Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film: Silent Film 1927

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.

Showing posts with label Silent Film 1927. Show all posts

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Scott Lord Silent Film: Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1927)

The periodical Photoplay during 1927 looked at the film "Hotel Imperial", "Here is a new Pola Negri in a film story at once absorbing and splendidly directed...Hotel Imperial places Mauritz Stiller at the forefront of our imported directors. It will give high interest to his forthcoming work with Emil Jannings." Moving Picture World of that year listed it under "romantic drama" and under "love drama" as well.

Under its Drawing Power subheading Motion Picture News in 1927 wrote,"Suitable for first run and all types of houses.Title and star should draw them." and under its EXploitation Angles subheading it wrote,"Play up Pola's best American film. Tease the title."

Swedish Silent Film director Mauritz Stiller is credited with having directed Pola Negri in the 1927 six reel film "The Woman on Trial", photographed by Bert Glennon and co-starring actor Einar Hanson and actress Veronica Veronma. The film is presumed lost with only fragments surviving. Pola Negri during 1929 had starred in "The Secret Hour" (eight reels) directed by Roland V. Lee. The film is presumed to be lost with no surviving copies. Mauritz Stiller

Scandinavian Silent Film Mauritz Stiller

Monday, June 16, 2025

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927)

William Nigh directed Lon Chaney in "Mr. Wu" costarring actresses Louise Dresser, Gertrude Olmstead and Renee Adoree. "Mr Wu" was photographed by cameraman John Arbold. The periodical Moving Picture World, during 1926, announced the film as having been adapted for the screen by Lorna Moon from a novel by Louise Jordan Miller. The periodical Moving Picture World, later, in 1927, credited the film as having been adapted from a play by Maurice Vernon and Harold Owen. To convince us that Lon Chaney brought to the screen not only characterizations but "creations, biographer Robert G. Anderson, in his volume Faces, Forms and Films writes, "The novel by Louise Jordon Miln, based on the stage play Mr. Wu, gives scant description of the character. The old mandarin is described in such scattered phrases as "eighty" and "guant, withered and pockmarked." Motion Picture Magazine during 1927 called Mr. Wu a "venerable Chinese gentleman" while giving his daughter, played by Renee Adoree, the appellation of "A Flapper in the House of Wu".

During 1927, Lon Chaney also starred in the films "The Unknown" and "London After Midnight", both directed by Tod Browning and "Mockery", directed by Benjamin Christensen.
silent film silent film Lon Chaney Movie Posters

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Scott Lord Silent Film: King of Kings (De Mille,1927)

"I have always made pictures with a message and a moral. True, I have dressed up these in elaborate trappings, principally because I wanted people to see my pictures. Messages without an audience aren't worth very much." Photoplay Magazine during 1927 featured an interview with silent film director Cecil B. De Mille titled "How Christ Came to Pictures" in which he briefly explained his father had been a lay reader who preached in an Episcopal church in Pompton, New Jersey before quickly continuing to his earlier marriage comedy films made before 1920. De Mille ended the interview with "'The King of Kings' has the ring of sincerity. We did it with complete sincerity." Photoplay Magazine during 1927 reviwed "King of Kings" as being an authentic depiction of the events in the Holy Bible, "De Mille has followed the New Testament literally and with fidelity. He has taken no liberties. Frequently, in his groupings, he has followed famous Biblical paintings...Mr. Warner meets the accepted ideas of Christ and gives a very well sustained performance."

Harvard Buisness Reports, describing "The King of Kings" as a film about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, reported in 1930 that the film cost $ 2,000,000 to produce.

silent film Noah's Arc Jesus

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Seastrom Swedish Silent Film More properly the headlines should read, "Garbo Talks, Seastrom Returns Home." Victor Seastrom, who had worked in the Swedish theater before pioneering in Swedish Film, returned to Sweden with the advent of the sound film, not to direct, but to act. As in Hollywood, the exterior of the Swedish landscape that had established Sjostrom, Stiller and Molander during the golden age of Swedish Silent Film, had taken the innovation of sound back to the proscenium arc of the interior with Molander managing the transition to dialogue centered films.

Victor Sjostrom

Several of the films directed by Victor Sjostrom use artistic experiments in camera technique conducive to conveying symbolic meaning and dramatically charged images, among them being Masks of the Devil, with John Gilbert, and the earlier Kiss of Death, made in Sweden. Victor Sjostrom had begun on stage as an actor in Sweden and appears both on screen as well as from behind the camera. it is an obvious tribute to The Phantom Carriage that Ingmar Bergman includes the actor Victor Sjostrom in a symbolic scene during Wild Strawberries. In his autobiography Images, Ingmar Berman regrets that his workbook to the screenplay to Wild Strawberries had been lost, but he continues to acknowledge the influence of Sjostrom as a director while he moved "spontaneously between different planes-time-space,dream-reality....the hearse that overturns with the coffin bursting open." Silent Film Victor Sjostrom