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Introduction – From Sjöström to Seastrom
Victor Sjöström (1879-1960), or Victor Seastrom as he was known during his
Hollywood career, is undoubtedly the most renowned Swedish director from
the period of silent cinema. In the present digital era, however, a long time has
passed since these early years of moving pictures, and his contribution to film
history might at least seem distant, if at all important. However, numerous retrospectives
during the first decade of the twenty-first century (e.g. in Stockholm,
Helsinki, New York, Montreal, Toronto, Munich, London, Lisbon, Madrid,
Barcelona, São Paulo) and some important restoration projects, as well as
the sensational rediscoveries of hitherto lost material, all testify to the significance
of Sjöström’s films. 1
This study attempts to explore the films directed during Victor Sjöström’s
Hollywood years from 1923 to 1930. My research endeavours to analyze the
director’s transition from European to American film culture. Central to this
analysis is the question of film style and its transformations, from Sjöström’s
earlier films directed in Sweden – in particular, those from the years 1917 to
1923, often labelled as the “golden age” of Swedish cinema – to the American
ones. 2 Equally important, however, are questions of framing: the complex interplay
between texts and contexts within a new production culture.
My general definition of “film culture” draws inspiration from Richard Maltby
and his “New Cinema Histories”, considering cinema “a site of social and
cultural exchange”, though my focus on the films rather places this work within
the paradigm of Jean Mitry’s classic proposal from 1973 for a film histoire totale,
which Maltby also refers to: “simultaneously a history of its industry, its technologies,
its systems of expression (or, more precisely, its systems of signification),
and aesthetic structures, all bound together by the forces of the economic,
psychosocial and cultural order”, as well as to Michèle Lagny’s definition of
film history “as part of a larger ensemble, the socio-cultural history”. 3
There is, however, a methodological problem implicit in the assumption of
the European (or more specifically, Swedish) film culture as clearly distinguishable
from Hollywood film culture. Kristin Thompson, though, argues that “in
rare cases [during World War I], a country’s filmmaking might exist in near isolation,
creating the possibility for a distinctive national cinema to arise”, where
she mentions the Swedish example in the first place. 4 In my earlier research on
the Swedish “national style” during the golden age, however, I discuss the problematic
concept of national cinema. Here, I rather analyze the “national” as a