Silent Film to be revised: November 2024

If filmic address during a cinema of attractions had begun with the act of display, it had begun to incorporate the actor as seen in close shot, which could be edited into a grammar of film - the shot had become "the unit of editing" and the "basis for the construction of the scene" (Jacobs), whereas before it had been the scene that would allow the placement of shots, it now being that there could be an assemblage of shots.

One author writes, "Nevertheless in his best dramas of pastoral life, Sjöström to integrate the rugged Swedish landscape into the texture of his films with an almost mystical force- a feature noted and much admired in other countries." Of interest is that the establishing shot that begins the Greta Garbo film Love, directed in the Untied States by Edmund Goulding is an exterior that begins the plotline with Garbo in a snowstorm being brought homeward in a sleigh; it is a series of exterior shots that depict nature as the background for character delineation very much like in the films of Scandinavian director Victor Sjöström, so much so that it is revealed in the first interior shots that both the love interest in the film, portrayed by John Gilbert, and the audience, were nearly unaware of who the character portayed by Garbo really was and hadn't fully realized it untill being given later look at the beauty of the passenger, as though they were being reintroduced to someone they had been with during the journey through the snow.
And yet, if the present author has anything to add to what has been written in appreciation of Scandinavian film and its use of landscape to add depth to the development of character by creating relationships between the background and the protagonist of any given film's plotline, within that is that within classical cinema and its chronological ordering of events, it is still often spatio-temporal relationships that are developed. The viewer often acknowledging the effect that an object within the film might have upon the character, an object that is either stationary or in movement, poeticly in movement as a waterfall would be, the structuring of space within the film not only clarifies plot action, but, within the framed image, included in the spatial continuity within the visual structure of the film, establishes a relation of objects that appear onscreen to the space that is offscreen. Spatial relations became narrative. Character movement, camera movement and shot structure create a scenographic space which within the gaze of the actress is observed through an ideal of femininity, a unity of space constructed that links shots, often by forming spaces that are contiguous within the scene and creating images that are poeticly presented as being contiguous; subjectivity is structured within the discourse of the film and these subjectivities are presented to the viewer as being within a larger context within early Silent Scandinavian films.
In Kristianstad, Sweden the director Carl Engdahl pioneered with the film The People of Varmland (Varmanningarna) in 1909. Robert Olsson photographed The Wedding at Ulfasa for two directors, the second having had been being Gustaf Linden. The film starred the Swedish silent film actresses Ellen Appelberg, Lilly Wasmuth and Anna Lisa Hellstrom. In 1910, Olsson wrote, directed and photographed the film Emigranten, starring Oscar Soderholm and Valborg Ljungberg, and photographed the films Emigrant starring Torre Cederborg and Gucken Cederborg in her first appearance on screen, and Regina von Emmeritz och Kongung Gustaf II Adolf, starring Emile Stiebel and Gerda Andre, both directed by Gustaf Linden. Twelve years later, Gucken Cederborg was introduced to another actress who would soon be introduced to Swedish audiences, Barry Paris having written that when when she and actress Tyra Ryman walked into Pub with actor-director Eric Petschler, Greta Garbo, who worked there as a clerk, recognized them immediately.
Film historians have noted that Kristianstad, Sweden was home to another film, The Man Who Takes Care of the Villian (Han som clara boven), filmed in 1907. Produced by Franz G. Wiberg, the film has never been released theatrically.
Svensk Kinematograf was the production company that under N. E. Sterner had filmed six of the earliest films photographed in Scandinavia- Robert Olsson had photographed Pictures of Laplanders (Lappbilder), Herring Fishing in Bohuslan (Sillfiske i Bohuslan), Lika mot lika starring Tollie Zellman and Kung Oscars mottagning i Kristianstad in 1906 before working with Carl Engdahl. Also shown in Stockholm and Goteborg during 1906 was the film Kriget i Ostergotland. In 1911, Gustaf Linden, directed the film The Iron Carrier (Jarnbararen), photographed by Robert Olsson and starring Anna-lisa Hellstrom and Ivan Hedqvist. Similar to the early cinematography of Robert Olsson were the films shot by Ernest Florman, who wrote and directed the film Skona Helena (1903), which had starred Swedish actress Anna Norrie.
n Another of Sweden's earliest photographers was Walfrid Bergström, who was behind the camera between 1907-1911 in Stockholm for Apollo productions. In 1907 Bergström filmed Den glada ankan, one of the three films produced by Albin Roosval starring Carl Barklind and Emma Meissner and Konung Oscar II's likbegangelse. Between 1907 and 1911, Bergstrrom would photographed Skilda tiders danser with Emma Meissner and Rosa Grunberg in 1909 and Ryska sallskapsdanser in 1911. During 1908, Svenska Biografteatern produced two short films with the actress Inga Berentz, Sjomansdansen, photographed by Walfrid Bergstrom, and I kladloge och pascen, photographed by Otto Bokman.
Charles Magnusson, who came to the United States, directed and wrote The Pirate and Memories from the Boston Sports Club in 1909 and Orpheus in the Underworld (Urfeus i underjorden) in 1910. Magnusson in 1909 had become the managing director of Svenska Biografteatern, which Julius Jaenzon become part of in 1910. Notably, while under N. E. Sterner of Svensk Kinematograf, Charles Magnusson had photographed Konung Haakons mottagning i Kristiania (1905), a short film of the King of Norway's visit to Kristiania almost as though to presage that it would be there, rather than Rasunda that he would begin the Swedish Film industry, his also having directed the films Gosta Berlings land(Bilder fran Frysdalen, 1907), Gota elf-katastrofen (1908) and Resa Stockholm-Goteborg genom Gota och Trollhatte kanaler (1908). Konstantin Axelsson, in 1911, directed Hon fick platsen eller Exkong Manuel i Stockholm. Starring Ellen Landquist, the film was produced in Stockholm by Apollo and was photographed by Walfrid Bergstrom.

