel appear on screen in the filmf. Author Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film notes that the film was "an elaborate and spectacular historical film". Forsyth Hardy implies that "Vem Dormer" was not only an example of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film but an overwhelming attempt to save it, it having been an expensive film to make in hope of regaining an overseas audience that had begun to lose interest in serious Swedish Films. "All the resources of the newly completed Rasunda Studios were mobilized to make the spectacular Vem Dormer." While interviewing Victor Sjostrom the periodical Picturegoer noted that his then most recent film, "Love's Crucible" had taken three months to film, to which Sjostrom replied,"But fully a year was spent in preparatory work. It is a love story of Renaisannce times." When asked where the story took place Sjostrom had replied "The Kingdom of Romance".
Vito Adriaensens, in his paper, "A Swedish Renaissance: Art and Passion in Victor Sjostrom's 'Vem Dommer' (1922)" explains the connection between the title and theme and the use of symbolic imagery in the films of VictorSjostrom, "The statue of Christ adorns the local church and is the first and last thing we see in the film. Christ is pivotal for the narrative and for the title, as 'Vem Dommer' literally translates to 'who judges', implicating that only Christ can, not the community that tries to judge Ursula." During the following year, 1923, Jenny Hassellquist starred in another collaboration between Victor Sjostrom and Hjalmer Bergman, the Film “Eld Ombord” (“The Hellship”)in which she appeared on screen with Victor Sjostrom, while under his direction. Actor Matheson Lang stars with actress Julia Cederblad in the first film in which she was to appear. The cinematographer to the film was Julius Jaenzon.
"Brass" (nine reels), directed in 1922 by Sidney Franklin and starring actresses Marie Prevost, Rosmary Church and Lucy Baldwin was one of the several films that year photographed by cinematographer Norbert Brodine. Sidney A. Fraklin that year directed the films "East is West", "Primitive Lover" and Smilin' Through". During 1920, Sidney Franklin directed Conrad Nagel, Rosemary Theby and Sylvia Breamer in the film "Unseen Forces" (six teels). Considered to be a lost silent film, a copy was found during 2010.
The film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's account of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde directed by F.W. Murnau during 1920 is presumed to be a lost silent film with no known existing copies of the film. "The Head of Janus" (Der Janus Kopf, Love's Mockery) had starred Conrad Veidt and Bela Lugosi and is credited with having been one of the first films to include the use of the moving-camera shot, "the unchained camera". Silent Horror Film Director F.W. Murnau made 21 feature films, 8 of which are presumed lost, with no surviving copies. Included among them is the 1920 horror film "The Hunchback and the Dancer" (Der Bucklige und die Tanzerin) photographed by Karl Freund. As early as 1973 author Lotte H. Eisner, in her volume Murnau, expressed a concern about Film preservation, "The particular problem which Murnau poses for the film historian is that of the loss of nearly half his work. Of the twenty one films listed in the filmography at the end of this book, nine are missing some of the other twelve are in a very incomplete state. Of course the publication of a book like this can bring films to light and we may be lucky enough to find some of the missing nine." Two of the lost films of F.W. Murnau made chronologically before and after his film "Nosferatu" were the 1921 film "Schnsucht" and the 1923 film "Die Austreibung",
Although the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Learning has gone on to join the EDX platform in its production of MOOC internet classes, two of which on art and propaganda I have enjoyed completing, its early open courseware offering of The Film Experience offers a summary of Murnau's relation to Expressionism provided by Professor David Thorburn, who views Expressionism as having employed "principles of distortion and surreal exaggeration". Influenial films, to reword his lecture, emerged from the "cultural center of society" and its "cultural authorities" to create a Golden Age of German Silent Film from between the 1918 armistice through 1927 and the advent of sound film by filmmakers that had brought artistic inentions from the established theater and arts as a modernism, in fact. Thorburn begins by comparing the screen to the canvass by noting the theatrical authority of the static camera as an imagined member of the audience and how characters are situated in space, an ideal observer, almost to the point of asking if there is anything moving within a stationary insert shot. Professor David Thorburn sees F. W Murnau as the director which freed German cinema from the "constraints of high art". He notes F.W. Murnau depating from the concept of "filmed theater" towards something more cinematic through the use of natural sunlight during both interior and exterior shots, the sunlight itself a motif in the film "Nosferatu" and credits Murnau with the discovery toward a more subjective camera. Thorburn, and myself perhaps, see author Lotte Eisner as an "important historical figure' in the historiography of film criticism.
