FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

Sjöström – From National to International
To fully understand Sjöström’s position as one of the leading Swedish film directors
at the time when he was moving to Hollywood it is necessary to first
take a closer look at his Swedish background, both as actor and director. 1 After
this general background, the change in Swedish production strategies during
his early years as director will be shortly discussed, which leads on to a more
specific description of the particular film style that has been identified with
“Sjöström” as an early Swedish auteur. The public debate concerning film cultures,
on the specific issue of national versus international, that took place in
Sweden as well as in the rest of Europe and in America during the 1910s and
1920s will also be dealt with, as well as the American reception of Sjöström’s
films from the Swedish years.
Sjöström was born in 1879 to a mother with a background as actress and a
father who was a businessman with varying success. He spent part of his childhood
in the United States, but returned by himself to Sweden after the death of
his mother to attend an Uppsala secondary school in 1893. After the death of his
father in 1896, and with the help of his maternal uncle, Victor Hartman, a prominent
actor who provided him with a letter of recommendation, Sjöström
started his acting career. For 15 years, he worked mostly with a number of touring
theatre companies in Sweden and Finland, where he performed in classics
by Shakespeare or Strindberg, but he made his most prominent appearances in
popular comedies, where he won acclaim both for his good looks and his natural
way of acting. By 1911, he was managing the Einar Fröberg repertory company.
In 1912, however, the picture would change. Sjöström received a phone call
from an old classmate who had become a journalist and thus come to know
people from the film industry. Sjöström later recalled:
He asked me straight out, “How would you like to be a film director?”“Yeah – sure”,
I stammered, secretly ecstatic but trying to control myself and pretending not to be
particularly enticed by that kind of hocus-pocus. But apparently his idea was well
received, because Charles Magnusson, president of A. B. Svenska Biografteatern
[Svenska Bio for short – the forerunner of AB Svensk Filmindustri] told me to meet
him at a hotel early the next morning. And before long the whole thing was in the
bag. 2
Svenska Bio had just moved from the town of Kristianstad to a brand new studio
in Lidingö. Cameraman Julius Jaenzon, whose name would later be closely
associated with Sjöström, had been working for Svenska Bio ever since 1910.
His brother Henrik, who would also shoot for Sjöström, was there as well.