FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

130 Transition and Transformation
end of the film, the last image is again that of Buck’s shadow, remaining for a
short moment on screen as he has left the ranch; as if he was hesitant to leave.
A last example of silent devices surviving is offered in the scene where Lena,
after having sewed “against time with desperate speed” to get pads over the
arm rests on Tony’s crutches before she intends to leave, “carefully places the
crutches back where they were outside of the window. One of them falls with a
clatter to the porch floor. She stands still listening.” 27 This was filmed almost
exactly as stated in the script; however, as the crutches fall (both of them actually
fall in the film) and we hear the sound, there is also, simultaneously, a cut-in
to a completely new angle, focusing on the falling crutches. This kind of cut-in
on “sound” is indeed, as has already been discussed in relation to The Wind,
familiar from Sjöström’s films in the silent era – not least from his Swedish period,
like in the previously mentioned example from The Girl from the Marsh
Croft, where he cuts in on a cup of coffee hitting the ground, splashing and
breaking –where he repeatedly made this kind of cut-in to suggest sound effects
before it was actually possible. 28 Likewise it was used during the American
years in He Who Gets Slapped as the “sound” of the audience’s applauses,
which is suggested by a cut-in, drowns the desperate attempts from the Baron
and the Count to attract attention in their desperate struggle against the lion.
Last but not least, it is worth noting that the dissolves – which, as we have
seen, may be regarded as Sjöström’s stylistic device par excellence both in Sweden
and in Hollywood – still remain in the new context of sound, but now they
no longer serve the complex narrative purposes that they used to during the
silent era. Here, they function simply as markers of lapses in space or time, as
in the scene when Lena washes Tony, who sits upright in his bed and complains,
and two dissolves during her work mark the seemingly never-ending
duty.
Already in Confessions of a Queen, however, according to the continuity
script as well as to remaining parts of the film, Sjöström seems to have limited
himself to this more conventional use of dissolves. Thus, it is not possible to
make any clear-cut distinction between his use of dissolves in silent versus
sound cinema. Still, in this case, the absence of more elaborated dissolves,
which had become something of the director’s hallmark, with their symbolic or
metaphoric dimensions, may suggest that something actually did change in his
use of stylistic devices with the transfer to sound. Possibly, the new technology
as such presented a challenge to the production, which may have limited the
visual innovativeness of its director. More importantly, though, sound also
added new stylistic possibilities, like the different uses of off-screen dialogue,
which must have appeared as more relevant to explore. The symbols or metaphors
expressed in his earlier dissolves are indeed among the most refined examples
of silent film style.