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Introduction – From Sjöström to Seastrom 11
ignored in this connection either, as both in contemporary criticism and within
film history, even the Hollywood films have generally been considered as Sjöström’s
works.
Before turning to the more general question on Sjöström’s shift from Sweden
to Hollywood, however, a few words ought to be said on the source material
available. This study, in spanning over (at least) two film cultures, including
different languages, also contains a not inconsiderable linguistic issue, to which
there will be reason to return on a more general level. As far as the matter of
translation of Swedish scripts or secondary sources is concerned, if no published
translation is available, they have been translated by the author. Secondary
sources, though, are strikingly rare, except for some biographical records.
Bengt Forslund in his dissertation on Victor Sjöström has provided the most
thorough and insightful general overview of his life and work to date, including
important facts and observations concerning the films from the Hollywood
years. 9 It is inevitable that my book to a certain extent overlaps with his research.
However, as his book was published in 1980, it does not include the
latest rediscoveries of film material. My aim with this study also differs from
Forslund’s, firstly in being more limited in its purpose: I deal only with the
director’s Hollywood years, with his work in Sweden used as comparative
background, and secondly by having another focus: the intersection between
production culture and style, which I want to analyze in more detail. A number
of articles, some recent, have dealt with one or another of Sjöström’s American
films within different contexts. 10 Only a few studies adopt a wider perspective,
most notably Graham Petrie’s solid book Hollywood Destinies. 11 These will all be
discussed further in relevant contexts.
Except for the films preserved as a whole or in part, there are generally two
other kinds of primary sources. Firstly, there is rich and varied published material,
mostly from the press: reviews, reports, debates. The status of such source
material within film studies is somewhat ambiguous: sometimes, it is considered
to be of limited value because of the standardization and dominating templates
of film criticism, which not always allow for differentiation in a given
historical situation or within a corpus of films. These objections may be valid if
the material is used for the purpose of film analysis. In contextualising or framing
the films, however, with emphasis on their surrounding discourses both on
the films themselves and the production systems, the objections lose their relevance
and the templates instead become important clues in the description of
how different ways of looking at cinema are confronted during the actual period.
12 The example of Sjöström particularly underlines the importance of the
press as a cultural institution, active in the ongoing process of interpreting individual
films as well as the cinema institution itself. Thus, the press contributes
to the regulation of cinema, both of production in the past and of our historical