Frans Lundberg filmed in 1910,The People of Varmland (Varmlandingarna), directed by Ebba Lindkvist, photographed by Ernst Dittmer and starring Agda Malmberg, Astrid Nilsson and Ester Selander. The following year Ernesr Dittmer would write and direct the film Rannsakningsdomaren, starring Gerda Malmberg and Ebba Bergman.
In Malmo Sweden, for Stora Biografteatern, Otto Hoy during 1911 wrote and directed the film The Spy (Spionen), starring Paul Welander and Agnes Nyrop-Christensen, the manager of Stora Biografteatern, Frans Lundberg. Paul Welander wrote and directed his first film in 1911, Champagneruset.
Carl Engdahl later appeared in the 1926 film Mordbrannerskan, directed by John Lindlof.

Forsyth Hardy notes that the early Swedish films of 1911 were films in which "the camera remained static and the action was artificially concentrated into a small area in front of it." Not quite apart from this and very much like the silent film included in Vardac's account of the use of the proscenium arch in early cinema in Stage to Screen,the films directed by Anna Hofman Uddgren in 1911 were transpositions of Miss Julie and The Father (Fadren) ,the intimate theater of Swedish playwright August Strindberg. Cameraman Otto Bokman used two exterior shots during The Father, the film having starred Karin Alexandersson and Renee Bjorling. Miss Julie, a film that had had its Stockholm premiere at the Orientaliska Teatern, starred Karin Alexandersson and Manda Bjorling. Both plays were later to be filmed by Alf Sjöberg. Stiller had, in fact, been the manager of the Lilla Teaten and a contemporary of August Falk and Manda Bjorling had acted with him and Anna Flygare at the Intima Theatern. Uddgren also in 1911 directed Single a Dream (Blott in drom), starring Edith Wallen Sisters (Systarna), starring Edith Wallen and Sigurd Wallen and Stockholmsdamernas alskling, starring Carl Barcklind, Erika Tornberg and Anna-Lisa Hellström. Balif vid Molle (1911) was photographed by John Bergqvist. Also in Stockholm, the Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, later managed by both Ingmar Bergman and Erland Josephson, was headed by Gustaf Fredriksson between 1904-1907 and then by Knut Michaelson between 1908-1910.
Victor Sjöström had had his own theater with Einar Froberg before his directing under Magnusson, it having been Froberg that had spoken to Magnusson before he and Sjöström had met.
The Blue Tower, where August Strindberg lived in Stockholm between 1908-1912 and where he wrote the play The Great Highway, is now part of The Strindberg Museum.
Although a theory of a cinema of attractions depends less upon the use of the proscenium arch written about by Nicholas A. Vardac or the camera's photographic reproduction of drama that had previously been enacted upon the stage and more upon the act of display having preceded the use of cinematic and editorial devices to propel narrative, the grammar of film would be used both to transpose the theatricality of the stage play and to adapt novels to the screen in ways which they could not be performed in front of a theater audience not only in regard to the modes of address which would position the spectator but also in regard to the public sphere of reception. Within the reception of each film there soon was a heterogeneity of filmgoers and that films were visual soon transversed language barriers between audiences that would otherwise have been seperate. Characteristic of early films that were adaptions of novels was the use of a linear narrative similar to that of the "well made novel" novel of the nineteenth century, the camera following the character into each subsequent scene. There soon would be films in which there would be a contemporaneity of narrative and attraction. Raymond Spottiswoode distinguishes between the photoplay, the adaptation of the stage play to the screen with little or no editing, and the screenplay, where camera movement and technique is used to convey narrative- the photoplay can be likened to a cinema of attractions where the scene is filmed from a fixed camera position, whereas the screenplay includes the cut from a medium shot to a close shot in order to build the scene.
In regard to the camera being authorial, Raymond Spottiswoode writes, "The spatial closeup is the usual means of revealing significant detail and motion. Small movements which must necessarily have escaped the audiences of a play sitting removed some distance from its actors can thus be selected from their surroundings and magnified to any extent." While writing that how the camera is authorial includes its having only one position, that of the viewer, which, differing from that of the theater audience can vary with each shot change, depending upon the action within the scene, Spottiswoode cautions that the well written stage play is not suited for the camera's mobility. He also indirectly addresses the use of nature as a way to connect characters to their enviornment while they are being developed that is quite often significant in Scandinavian films when writing about the possibility there being a "difference film", by that his referring to a film which uses relational cutting. "To constitute such a 'difference film' is not sufficiently merely to photograph mountains and streams which are inaccessible to theater producers; the film must also choose a method of carrying on its purposive themes or meaning from moment to moment." He continues, "the public can be trained to appreciate that the differences between nature seen and nature filmed constitute the chief value of the cinema."

