FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

18 Transition and Transformation
Georg af Klercker and Mauritz Stiller – both former actors – joined Sjöström as
new directors.
After a first summer at Svenska Bio, where he directed five films, Sjöström
went back to the theatre – to what was now called the Fröberg-Sjöström company
– but only to return once again to Svenska Bio in 1913, now with a permanent
position as director.
Sjöström directed no fewer than thirty films – of which only four have been
preserved – before Terje Vigen (A Man There Was), the 1917 work based on
an Ibsen poem that is often considered his breakthrough. From 1917 to 1923, he
made twelve, all but one of which have been preserved. Of his nine Hollywood
films from 1923-1930, seven have survived (although two are only fragmentary).
After returning to Europe for the last time, he made just one film in Sweden
(Markurells i Wadköping, 1931) and one in Britain (Under the Red
Robe, 1937), both of which have been preserved, but he also returned to the
theatre and to acting from 1930–1957 (not least in his memorable role in Ingmar
Bergman’s Smultronstället [Wild Strawberries], 1957). Sjöström also
worked as artistic director for Svensk Filmindustri from 1943 to 1949. He died
in Stockholm in 1960.
Sjöström’s career as film director in Sweden before he went to Hollywood is
usually divided into two parts: before and after A Man There Was (1917). That
film earned him a critical breakthrough in Sweden and marked a shift in Svenska
Bio’s production strategy from a large amount of films per year to fewer
productions, exclusively based on prestigious literary sources. 3 Film historians
have often regarded these early films as a historical parenthesis, or as exercises
preceding Sjöström’s “real” career. This not least as his directing debut, Trädgårdsmästaren
eller världens grymhet (The Gardener or The Cruelty
of the World) was banned by the Swedish censors. In this view, Ingeborg
Holm from 1913 has thus traditionally been considered an exception, anticipating
the development to come, a view to some extent based by the simple fact
that much of the early material is lost. The rediscovery of Dödskyssen (The Kiss
of Death) from 1916, however, calls for a nuancing of this; in its complex stylistic
effects, this film stands much closer to Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)
1921, his internationally most famous and stylistically most elaborated
film, than to A Man There Was. Thus, it would be misleading to discuss Sjöström’s
development as director primarily from an evolutionary perspective,
where he gradually masters more difficult technological or stylistic devices. The
change in 1917 had less to do with Sjöström’s general working methods and his
insights in cinematographic technology or devices of style, than with a general
change of Swedish production policies. The vision for the future was grand.
This tendency towards developing a national style in Sweden had gradually
grown stronger. The “Swedish style” was characterized in particular by its ways