Lotte H. Eisner, in her biography titled Murnau, looks at a scene change to the shooting script of "Nosferatu" written by Henrik Galeen made by the director, F.W. Murnau, but adds that few additons and revisions to the original script were made by Murnau. "Sometimes the film is different than the scenario though Murnau had not indicated any change in the script...But there is a suprising sequence in which nearly twelve pages (thirteen sequences) have been rewritten by Murnau."
Lotte H. Eisner analyzes the film "Nosferatu" in her companion volume to his biography of Murnau, The Haunted Screen. "Nature participates in the action. Sensitive editing makes the bounding waves foretell the approach of the vampire." Eisner later adds, "Murnau was one of the few German film-directors to have the innate love of the landscape more typical of the Swedes (Arthur von Gerlach, creator of Die Chronik von Grieshums, was another) and hes was always reluctant to resort to artifice." Murnau had visited Sweden where the cameras being used were made of metal rather than wood, which aquainted him with techniques that were in fact more modern. Author Lotte H Eisner, in her volume Murnau writes of F.W. Murnau viewing the films of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller "when he made 'Nosferatu', the idea of using negative for the phantom forest came from Sjostrom's 'Phantom Carriage', which had been made in 1920. Above all, he had a love-hatred for Mauritz Stiller, whose 'Herre Arne's Treasure' he couldn't stop admiring." Interestingly enough, "Nosferatu" was by all accounts banned from exhibition in Sweden untill 1972 due to its having what was thought to be graphic content. Not only can we look at Murnau's film to compare and contrast its use of landscape and location to that of Swedish Silent Films, but the Wisconsin Film Society during 1960 pointed out that its narrative was situated in a different century. "Murnau probably felt that by transferring the action to the year 1838 he would have an atmosphere more condusive to the supernatural. Because of the distance in time, an audience is perhaps more willing to employ its 'suspension of disbelief'." The Film Society mentions F.W. Murnau having filmed the Vampire's carriage in fast-motion for effect, an effect which it felt had been lost on the audiences of 1960. It conceded that shooting on location brought the film "far from the studio atmosphere", but hesitated, "Although frequently careless in technical details (camerwork, exposure, lighting, composition, and actor direction) it had variety and pace."
Interestingly, as scholar Janet Bergstrom, UCLA, surveys the work of F.W. Murnau she concerns us with evaluating how "conventions relating to sexual identity, the spectator and modes of abstraction do or do not carry over from one highly conventionalized national cinema to another. She allows that the emigre directors from Germany were less of a school of literaure than perhaps Sjostrom and Stiller were. She alludes to the women in Murnau's films as appearing one-dimensional mostly during a "morbid fascination with the female body"- "sensuality in death".
Lotte H. Eisner, in her volume Murnau, writes, "As always, Murnau found visual means of suggesting unreality". Professor David Thorburn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, expresses aprreciation and gratitude for the author's writings pointing out that "her arguments in The Haunted Screen are still widely accepted." In regard to the expression of unreality, David Thorburn sees Expressionism as having been typified by "distortion and surreal exaggation" as well as having been "interested in finding equivalents for he inner life, dramatizing not the external world, but the world within us." If not the first horror film, Thorburn delegates "Nosferatu" to being an "origin film" and as "the film in which we can see Murnau freeing the camera.....no one had ever used the camera outdoors more effectively up to this time than Murnau". Lotte H Eisner, in The Haunted Screen writes, "The landscape and views of the little town and the castle in Nosferatu were filmed on location...Murnau, however, making Nosferatu with a minimum of resourses saw all that nature had to offer in the way of fine images...Nature participates in the action."