That intertitles were at first often explanatory shows the beginnings of a narrative within cinema.
Certainly by 1917 films made in the United States, and the films made in Sweden had acquired a narrative transitivity, a chronological plot outline, more often than not their being characterized by their having a causal motivation of scene and its structure. In regard to film preservation and the intertitle,

---------------insert and revise below into new revison-------- Among the films produced by Nordisk Films Kompagni in 1906 was Bonden i Kobenhavn (Hunting of a Polar Bear), directed by its manager, Ole Olsen. Ole Olsen established its first production company in 1906, Ole Olsen's Film Industry, which that year filmed Pigeons and Seagulls (Duer og Maager). ------------------------------ Ole Olsen also produced the 1906 films The Funeral of King Christian IX (King Christian IX's Bisaettelse) and The Proclamation of King Fredderick VIII (King Frederick VIII's Proklamtion). There were thirty one silent films produced by Ole Olsen that were given to the Royal Library during the year 1913.

Tandpine and Kortspillere were also filmed by Nordisk Films Kompagni during 1906. In 1906 Louis Halberstadt for Nordisk Films Kompagni directed the film Konfirmation, photographed by Rasmus Bjerregaard, it having been the first Danish silent film in which Greta Garbo co-star Jean Hersholt (The Rise and Fall of Susan Lennox) was to appear.

In the year 1906, the actress Margrethe Jespersen had starred in the films Anarkistens svigermor (Larsen), Knuste hab, Caros dod, Haevnet (Larsen) and Fiskerliv i Norden (Larsen).

Among the films directed by Larsen in 1907 were A Modern Naval Hero (En Moderne Sohelt) and Once Upon a Time (Der var engang) with Clara Nebelong, Gerda Jensen and Agnes Porlund Seemann, both of which he appeared in as an actor.

Emmanuel Tvede directed only one film in Denmark, Faldgruben, and yet in it was future star Emilie Sannom in one of her first screen appearances, Danish actress Kate Fabian also having appeared in the film.
In addition to Nordisk Films, during 1910 the Regina Kunst Kompagni briefly produced films in Denmark, notably the first three films in which actress Clara Weith Pontoppidan had, as Clara Weith, starred, Elskovsleg, Djaevelsonaten, and Ett Gensyn, in which she starred with actresses Annegrette Antonsen and Ellen Aggerholm. Director Axel Strom directed Clara Weith in the film Dorian Grays Portraet, in which she starred with Valdemar Psilander as well as his having directed Johanne Dinesen in the film Den doe Rotte. Danish silent film actress Emilie Sannon also starred on screen for the Regina Kunst Kompagni, her having starred in the film Doden.

The versatility of Asta Nielsen, directed by her husband Urban Gad, was especially shown from film to film. The Abyss begins with a shot of the actress Asta Nielsen as Magda and her boarding a train as though it were a whistle stop. It continues with exterior longshots, untill the two characters are seen at an outdoor coffee table. There is a cut to an interior where she is seen in full shot opening a letter, the camera distance well behing the Vitagraph nine foot line, particularly for an interior filmed in 1910. Seated, the next shot shows her at a closer angle, filmed higher than her as she is reading the letter. It then cuts to a train station and then a series exterior full shots of her arriving in the country. The scene then shifts to an outdoor circus and an exterior full shot during which she dances. The storyline becomes dramatic, or sensational in its being melodramatic, where she flees with the circus, much like in the Greta Garbo film The Rise and Fall of Susan Lennox. There is in the film a near panning shot following characters as a horse drawn carriage parks near the exterior of a building, the camera then cutting to the interior where she is recieving guests.

Peter Cowie notes that Karu's The Logroller's Bride (Koskenlaskijan morsian, 1923) has an exterior landscape scene that had been filmed by using six different cameras; the director later remade the film as the first Finnish film to include sound. The film Tukijoella (Log River) continued the influence of the Scandinavian film directors upon the silent cinema of Finland in their being a relation shown between the characters of the film and its background landscape, it having appeared in theaters in 1928. Also directing in Finland in 1913 was playwright Kaarle Halme who brought the films (The Bloodless Ones/Verettomat) and The Young Pilot (Nuori luotsi) to silent film audiences who had previously looked to the theater; the photplay, although quickly a new form of literature to convey the dramtic, and melodramtic, was still in Finland before 1919 contained within static camera angles without the frequent use of editing to complicate plotlines and character relationships, characters often shown in full figure, at the same camera distance, as at Vitagraph studios in the United States.

Peter Lykke-Seest, who had founded the first Norwegian film studio, the Christiana Film Company, was a screenwriter for Victor Sjöström (and Mauritz Stiller) before his directing The Story of a Boy (Historien om en gut) in 1919.
Aside from this was the consideration that once films had been begun to have been made that were two reels or more, dialouge,through the use of intertitles, and expository descriptions could be added to the way the causality of plotline was developed during a film and how character was delineated, intertitles that would not only lend continuity to the linear progression of storyline but also bring unity to it. Victor Sjostrom later would in fact use intertitles to act as retrospective first person, voice over narrative.

