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27 Aug 02:18

Filmnyheter 1923 (free online magazine on Swedish Silent Film)

Virtual History Film: 'via Blog this' Please allow the use of the magazine cover fairly as the is a link provided above it and enjoy the copies of Filmnyheter that have been made available online to read in both Scandinavian and the United States. silent film scott lord
03 Aug 04:07

Sherlock Holmes Fatal Hour



































30 Jul 05:04

Filmnyheter 1923 (free online magazine on Swedish Silent Film)

by Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film
Virtual History Film: 'via Blog this' Please allow the use of the magazine cover fairly as the is a link provided above it and enjoy the copies of Filmnyheter that have been made available online to read in both Scandinavian and the United States. silent film scott lord
30 Jul 05:02

Postscript: Embrace: Dr. Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King Statue added to Boston Freedom Trail

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
I usually don't update this blog and usually do update my other blog on film, but this morning the guide that welcomes people to either the Freedom Trail or to the Park Street Church began a conversation about our lack of books on William Lloyd Garrison. There was one that we had. The photo above is our library card catalog that has internet- as an assistant church librarian I could pull up the sermons that William Lloyd Garrison delivered in this room twenty years after the church was erected (in the same way that if you were at Harvard College you would have poems that Oliver Wendall Holmes had delivered there.) Our welcomer referred to the stautue from the previous entry, and you can notice that there was not yet any snow, as "The Image" and judging from her age I really think she meant "the blessed image of the late Dr. and Mrs King". She couldn't just say statue even though there is a statue of J.F.K (the blessed, but more than that the still legally elected) at the Boston State House, but that is something polite, and nice. There was a class today- Tammy (Harvard Divinity) gave me permission to "jump in" in the middle of it or be added to it next week. It is titled Lenten Discipleship Initiative. -----:-----::-----:::-----::-----:
Below is my original blog entry on "The Image" and I myself quake in many ways:
Although the Boston Freedom Trail is meant to be a tour of the Revolutionary War and the grave of Crispus Attucks, a stevadore killed in the Boston Massacre, is directly outside the Church window where I am right now, the new statue of Martin Luther King holding his wife, Coretta Scott King has been unveiled on Boston Common. Another piece of history, ourchurch ran a film on this week marking the one hundreath year of radio broadcasting of the church service, there having been a shop that sold radios across the street on Tremont Street. The service is in progreess upstairs and on WEZE while I am in my wife's library. Donna, please accept these photos as symbolic of our spending our Sundays together.
photos: Scott Lord
photo: Scott Lord Postscript:The Girl on the Flying Trapeze I spend every Sunday on the Freedom Trail, which our church is on, and I listen to the ministers conduct tours in case I'm needed when in the library or if I think I should point out the Granary Burial Ground. This morning we had a new addition, a sculpture where the usually have a Christmas Star. The other Christmas lights are still in Boston Common. As it is Freedom Trail art, I thought I would add it here, but it takes a couple of photos to conquer the height distance and perspective. It is an installation- a sculture of a girl on a swing put into an envirornment where art meets reality.
Girl on a Swing photos: Scott Lord
30 Jul 05:01

Scott Lord Mystery: Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
30 Jul 05:01

Mystery: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, 1945

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
30 Jul 05:01

From Donna's Library, The Articles of Faith from the founding of the Church

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
I took the time in the church library while Donna was reshelving books to look for the Articles of Faith from when the church was established. Between services, I said "hello" to Mark,the present minister, who was busy and remarked that we still use the Articles of Faith today, "I know that well." The first minister of the Park Street Church,Boston was Edward Griffin, also the first Phi Beta Kappa student at Yale, and apparently Donna was Phi Beta before I met her. His particular theme was preaching against something referred to as the New Divinity. I was surfing today and found that we are listed by the National Historical Park Service along with our adjacent Granary Burial Ground. The president at the time was James Madison. Below is a historical perspective.
30 Jul 05:01

Scott Lord Mystery: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1913

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
30 Jul 05:01

Sherlock Holmes Trailers-Pearl of Death

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30 Jul 05:00

I don’t need to tell you how much our plant has grown

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
It sprawled across the living room floor- over five feet diagnally from a shelf with three drawers, past a night table and a book shelf. It climbed over a plastic storage bin.
30 Jul 04:59

Swedish Silent Film

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
30 Jul 04:59

Donna in library Valentine's Day

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film,)
30 Jul 04:58

Silent Film: Sherlock Holmes, The Devil’s Foot (Elvey, 1921)

scottlordpoet shared this story from Scott Lord shared items on The Old Reader (RSS).

