Scott Lord

mystery silent film mystery

mystery silent film mystery

mystery silent film mystery

The 1912 directorial debut of Mack Sennett for the Keystone Film Company, "The Water Nymph" starred actress Mabel Normand. Film historian Arthur Knight, in his volume The Liveliest Art, "At first Sennett was Keystone's director, star, idea man, and sometimes he even helped out on the camera. Stories were improvised on the spot...The key scenes, the scenes involving incident, would be caught almost on the fly...Before long Sennett, like Ince, was forced to withdraw from direct participation in his comedies and become producer." Silent Film

Bo Florin, Stockholm University, in his volume Transition and Transformation, Victor Sjostrom in Hollywood 1923-1930, points to Victor Sjostrom's use of dissolves in the film "Monastery of Sedomir" as "transformatory devices", to thematiclly link two images. "The dissolve works, in other words, as an independent device, which does not in this context recieve any clarifying support from any other narrative patterns." The character, and the setting in which he placed, change as motif with the dissolve.
Peter Cowie, in his volume Swedish Cinema adds that the film "is not easily recognizable as a film by Sjostrom, for landscape and countryside play no part in it at all."
"The Monastery of Sendomir" (Klostret i Sendomir) was written and directed for Svenska Biografteatern by Victor Sjostrom during 1920. Photographed by Henrik Jaenzon the film starred actresses Rene Bjorling, Jenny-Tschernichin-Larsson and Tora Teje in the first film in which she was to appear during a year in which she would star with actress Mary Johnson in the film "Familjens Traditioner" under the direction of Rune Carlsten, however meteoric her career might seem. The screenplay to "Monastery of Sendomir" was adapted from a short story by Franz Grillparzer that, despite whatever reason Sjostrom had for choosing the material, had been filmed a year earlier, in Germany, by director Rudolph Meinert, starring actress Ellen Richter.
Victor Sjostrom
The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjostrom, 1920) Please screen the films below directed in Sweden by Victor Sjostrom as any double feature you see fit. Greta Garbo

Victor Sjostrom

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Greta Garbo

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Silent Film

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Greta Garbo

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victor Sjostrom

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Silent Garbo

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Swedish SIlent Film

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Swedish Silent Film

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Silent Film

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Lon Chaney Silent Film

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Silent Film

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Lon Chaney

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Lon CHaney

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Lon Chaney

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Lon Chaney

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Alfred Hitchcock

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Swedish Silent Film pioneer Anna Hofmann-Uddren began filming for Orientaliska Teatern in 1911 with the film "Stockholmsdamemas alskling" starring Carl Barklind, Sigurd Wallen, Erica Tomberg and Anna-Lisa Hellstrom. The film is presumed lost, with no surving existing copies. For a brief period of time, actors Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, then new to filmmaking, would be rivalled by film versions of the plays of August Strindberg before their having aquired world renown for establishing the Golden Age of Swedish Silent film with the film "Terje Vigen" (Victor Sjostrom,1916), based on Ibsen's poem.
Not quite apart from the account of the use of the proscenium arch in early cinema in Vardac's Stage to Screen, the films directed by Anna Hofmann-Uddgren in 1911 were tranpositions of "Miss Julie" (Froken Julie) and "The Father", the intimate theater of Swedish playwright August Strindberg. "The Father", starring Karin Alexandersson, Karen Thoren and Rene Bjorling featured an admittedly static camera and is an example of filmed theater. And yet cameraman Otto Bjorkman used two exterior shots and cutting that would bring about scene changes during "Miss Julie", a film that had had its premiere at the Orientalisks Teatern, starred Karin Alexandersson and Manda Bjorling. Both films were later remade by Alf Sjoberg and boths films were written by Anna Hofman-Uddgren's husband Gustaf Uddgren.
Ingrid Stigsdotter, Stockholm University, has noted that the reception of the films of Anna Hofman Uddgren was shared with her husband, his being a well known journalist, "Filmmaking was such a new activity that professional designations (the Swedish terms for "director", "producer", "scriptwriter", "actor", "cinematographer"....) had not yet aquired a fixed meaning in relation to the film medium an what was expected for example a director or writer of a film was in the process of fluctuation or negotiation."
To add a feminist historiography to the films, one reason for the films seeming to be overlooked, other than the director's career having had been being brief and not having continued to the 1916 incipience of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film, whether having had been being "filmed theater" or not, is primarily the availability of the films; "The Father" is the only film directed by Anna Hofmann-Uddgren known to exist, there being no surviving copies of five of the six films she had directed, those being considered Lost Silent Film.
Anna Hofmann-Uddgren during 1911 also directed acress Edith Wallen in two films, both filmed by cinematographer Otto Bokman, "Single a Dream" (Blott in Drom) and "Sisters" (Systarna). Both are included in the five lost silent films directed by Hofmann-Uddgren, her having scripted the former, Elin Wagner having written the photoplay to the latter.
Actress Karin Alexandersson during 1914 went to Svenska Bio to make film under the direction of Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller before returning during the 1940's to appear in more than a dozen films. Director Anna Hofmann-Uddgren in fact appeared in front of the camera as an actress twice during 1921 in the films "De Landsflyktige" (Mauritz Stiller) and "Pilgrimage to Kevlaar" (Ivan Hedqvist).
The Blue Tower in Stockholm, where August Strindberg lived bewteen 1908-1912 and where he wrote the play "The Great Highway" is now part of the Strindberg Museum. Strindberg had gladly acquiesced to have his plays adapted into films, almost congradulating Anna Hofmann-Uddgren's husband, Gustav.
Silent Film
Swedish Silent Film

Lon Chaney

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Lon Chaney

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Silent Film

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Silent Film

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Lon Chaney

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