That Sjöström the actor would later be shown in both long shot and close shot in the same sequence shows the relation between the character on the screen and the space within the frame; in that the camera had been becoming increasingly authorial, it often seemed to provide an embodied viewpoint from which an idealized spectator could view onscreen space, and by its being authorial, could seem to reposition the spectator during the film through the use of a second central character. While discussing film technique as something that is a reproduction of the images before the spectator, Raymond Spottiswoode claims that "it can never attain to art", and yethe adds that there must be a freedom available to the director "if he is to infuse his purpose and character into the beings of nature, to change them that their life becomes more living, their meaning more significant, their vlaue more sure and true." He continues that while it can be put forth that there is only one camera angle that any scene can be photographed from, one relation to the camera that any object can be aquire within the varying spatial relations that it takes while arranged with the other objects in front of the camera, "there is no reason to suppose that the choice of a camera angle is not perfectly free." The attention of the spectator could be directed spatially. It is by being authorial that the camera can impart meaning, technique not only to have brought an objectification of what was in front of the camera but also of the camera itself as it observed the actors within the scene, as it photographed the object, the structure of the image deigned by the placement of the camera, the pleasure of the spectator derived in part from the parallel between the spectator and the camera. In regard to the camera being authorial, a group member of an e-mailed silent film mailing list recently in a post quoted a postulate of the theory of there being a cinema of attractions, "The narrator inthe early films is sporadic; an occaisional specter rather than a unified presence."

Stiller directed in 1912 with Mother and Daughter (Mor och Dotter), in which he acted with Anna Norrie and Lily Jacobsson In 1912 Stiller wrote and directed film The Tyrannical Fiancee (Den Tyranniske Fastmannen), in which he starred with Agda Helin, Esther Julin, Stina Berg and Jenny-Tschernichin Larsson.

Victor Sjöström during 1913 directed A Secret Marriage (Ett hemlight giftermal) with Hilda Borgström, A Summer's Tale (En Sommar Saga).

Almost as soon as the golden age Swedish cinema had begun, it had begun adapting the novel to film; the significance of the cinema of attractions would now be in the shot, the placement of the shot within the scene, display relegated to frame compositions.
Eric Malmberg that year directed the films Oceanbreakers and Stolen Happiness (Branningar eller Stulen lycka) with Lily Jacobsson, Tollie Zellman and Victor Arfvidson, Samhallets dom, with Lily Jacobsson, Agda Helin, Tollie Zellman and actress Lisa Holm in the first film in which she was to appear, as well as Agaton and Fina (Agaton och Fina), and Two Swedish Emigrants in America (Tva svenska emigranters afventyr i Amerika), both photographed by Julius Jaenzon, also with Lily Jacobsson. Algot Sandberg that year directed the film Farbror Johannes ankomst till Stockholm.

Paul Welander in 1912 contributed the films The Pace That Kills (Broder och syster) and The Circus Queen (Circusluft). Welander also that year having starred with Ida Nielsen in The Bonds of Marriage (Karleksdrommar) a film made by Frans Lundberg.

During 1912-Juilius Jaenzon that year was the photographer and director of the film Condemned by Society.
1912 was also the year that Hjalmar Söderberg, often considered the nearest contemporary to Strindberg, published the novel The Most Serious Game (Den allvarsamm leken) and the one act play Aftonstjarnan. The first publication to appear written by Par Lagerkvist, People (Manniskor), a collection of short stories was also printed that year as well.
If this was later remarked upon as being part of a comparision and contrast, Mary Pickford was to write, "As I recall, D. W. Griffith never adhered to a script. Improvisation was frequently the order of the day. Sometimes the camera registered an impromputu piece of off-story action and that too stayed in the film." Lillian Gish in no way contradicts her by writing about how Griffith used the editing room to develop storyline, particularly by adding close ups and shots of objects, "Later, he would make sense of the assorted shots in the cutting room, giving them drama and continuity." These cut-in shots were inserted into the scene to add "depth and dimension to the moment".
During 1912 the first film that would star Mary Miles Minter would appear on the marquee, the one reel The Nurse and Anna Q. Nilsson would make her first film, the one reel Molly Pitcher. Oddly enough, Nilsson's studio, Kalem, had given the title role of The Vampire to Alice Hollister, the two later united on the screen in A Sister's Burden (1915). In addition to the films of Louise Glaum,whom Fred Niblo directed in Sex (1920, seven reels), and Valeska Suratt, another film of that title had starred Olga Petrova, it seeming that quickly " 'vamp' became an all too common noun and in less than a year it was a highly active verb, transitive and intransitive" (Ramsaye). Anna Q. Nilsson would appear in War's Havoc, Under a Flag of Truce and The Soldier Brothers of Suzanna in . Lillian Gish would later play a vamp in Diane of the Follies (1916). Birgitta Steene writes that in the films of Ingmar Bergman, "the vamp is portrayed as the social victim rather than the embodiment of sin."

That year Wilhelm Gluckstedt directed De to brodre and Zigeunerorkestret.

Danish film director Aage Brandt during 1912would direct Vera Brechling in A Death Warning (Dodsvarlet)

Blom that year also for Nordisk Film directed Robert Dinesen in the films Stolen Treaty (Secret Treaty/ Den Magt Trede
and The Black Chancellor (Den Sorte Kansler) with Valdemar Psilander, Ebba Thomsen and Jenny Roelsgaard, The Black Chancellor having been a film in which Danish silent film scriptwriter Christian Schroder appeared on screen as an actor. That year August Blom also directed A High Stake (Hjaerternes Kamp.
Danish film director Benjamin Christensen gave the screen the film Blind Justice (Haevnansnat, 1915) starred the actress Karen Caspersen. The two films by Christensen were of the only three produced by the Dansk Biograf Compagni.