Silent Film Silent Film
30 Jul 04:57

Scott Lord Mystery: Inner Sanctum, Killer’s Choice (1954)

scottlordpoet shared this story from Scott Lord shared items on The Old Reader (RSS).

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30 Jul 04:57

The Cat and the Canary (1927)

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30 Jul 04:57

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Night Before Christmas (Edison/Porter, 1905)

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)
Other films directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company include "The Seven Ages", "Coney Island at Night", "The Little Train Robbery" and "The Miller's Daughter".
SIlent Film Edison Manufacturing Film Company
30 Jul 04:57

Scott Lord Silentt Film: Mary Pickford in Amarilly of Clothes Line Alley (Neilan, 1918)

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)
During 1918, Mary Pickford starred in the five reel film "Amarilly of Clothesline Alley", directed by Marshall Neilan with a photoplay scripted by Frances Marion and Bellek Maniates. Actress Margaret Landis also appears in the film. Silent Film Mary Pickford
30 Jul 04:57

Scott Lord Silent Film: Biblical Drama, Ben Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925)

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)
While heralding "Ben Hur" as "the biggest movie spectacle since Intolerance", Classics of the Silent Screen, published by author Joe Franlkin in 1959 notes that its two large scale production scenes take place during the first half of the film, too early in the narrative in regard to audience interest and reception, "Part two not only moved slowly but had no spectacular action highlights." The actual chatiot race takes place after an hour and a half of film, but there is in fact another hour left to the complete film. Classics of the Silent Screen claimed the film trailed off to follow an incidental character with leprosy. Starring in the film with Romon Navarro were actresses Kathleen Kay, Betty Bronson, Myrna Loy and Colleen Moore. Silent Film Ben Hur
30 Jul 04:55

Scott Lord Mystery: Held for Ransom (Clarence Bricker, 1938)

29 Jul 23:53

Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film: January 2023

scottlordpoet shared this story from Victorseastrom's Favorite Links from Diigo.

Silent Film

Tags: Silent Film

29 Jul 02:47

Seventies art

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29 Jul 02:46

magazine art

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29 Jul 02:19

Scott Lord Swedish Silent Film: Thomas Graal’s Basta Barn (Mauritz Still..

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)
Peter Cowie, in his volume Scandinavian Cinema, writes, "The domestic relationships and erotic byplay in Stiller's comedies posses an application and validity beyond their immediate setting- and generation." In his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, Peter Cowie opines, "There is a spirited mischievousness about the performances of Victor Sjostrom and KArin Molander in 'Thomas Graal's First Child' that makes other acting of the period seem academic and ponderous. Directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1918, the photoplay was written by Gustaf Molander and the cinematographer to the film was Henrik Jaenzon. Starring with Victor Sjostrom and Karin Molander was actress Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson. Gustaf and Karin Molander were married from 1909 to 1919.
Victor Sjostrom playlist Mauritz Stiller
29 Jul 02:19

Scott Lord: The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjostrom, 1918)

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)


After having appeared in “The Outlaw and His Wife”, actress Edith Erastoff starred with Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth In “The Flame of Life” (1919), directed by Mauritz Stiller And “Let No Man Put Asunder” (“Hogre Andamal”, 1921) directed by Rune Carlsten.
In Sweden, Victor Sjostrom continued directing in 1922 with the film “Vem domer”, starring Jenny Hasselqvist, which he co-scripted with Hjalmer Bergman.

