FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

136 Transition and Transformation
the rules of the game. 7 It seems equally evident that by the time of the transition
to sound – in Sjöström’s case somewhere between the release of The Wind in
November 1928 and the making of A Lady to Love a year later – the demands
of the industry were hardening, as earlier concepts of success were no longer of
use. In times of transition, where the commercial potential was no longer as
easy to predict, the possibilities for a Gish or a Sjöström to navigate more freely
within the system seem to have become more limited.
When Goldwyn first brought over Sjöström and other Europeans, the critics
were, as we have seen, quite ambivalent. While complaining about the “invasion
of the Norsemen”, they also expressed admiration for the special Scandinavian
or European film tradition. Judging by the reaction of the critics, Sjöström
grew to be accepted during his years in America. 8 Although he was regarded as
alien and exotic at the beginning, his last works seem to have turned him into
just another Hollywood director. The rediscovery of A Lady to Love has shown
that he was just as able as any contemporary director in the studio system to
handle the transition to sound. However, his contract with the studio at the
time he returned to Sweden included three additional films, but the parties apparently
reached a tacit agreement not to pursue the matter any further. It is
hard to avoid the paradoxical conclusion that Sjöström’s assimilation into Hollywood
culture robbed him of his appeal, the aura of early Swedish silent film
that had hovered over his first years there.
If the myth of the completely uniform Hollywood system may to a certain
extent be deconstructed, this study has also tried to deconstruct the myth of
Sjöström as the unique auteur defying this system. As Sjöström gradually
grows into his Seastrom identity, this takes place through a complex interplay
between individual and system, as well as between texts and contexts. Because
Hollywood, as we have seen, did not limit Sjöström’s freedom as a director, it
provided him with new possibilities to make use of the cinematographic apparatus
in its Hollywood version, towards which he had at first expressed such
ambivalent feelings. He had, indeed, reached a point of no return; the few directorial
attempts that he later made in Europe have not made it into any canon of
film history. 9 The stylistic changes brought about by Sjöström’s moving to Hollywood
may not have been as definite as film history would have it according to
the paradigm. Still, the story of Sjöström was transformed by his transition to
Seastrom.