For Ingmar Bergman,the first notable Swedish film is Ingeborg Holm from 1913. In an interview with Jonas Sima, he describes the directing of Victor Sjöström, "It is one of the most remarkable films ever made...Often he works on two planes, something being played out in the foreground,but then,through a doorway for instance,one sees something quite different is going on in the background.". Produced by AB Svenska Biograteatern and five reels in legnth, it is also his screenplay from a play by Nils Krook which Sjöström had adapted for the stage in 1907. Like Sarah Bernhardt, Hilda Borgström had came to film. Also in the film are Aron Lindgren and George Gronroos. William Larsson and Carl Barcklind both appear in the film as well. It is almost astounding that under the title Give Us This Day the legnth of the film is listed as having reached seven reels. Einar Lauritzen wrote, "The primitive tableau of the time cannot destroy the genuine feeling for both character and enviornment which Sjöström brought to almost every scene."
Much like it being that the films of Bergman "concern interior journeys: journeys into the soul of the character, or into the souls of two related characters" (John Simon), that Ingeborg Holm was a contemporary drama is particularly a matter for aesthetics, as was the observation that there may have been the photoplay of intimacy, the photoplay of action or the photoplay of splendor. As a side note from the present author, the caption on the cover to the filmed version of The Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts reads, "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people." What is beautiful is not only that the images of film consist of our being in a position to them spectatorially, or the look that is entailed within suture, but that behind the close ups of faces there is a character, quite often one in the midst of drama- if the cinema of attractions was followed by a cinema of narrative integration, what concerns aesthetics is that no matter how maudlin or whether or not plot was translated into fantasy, the cinema had begun to develop character more fully, more deeply. Bengt Forslund writes, "I am fairly convinced that it was always the fate of the individual that intrigued Sjöström- not the circumstances that led to it."
Interestingly enough, one of the best explanations of classical narrative construction, narrative form which is often based on there being a casual relationship between events that are connected spatially during the film brought about by its characters, comes from the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. In his autobiography Images, Ingmar Bergman relates that it was Stina Bergman, then head of the script department, who had asked for him at Svensk Filmindustri. She and her husband Hjalmar Bergman had in fact met with Victor Sjöström while in the United States, where Stina Bergman had acquired the technique of scriptwriting. "This technique was extremely obvious, almost rigid; the audience must never have the slightest doubt where they were in the story. Nor could there be any doubt about who was who, and the transitions between various points of the story were to be treated with care. High points should be allotted and placed at specific places in the script and culmination had to be saved for the end. Dialougue had to be kept short." Author David Bordwell often approximates this description of continuity in the feature film. Bergman continues in the autobiography to write that many of the remarks that Stina Bergman made at that time were treasured by him and that Hjalmar Bergman was his idol.

Sweden, in 1953, made The Bread of Love (Karlekens brod). Writing about the films of Victor Sjöstrom, Bengt Forslund notes, "Guilt Redeemed, shot in the early summer of 1914, may perhaps be seen as an attempt to repeat the success of Ingeborg Holm. Guilt Redeemed (Skana Skuld) starred actress Lili Bech.

Among those Sjostrom directed in 1913 were The Conflicts of Life (Livets konflikter) starring Gösta Ekman, A Good Girl Should Solve Her Own Problems (Bra flicka reder sig sjalv) with Clara Pontoppidan and Jenny Tschernichin and The Clergyman (Prasten), starring Clara Pontoppidan and Egil Eide; the film is lost, with no surviving copies existing.

Alongside Sjöström, that year Maurtiz Stiller would film en pojke I livets strid, Brother Against Brother (People of the Border, Gransfolken), which was the film debut of Edith Erastoff and in which Anders Henrikson had appeared. No less than four Swedish silent film actresses would make their first appearance on the screen in Mauritz Stiller's film The Fashion Model (Mannekangen) : Ida Otterström, Anna Diedrich, Lili Ziedner and Mary Johnson.