Victor Sjostrom had written four hundred letters to Edith Erastoff, his co-star from the film “The Outlaw and His Wife”, their eventually having married during 1922.
The historiography of the film criticism that delineates the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film was perhaps easily formulated while the films were still being screened internationally in theaters if we heed the review placed in the periodical Picture Show magazine during 1919 that astutely notes "On stage it is easy to calculate the effect of limelights....a glance at the top photographs of Seastrom (left) in 'Love the Only Law' and (right) 'A Man There Was' well illustrates how the one appealing figure dominates the immense landscape around him". The magazine quotes Victor Sjostrom explaing his liking screen adaptation over stage adaptation almost propheticly in regard to the film criticism, if not film theory, that would later follow. "One has to deal with more people', he says, 'and also with grande, terrible landscapes, with shifting effects of shade and shadow'".
Author Forsyth Hardy, in the volume Scandinavian Film written in 1952, explains the film of Victor Sjostrom as having established Sjostrom as an auteur of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film by his work having created a poetic cinema. Hardy writes, “There was a greater freedom of movement, an assured sense of rhythm and a fine feeling for composition. In ‘The Outlaw and His Wife’ Sjostrom used landscape with a skill which was to become part of the Swedish Film tradition. He found a way of filming the tree-lined valleys and wide arched skies of his country so that they became not merely backgrounds but organic elements in the theme in the theme. There was still, however, a lingering tendency to melodrama in the acting....the end of the film especially was marred by melodramatic excess, but despite this fault, Berg-EJvid was memorable because of its theme, and its demonstration in the earlier sequences of the film medium's affinities with poetry." During 1960, Charles L. Fuller, writing for Films in Review, succinctly described the films motifs, "Its theme was that no man escapes his fate 'though he rides faster than the wind' ".
Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, explains, "But apart from his assured use of flashbacks, Sjostrom was the first Swedish director to realize the importance of landscape in the cinema. The solicitude and predicament Berg-EJvind and his wife speak through images with the clouds and mountains expressing a life of vigor and simplicity."
About the film, Einar Lauritzen wrote, “But Sjostrom never let the drama of human relations get lost in the grandeur of the scenery.” To this can be added that Jean Mitry, in his work The Aesthetics and Psychology of Cinema, writes of the mountain in "The Outlaw and His Wife", up to the tragic ending, is a symbol of granduer and isolation, as well as a symbol for the effort of the man and woman to reverse their fate. The snow, in Mitry's interpretation symbolizes not only purity but alao redemption.
Peter Cowie writes, "Prominent too in this masterpiece is the Scandinavian approach to the seasons. Summer is recalled in short, wrenching spasms, as the outlaw sits starving in his mountain hut toward the end; but winter, equated inthe Swedish arts with death, destroys the spirit and whips the snow over the couple's bodies with inexorable force."

"The Outlaw and His Wife" was reviewed in the United States during 1921 under the title "You and I". Motion Picture News concluded, "The picture is marred by an utterly irrelevant prolougue and epilougue which should be dispensed with immediately. It has no place in advancing the drama and really spoils the good impressions of the picture."
When Bluebook of the Screen in 1923 introduced Victor Sjostrom as then currently filming his first feature made in the United States, "Master of Men" as Victor Seastrom it related, without quoting him directly, that Sjostrom felt that his "tragedy of Iceland", "The Outlaw and His Wife", was his est work and that to him it "would not be understood or appreciated in England or America".

Greta Garbo

Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom playlist
29 Jul 02:18

Scott Lord Silent Film: Intolerance; Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages...

by noreply@blogger.com (Scott Lord on Silent Film, Scott Lord on Mystery Film)