In Expressionist Film: New Perspectives, author Deitrich Scheunemann looks at the dismissal of Lotte Eisner's expressionist name tag as genre called for by authors Werner Sudendorf and Barry Salt. Salt excludes Murnau's film "Nosferatu" from German Expressionist Film, the criteria being an affinity with expressionist painting and drama. Scheunemann continues later, "Because of the uncanny nature of the protagonist, Nosferatu has often been compared to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. However, the uncanny and its various embodiments in the form of doubles,vampires and artificial creatures are not in itself motifs of the expressionist movement." Author Lotte H. Eisner can still be seen comparing Nosferatu with other German Silent Cinema from 1919-1924 and the camera technique used in depicting setting and mood, "When Nosferatu is preparing a departure in the courtyard, the use of unexpected angles gives the vampire's castle a sinister appearance. What could be more expressive than a narrow street, hemmed in between monotonous brick facades, seen from a high window, the bar of which crosses the image?" Author George A. Huaco, in his volume The Sociology of Film Art, points out that the novel and film differ in plot resolution, "In contrast to the novel Dracula, the plot of Nosferatu deemphasizes the role of Professor VAn Helsing; the final duel is between the heroic bourgeois housewife Nina and the evil aristocratic vampire. Hoaco goes so far as to venture that this reflects the growing economic crisis of the period."
Close-up magazine during 1929 reviewed the film, unaware that the Wisconsin Film Society would later favor the 1931 Tod Browning version, "The film opens with beautifully composed shots typical of Murnau (one spotlight on the hair, now turn the face slightly, and another spotlight)....It is unquestionably a faithful transcription of the book. During 1926, when Murnau was readying to come to American, the periodical Moving Picture World interviewed his assistant, Hermann Bing, "Murnau's intention is to try to make pictures which will please the American theatre patrons- commercial successes because of their artistry....Murnau's object will be not to describe but to depict the relentless march of realities not for the objective, but from a subjective viewpoint." This almost seems like a nod to Carl Th. Dreyer's later film "Vampyr", other than that Dreyer's film had been made during the advent of sound film while Murnau was in America, shortly before Murnau's death. Fox Film publicity happenned to announce F.W. Murnau's coming to America by withholding the title of his debut American fim, giving the name of the dramatist that wrote its photoplay as Dr. Karl Mayer. "Theater Audiences Everywhere Are Waiting For This Creation". Silent Film In regard to the extratextual discourse of movie magazines of the time period, during 1929 the periodical Motion Picture News subtitled their review of "Nosferatu" with "Morbid and Depressing". It deemed Murnau's adaptation of the novel by Bram Stoker to be "a vague yarn hard to follow with several sequences that have a tremendous part to do with the plot introduced most haphazardly." The opinion of the periodical was that "The picture itself is a most morbid and depressing affair without entertainment value. It will not be acceptable anywhere except in the 'arty' houses." Silent Horror Film
Directed by Robert G. Vignola for Cosmopolitan Productions, "Beauty's Worth" (seven reels) showcases Marion Davies starring with actresses June Eldvige and Lydia Yeamans. Marion Davies had also appeared under the direction of Robert G. Vignola during 1922 in the film "Young Diana" (seven reels). The film is a lost silent film there being no surviving copies at present. The comedy "Adam and Eva" from 1923, in which Marion Davies again starred for director Robert G Vignola, is also presumed lost with no surviving copies existing.
With a photoplay by June Mathis, "Blood and Sand", directed in 1922 by Fred Niblo, showcased Rudolph Valentino with Lila Lee, Nita Naldi and Rose Rosanova. The nine reel film was photographed by cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff; Fred Niblo and photographer Alvin Wyckoff were teamed again the following year for a comedy starring Barbara La Marr and Enid Bennett titled "Strangers in the Night", a film which is presumed lost with no existing surviving copies. Author Peter Cowie, in his volume EIghty Years of Cinema, described "Blood and Sand" as "Stagebound and tearjerking". Swedish Silent Film
Directed by Sidney Franklin during 1922 “The Primitive Lover” (seven reels) starring Constance Talmadgewas scripted by Frances Marion, having been adapted from the play written by Edgar Selwyn.
That year Sidney Franklin also directed "The Beautiful and the Damned”, adapted from the novel by Scott Fitzgerald by photoplay writer Olga Printzlau and starring actress Marie Provost. The significance of the presumed lost film is entirely left to historians of American Literature as the novel The Last Tycoon was only published posthumously in 1941. The director of the seven reel film is also listed as having been William Seiter. The periodical The Film Daily, during 1922,in fact, lists William A. Sieter, and that it “used F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Famous flapper story only as background”.
Please note that there are also no existant copies to the film "The Great Gatsby" starring Lois Wilson, it having been directed four years later by Herbert Brennon, any insight to the content of the film in the world of Lost Films, Found Magazines being left to scripts of the photoplay where we can find the intertitles or in magazines advertisement for the first runof the film.