Carl Barklind directed his first film that year, The Suicide Club (De lefvande dodas klubb), photographed by Julius Jaenzon and starring Hilma Barcklind and Nils Arehn. Barcklind had appeared as an actor in the film Den glada ankan in 1907. Paul Welander directed and Axel Briedahl scripted the 1913 film Black Heart and White (Karleken rar). John Bergqvist that year directed the films Amors pilar eller Karlek i Hoga Norden and Lappens brud eller Dramat i vildmarken, both with Birger Lundstedt and Hildi Waernmark as well as the film Truls som mobiliserar, with Otto Sandgren. Paul Welander in 1913 directed A Fallen Star (Hjaltetenoren). Arthur Donaldson that year directed Lilly Jacobsson in the film En skargardsflickas roman, which he wrote and in which also appeared as an actor.
------------ While in the United States, Danish Silent Film actress Betty Nansen appeared in the films of producer William Fox. Among them, four were directed by J. Gordon Edwards in 1915: A Woman's Resurrection, The Song of Hate, scripted by Rex Ingram, Should a Mother Tell, also written by Rex Ingram, and Anna Karenina (five reels), scripted by Clara Beranger. ------------------
Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström both had continued to direct in 1914and 1915, the former with His Wife's Past (Hans hustrus forflutuna), The Avenger (Hamnaren) ,which, starring Karin Molander, was the first film in which the actress Tyra Dorum had appeared on the screen, Playmates (Lekkamraterna), The Master Thief (Matsertjuven) with Wanda Rothgardt, Gentleman of the Room (Kammarjunkaren) with Clara Pontoppidan, Madame de Thebes, starring Karin Molander.
The latter, Victor Sjöström, continued directing with The Miracle (Miraklet) with Clara Pontoppidan and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, photographed by Henrik Jaenzon. In regard to the film, based on a story by Zola, Bengt Forslund views as the foreground to the film Monastery of Sendomir and Love's Crucible with the caution that Sjöström may not truly have had an affinity with making "cloistered romances" much in the way his making The Divine Woman may have been pedestrian, significantly the author adds, "It is clearly the first time that Sjöström consciously made use of a particular stretch of natural landscape as a background to the drama." Victor Sjöström also that year continued with Landshovdingens dottar, a film adapted by Sjöström from the novels of Marika Stiernstedt, Do Not Judge (Domen icke) starring Hilda Borgström, Children of the Streets (Gatans Barn), photographed by Henrik Jaenzon and starring Stina Berg, Love Stronger than Hate (Karlek Starkare an Hat), starring Emmy Elffors and John Ekman, The Strike (Strejken), in which Sjöström starred with Lilly Jacobsson, It Was in May (Det var i Maj), written by Algot Sandberg and photographed by Henrik Jaenzon, The Price of Betrayal (Judaspengar), starring Stina Berg, Stick to your last, Shoemaker (Skomakare, bliv vid din last), starring Stina Berg and In the Hour of Trial (I provingens stund), in which he starred with Greta Pfeil and Kotti Chave. -----------Recently, the theater in the city of Uppsala where the Swedish silent films Domen icke and Bra flicka reder sig sjalv, directed by Victor Sjöström, and the film Stromfagelin directed by Mauritz Stiller, were first shown has been renovated, restoring it to how it first looked when built in 1914.
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After his having starred in the films of Victor Sjostrom Gunnar Tolnaes, who in 1915 appeared in the films One Out of the Many (En av de manga) with Greta Almroth, Lilly Jacobsson and Lili Bech, and When Artists Love (Nar konstnarer alska), returned to Denmark from Sweden to film Doktor X under the direction of Robert Dinesn.
Danish Silent film director Holger-Madsen often filmed with the cinematographer Marius Clausen. Betty Nansen in 1914 starred in his film For the Sake of A Man (Under Skaebnens Hjul), which, also starring Maja Bjerre-Lind, Christel Holch and Ingeborg Jensen, was among those films he photographed with Clausen. In 1914, Danish silent film director Vilhelm Gluckstadt directed the film Youthful Sin (Ungdomssynd), starring Sigrid Neiiendam.
Swedish Film director Edmond Hansen in 1915 directed the film Revenge (Hamnden ar ljuv), his also having that year directed Edith Erastoff in two films for Svenska Biografteatern, A Hero in Spite of Himself (Hjalte mot sin vilja), which was not only the first film photographed by Swedish cameraman Carl Gustaf Florin but also the first film scripted by Swedish screenwriter Oscar Hemberg, and The First Prize (Hosta vinsten), photographed by Julius Jaenzon. Arvid Endglin wrote and directed the film An Error (En forvillelse), starring Clara Pontoppidan, William Larsson and Egil Eide and directed Patrick's Adventures (Patriks aventyr), starring Alfred Lundberg and Hilda Forsslund, the film having been the first in which she was to appear.

Klercker's assistant director, Gothson having had been being the assistant director to the 1915 film In the King's Uniform (I kronas klader).