Three years before the premier of "Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916), author Eustace Ball, in the volume "The Art of the Photoplay" advised, "Put one plot at a time; the single reel picture lasts only eighteen minutes and only one line can be worked out well in this time. This is another important detail in which the photplay differs from the drama."
David Bordwell sees cinematic history as a "Basic Story" and that within this approximation, D.W. Griffith is attributed with having invented "cinematic syntax". This syntax is apparent in what Raymond Spottiswoode referred to as the "grammar of film", or shot structure and perhaps in what is expanded later into semiotics and the "grande syntagmatique". While crediting Edwin S. Porter with the use of crosscutting two simultaneous actions, Bordwell notes the crosscutting of four historical periods (seperate storylines, which thematically merge) in Griffith's film Intolerance, filmed thirteen years later.
Susan Jean Craig, The City University of New York, in her dissertation "Skin and Redemption-Theology in Slent Films 1902 to 1927 describes the editing of motifs as film technique, "Filmmakers learned that they could use simple shorthand of now widely recognized filmic devices to amplify characterization and backstory: creating metaphoric links between seemingly unrelated storylines by shifting the action betwen them, called intercutting, underscoring human behavior and emotion through high-contrast lighting of scenes and subjects; and stressing subtle psychological shifts in motivation simply by moving the camera closer to the actor's faces. Thus, when D.W. Griffith wanted to introduce a prostitute in his 1916 epic "Intolerance, Love's Struggle through the Ages (Triangle Film Corp.) he didn't need to showa young woman trading sexual favors for payment. Instead he cut from a simple two second shot of a woman dressed too elaborately for her station in life to an intertitle that dubbed her "The Friendless One" to make his point crystal clear. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier sees crosscutting as a programmed languague and dismisses the need to view D.W. Griffith as its inventor, but rather as his "method of film construction", which having previous existed, he "developed and systemized", specifically that editing used in chase scenes and last minute rescue scenes to meet the exingencies of his narrative technique. While properly evaluating the work of D.W. Griffith and the canonical structuring of editing through a "suspensefull call for help, the proximity of the threat and the last minute rescue", Phillipe Gauthier finds early examples of the origins of film technique neglected by earlier prominent film historians. The director of the 1908 Pathe film "A Narrow Escape", if nothing else, certainly does quite often cut on the action of the character leaving the frame.
Author Stanley J. Solomon, in The Narrative Structure of the Film, from his volume The Film Idea eescribes the use of simultaneuous threads of action to climax thematically, "The last two reels (of the total thriteen in extant circulating versions) are among the most exciting sequences in all cinema. As the four stories head toward their conclusions, Griffith begins to cut back and forth much more quickly than he did earlier- mainly without the interference of the image of the rocking cradle...delaying the outcome of each story and building up a tremendous amountof suspense." Solomon looks to Iris Barry often. Iris Barry herself, author of D.W. Griffith, American film master, notes "Intolerance" directed by D. W. Griffith as being seminal. "The film Intolerance is of extreme importance to the history of the cienema." She singles out shots that use only part of the screen's area, tracking shots and rapid crosscutting as techniques used by Griffith in extraordinary combinations with his camera angles.
Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema implies that the storyline to "Intolerance" was entirely improvization on the part of D.W. Griffith; not only is there no credit for the photodramatist that wrote the photoplay, but there was originally no scenario to the film. Peter Cowie adds, "Like all Griffith's work, 'Intolerance' has a didactic ring that makes the captions seem pompous. But it lives up to the director's dictum 'Art is always revolutionary, always explosive and sensational."

Stanley J. Solomon in turn finds a thematic continuity in the film, "The four stories demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between individual acts and broadly calamitous events....That concept held in that the peculiarly suggestive medium of film, visual information should consist of fragments which, when carefully chosen and sensitively edited, would produce the idea of a completed action."
Both Lillian Gish and Paul Rotha write of Griffith having found lines in a poem by Walt Whitman that were to connect the stories thematically, Gish appearing at intervals throughout the film to contrast the dramatic quickening of the pace of the film and lending it a symbolism, "Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film." Motion Picture World during 1916 popularized the film as bringing Griffith to a pantheon by subtitling its review with, "Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form are Successfully Revolutionized." Paragraph subtitles were to include, "Original Method of Construction", "Human Interest in Abundance" and "Marvelous Spectacular Effects".
In her book entitled Screen Acting, Mae Marsh explains the differences between the acting required for each camera distance. She begins with telling us that during a long shot facial expressions register indifferently and need to be compensated by body movement. She allows that most dramatic action is filmed in three quarters legnth, from the face to the knees, intermediate shots that require both facial expressions and body movement.
It is thought that the later films of D. W. Griffith, including "The White Rose" (1923) with Mae Marsh, more elaborately presented theme as being intertwined with the drama in which the characters were situated. D. W. Griffith
Victor Sjostrom
28 Jul 03:02

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, 1945

28 Jul 03:02

FIVE ALL NIGHT-Truly Great Entertainment



When I had my Super Eight projector, the Universal films were split into two channels. The Basil Rathbone Nigel Bruce, Warner Oland and Peter Lorre detective films were on an independent channel and the Universal Horror films were on one of the three network stations.

This intro to the film I remember and would have always wanted to have my own slot. Please enjoy this splice (ie. clip) of"my first professor", whose residence for his artistry was as host of classic horror film on the "late night double feature picture show" in Boston.

Scott Lord silent film
28 Jul 03:01

magazine art

28 Jul 03:01

Scott Lord Silent Film: Yesterday and Today Newsreel (1929)

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scottlordpoet shared this story from Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film.

SIlent Film Silent Film
27 Jul 00:11

The Cat and the Canary (1927)