In his volume Deer Stalker! Holmes and Watson on screen, Ron Haydock quotes the author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the creator of the armchair detective, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Conan Doyle himself, having seen Norwood in the role, seemed as equally impressed with him as were Norwood's general movie audiences. 'He had that rare quality which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly.' Conan Doyle said, 'He has the brooding eye which excites expectation and he has also a quite unrivalled power of disguises.'". Admittedly, Ellie Norwood prided himself on his ability to assume a disguise and cherished the role of Sherlock Holmes for that reason. Haydock writes, "The series was well recieved wherever it played and such a success that over the next two years Stoll produced another 32 films about the best and wisest man Dr. Watson had ever known." The first of the 47 film was appropriately an adaptation of "The Dying Detective". Sherlock Holmes in Elsinore, Danish Silent Film Silent Film
Robert Sherwood, editor of the volume The Best Moving Pictures of 1922-23, wrote, "In the direction of 'Shadows' by Tom Forman, and in the acting by Lon Chaney, Harrison Ford, Marguerite de La Motte, and John Sainpolis, there was a fine sincerity. They all seemed to realize they were working on a picture that was destined to be a part from the regular run of machine made products."
The periodical Exhibitors Trade Review during 1922 entitled their rebiew of the film "Chaney a Master of Characterization". It read, "Most stars stand for a definite type of pwrformance, while Chaney is never the same except perhaps in the degree of sincerity and finish that he gives to the characetrizations he undertakes." To add authenticity, authority and credibitlity, Exhibitors Trade Review quoted snippets from the periodicals Motion Picture News, The Film Daily, and Motion Picture World, apparently unperturbed by the competition.
It seems odd that the periodical The Film Review and Moving Picture News during 1922 included "Samson and Delilah" in a series of "one reel pictures based on dramatic incidents in well known opera", a publicity still from the film being the only still featured in its article titled "Tense Moments From Opera Filmed", in which it hailed it to be the best of the "unduly hurried" productions from either Gaumont or Masters studios, or both. The magazine printed the opinion that "the artificiality of such a performance is more noticeable perhaps in the screen version of a stage success owing to the character of the dress, the make up of the performers and the background in which they work." Director Edwin J Collins that year also directed a screen version of "Don Juan" included in the "Tense Moments in Opera" series starring actresses Lillian Douglas, Pauline Peters and Kathleen Vaughn. Silent Film
Directed during 1922 by Frank Borzage, "The Pride of Palomar" (eight reels) features actress Marjorie Draw with Warner Oland in the supporting cast.
Silent FilmSilent FilmSilent Film
Once thought to be lost, without any surviving copies of the film, not all eight reels of the film "The Village Blacksmith" have been recovered, the print that now exists being incomplete.
Within the world of Lost Films, Found Magazines, the film "The Courtship of poem titles and Miles Standish (Frederick M. Sullivan, 1923) is lost, but there are pages of full page advertisemens of Charles Ray and Enid Bennett in the periodical The Film Daily from the year of its first run.
Seven reels in length, "The Wreck of the Hesperus", from 1927, is also a lost film. Directed Elmer Clifton, it was produced by Cecil B. de Mille and starred Virginia Bradford.
The two silent film bersion of "The Village Blacksmith" have been mention as being among more than ten adaptations derived from the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Jan Christopher Hoak, in his paper American Literature and Silent Film, "All of these films capitalized on the well known poem titles and on certain plot elements from Longfellow. without however intending a faithful adaptation. The same could be said for John Greenleaf Whittier, whose civil war ballad 'Barbara Frietche' was filmed in 1908, 1915 and 1924."
It is of no consequence, but we drove past the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house in Massachusetts this morning, in a taxi on the way to lunch. There is a nearby house that has a plaque that reads "Longfellow Beach"-if, straining, I read it correctly- that is still a complete mystery to me when driving by, but it is mere curiousity.
SILENT FILMSILENT FILM
Eric von Stroheim costarred with actresses Miss Dupont, Dale Fuller and Maude George during 1922 in the film "Foolish Wives" (fourteen reels), which he directed and co-scripted with Marion Ainslee and Walter Anthony.
Author William K EVerson sees the film's plot as "vitrually an extension" of Von Strohiem's earlier film "Blind Husbands"