Besides the photographers Julius and Henrik Jaenzon, another of Sweden's cameramen was Hugo Edlund who photographed the film His Father's Crime (Hans faders brott, 1915), the director F. Magnussen's first film, it having starred Richard Lund and Thure Holm. Both Edlund and Julius Jaenzon are listed as having been the cinematographer to the films Den Moderna suffragetten and For sin karleks skull. Magnussen in 1916 also directed the films The Hermits Wife (Enslingens hustru), starring Greta Almroth, Her Royal Highness (Hennes kungliga hoghet) ,starring Karin Molander and At the Eleventh Hour (I elfte timmen), also starring Greta Almroth, each filmed by Hugo Edlund.
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Directed by Victor Sjostrom and photgraphed by Julius Jaenzon, the first of Gustaf Molander's screenplays to become well known was Terje Vigen (1916), from the poem by Henrik Ibsen. The intertitles being from the poem, the structure of a poem would accomodate the structure of a silent film, and yet the film shows that there was beginning to be a grammar to film technique of its own. Scholar Bo Florin in his psper entitled "THe Best Swedish FIlm Ever Made", writes, "While Sjostrom abridges, compresses and rearranges individual scenes, the intertitles are largely true to the wording of the poem." This includes an inversion where on occaision the order of the stanzas have been reversed in order for the film to remain cinematic.
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Edison's 1912The Charge of the Light Brigade has a similar use of the lines from the poem as intertitles and there had been an adaptation by the Independent Motion Picture Company of Hiawatha (1909) with Gladys Hulette as well. The 1912 poem Vanteenheittajat, written in Finland by Eino Leino, was to be filmed shortly after its publication by director Kaarle Halme as Summer (Kesa) with Hilma Rantanen. In regard to film preservation, the film Terje Vigen was rediscovered from a German print in 2004 and the translated restored intertitles charmingly read Svenska Biografteatern at the top framed by their owl logo and are in the from of stanzaic quotation, their being expository. The opening sequence is shot beuatifully and shows Victor Sjostrom portraying Terje Vigen as elderly against a background of the ocean at night during a storm in a series of shots during which he is filmed in blue tint and is shown framed by a doorway in adjacent masked shots alternating between over-the-shoulder and strait on shots, our sharing his view of the storm as well as watching his looking out into it. The intertitles then take the form of narrator as the film cuts to a restropective scene shot in a sepia-like red of Sjostrom as a young man aboard a ship to begin the storyline. Tytti Soila writes, "The film also established the term 'literary cinema' in Sweden." When reviewed in the United States, the film was seen as "forcefull despite its occaisional indulgence in too much sentimentality and moralizing." Bengt Forslund writing about the film notes, "the explanation is undoubtedly that the description of Nature plays such a major role. It is really the sea that has the main part, like the mountains in The Outlaw and His Wife and the dust strom in Sjostrom's last major work, The Wind. Appearing in the film with Victor Sjostrom are Bergliot Husberg, Edith Erastoff and August Falck. Molander had written Miller's Dokument (1916), directed by Konrad Tallroth and starring Greta Almroth, before writing for Sjöström. Later, with his film Defiance (Trots, 1952) Molander was to introduce another screenwriter to modern audiences, Vilgot Sjöman (Lek pa regnbagen, Playing on the Rainbow, 1958). The film begins the story of Terje Vigen aboard a ship, the early exterior shots including his climbing the mast. Sjostrom cuts from an extreme longshot to a full shot of Terje Vigen sitting on the mast. His wife in the film is portrayed by Swedish silent film actress Bergliot Husberg the interior shots in which she is shown with are for the main part non-titned. Sjostrom is seen in the foreground of a midshot during a tinted exterior shot and then, during the shot, runs from the camera to the background of the shot, the camera then returning to an exterior midshot of the husband and wife. To reinforce his use of the Scandinavian landscape and the foreground of the shot as a source of compositional depth, the interior scenes are again, contrastingly, non-tinted intercut with shots of Terje Vigen silhouetted in the froeground of the shot in front of the expanse of the night sea, the film tinted blue. During the film, the movement within the composition of the frame is often that of the sea. Act Two beins with Terje Vigen having eluded his pursuers. He is show in the foreground of the shot in his skiff rowing against the background of the sea, spotted in a vignette circled masked shot of his pursuers telescope. Crosses at a graveyard are silhouetted against the ocean's horizon to end Act Two. Act Three begins with the same scene that was used to being the film, Sjostrom as elderly looking toward the ocean at night. He leaves his cottage to kneel on the beach, the waves crashing against the rock. Sjostrom espies a sinking craft admist the pounding surf and boards his skiff to aid in their rescue, the ship tossing in the spray of the ocean. In a later shot, Sjostrom leaves his cottage as Edith Erastoff sails away, the film ending with a shot of the crosses at the graveyard near the ocean.
Writing about Victor Sjöström and quoted by Charlotte de Silva for the Embassy of Sweden in London, Jon Wengström of the Swedish Film Institute writes, "The pictorial compositions in Havsgamar/Sea Vultures (1916) and the complex narrative structure in the recently rediscovered Dodskyssen/Kiss of Death (1916) show a director in full command of the medium." In addition to The Kiss of Death (Dodskyssen,four reels), in which Sjöström playing a double role and which not only uses retrospective narrative but also includes the use of double exposures

1916 Sjöström directed the films Ships that Meet (Skepp som Motas) with Lili Bech and August Warberg, Therese, a melodrama which had included intercutting and retrospective narrative starring Lars Hanson and She Was Victorious (Hon segrade) , in which he starred with Lili Bech and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson.

Mauritz Stiller directed His Wedding Night (Hans brollopsnatt), The Mine Pilot.
Appearing on the screen as as an actor as well, Edmond Hansen at Svenska Biografteatern during 1916 wrote and directed the films The Consequences of Jealousy (Svartsjukans foljder) with Eric Petschler, Stina Berg and Ellis Elis and Old Age and Folly (Alderdom och darskap) with Edith Erastoff and Greta Almroth. He that year directed Love's Wanderings (Karlekens irrfarder), photographed by Carl Florin and starring Nicolay Johannsen and Greta Pfeil as well as Pa detta numera vanliga satt, starring Greta Almroth and Jenny Tschenichin Larsson.

during1916 Geoge af Klercker wrote and directed the film Calle's New Clothes (Calles nya klader), starring Mary Johnson and Tekla Sjoblom, and Calle as a Millionaire(Calle som miljonar), the first film in which actress Helge Kihlberg was to appear. ------------During 1916, Klerker was allowed to film more professionally in a larger studio, on Otterhallan and in Castles, one being at Borshuset. The running time of the films of George af Klercker that year went from those of a half hour duration, to those lasting an hour. One Swedish webpage can be quoted when looking for the use of landscape in Swedish films and the filming of a direct relationship betwee the motifs in nature and those that develope character, "Like Stiller and Sjöström is af Klerker sparse with the custom of closes-up. that he on your height uses that dramatic effective emphasis in an enviornment that total to be dominated of the entire picture format.

----------- In 1916 F. Magnussen directed Victor Sjostrom, Lili Bech and Lars Hanson in the film The Gold Spider (Guldspindeln), photographed by Hugo Edlund for Svenska Biografteatern.
Captain Grogg's Wonderful Journey (Kapten Grogg's underbara resa) in 1916 introduced to Swedish audiences a series of films showcasing the animation of director Victor Bergdahl that would continue untill 1922. One of two films directed by Bergdahl that would use animation to narrate circus stories, Cirkus Fjollinski, also appeared that year.
As part of its Women and the Silent Screen series held June 11-13, 2008, the Cinematecket in Stockholm will be screening a the 1916 Danish film The Queen of the Stock Exchange (Die Borsenkonigin), written and directed by Edmund Edel. The film is from the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Paired with the film will be the trailer to the lost film The Sunken (Die Gesunkenen, Rudolf Walther-Fein, 1925) also starring Asta Nielsen, a film in which she costarred with the actress Olga Tschechova.

In the United States, Lillian Gish during 1916 appeared in the films Sold for Marriage, Flirting with Fate and Pathways of Life. Mary Pickford that year made three films five reels in legnth, The Eternal Grind, The Foundling and Hulda from Holland. That year she also starred in Poor Little Peppina (Sidney Olcott, seven reels) and Less Than Dust (John Emerson, seven reels). silent film actress Corrine Griffith, "The Orchid Lay of the Screen", appeared in the film The Last Man in 1916.
Triangle Film Corporation had been formed in late 1915 to combine the efforts of Thomas Ince, D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett. Sennett, who began at Biograph as an actor under Griffith had founded Keystone Studios in 1912. Not only was Sennett present at Biograph and Triangle with Griffith, but as a pioneer of silent film his name is alongside Griffith's in his contribution to the development of film technique and the development of a grammar of film, a grammar of scene construction. It may well be that the comedies of Mack Sennett have their origin in, or are a continuation of, the earliest of narrative films that prior to 1907, and prior to Griffith's joining Biograph, had brought together a cinema of attractions with films that depicted action, or the chase film. Just as Swedish silent film directors would use nature and landscape as a visual language, comedy would rely upon the visual in its use of the sight-gag. Among the comedies of 1912 were Love, Speed and Thrills directed by silent film director Mack Sennett and Love, Loot and Crash, also directed by the silent film pioneer Sennett, both films currently in public domain and both presently offered online by the Internet Archive, who were kind enough to write to the present writer and who it is sincerely hoped that in the future they will return again as my reader.
Silent comedian Charlie Chaplin would in 1916 leave Essanay studios, where he had made fourteen films, to film two-reel comedies with the Mutual Company, where he filmed The Immigrant (1917).

Writing in 1971 that the films of Swedish silent cinema were those to which "the prescence of mountain and pastoral landscapes gave a dimension of authenticity and elemental persuasiveness", Peter Cowie remarks upon Sjöström's use of bucolic subjects, David Robinson upon Sjöström's depiction of man's relationship to nature. Both find something spiritual or supernatural to the writings of Selma Lagerlöf, as though within the relation to the character's surroundings there is a solitude. Lauritzen noted that there is often the "juxtaposition of man and nature" in early Swedish cinema. Although remarking upon the films of Brunius, Stiller and Sjöström not having had been distributed to large audiences, as were the films of Ernst Lubitsch (Passion) that had starred Pola Negri, author Lewis Jacobs writes, "Opposed to the artificiality of the German films in their stress on the real world of nature, the sea and the landscape, Swedish pictures were impressive for their simplicity, realism, sensitive acting and sincerity." Starring the actress Karin Molander, when reviewed in the United States, the film was commended for its "unity of plot structure" and for "all its dramatic elements (being) dramatically related, its development (being) climactic and consitent.". Also in the film are Greta Almroth, Concordia Selander and Hilda Castegren in her first appearance on screen. The novel was in fact filmed again in 1947 by Gustaf Edgren and in 1958 by Gustav Ucicky with Maria Emo. Peter Cowie has put the films of Finnish director Ruani Mollberg (Earth is a Sinful Song, Maa on syntinen laula, 1973) alongside the films of Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, his writing, "His characters move not against the backdrop of field and lake and forest, but deep within the enveloping topography."
Charles Magnusson in 1909 had hoped to film the novel The Wonderful Journey of Nils Holgersson, which Victor Sjöström had read with enthusiasm.

Frances Marion that year also wrote the photoplay to the film Temple of Dusk (James Young, five reels), her following it in 1919 with the scenarios to A Regular Girl (James Young, five reels), The World and its Woman (Frank Lloyd, seven reels) and The Cinema Murder (George Baker, five reels). Lillian Gish in 1917 had starred in the films The House Built Upon Sand (Ed Morrisey, five reels) with Kate Bruce and Souls Triumphant (John G. O'Brien, five reels) with Wilfred Lucas.
----------- George af Klercker directed and starred with Gerda Thome-Mattsson and Tollie Zellmann in For hem och hard, Swedish director Georg af Klercker. ---------- Konrad Tollroth in 1917 directed and starred with Lili Bech in The Bird of Paradise (Paradisfageln), directed and starred with Lisa Hakansson-Taube in Sig egen slav and directed and starred with Greta Almroth in Allt hamnar sig. That year he also directed Edith Erastoff in the film Chanson triste and Greta Almroth and Jenny Tschemichin-Larsson in the film Miljonarvet, and Karin Molander in the film Vem skot?. Egil Eide both directed and starred with Edith Erastoff in the films Every Man Forges his own Happiness (Envar sin egen lyckas smed) and Mrs. Bonnet's Slip (Fru Bonnets felsteg), which also starred Karin Molander. F. Magnussen that year wrote and directed the films Jungeldrottingens smyke, photographed by Henrik Jaenzon and starring William Larsson, Den levande mumien, photographed by Hugo Edlund and starring William Larsson and The Secret of the Inn (Vardshusets hemlighet), starring Edith Erastoff.
1917 was to mark the first publication written by the Swedish author Swedish author Agnes von Krusenstjerna, the volume Nina's Dagbook.

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