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A European in Hollywood – Name the Man
and the Shift of Production Systems
When Victor Sjöström arrived in Hollywood in 1923, it was, as already mentioned,
part of a strategy carefully worked out by Samuel Goldwyn and his
fellow producers, to import a number of influential European directors and actors.
As the director of a number of films in Sweden which were generally considered
as being among the most acclaimed critical and public successes in
world cinema, Sjöström was certainly a hot name, well worth acquiring for Hollywood
producers. But he and his colleagues would also, had they remained in
Europe, become a possible threat to the American hegemony of the market to
which Hollywood at this time clearly aspired.
If the previous chapter dealt with how Swedish national cinema might be
considered early on also as international, both from a national and an international
viewpoint, this chapter will rather deal with the question of American
films by European directors – and Sjöström in particular. Their ambiguous status
between two production cultures will be discussed in relation to the variations
between different practices, and the possible degree of independence that
a director like Sjöström might have enjoyed, but also in more detail concerning
the stylistic variations taking place in connection with his first Hollywood film
Name the Man.
By the time that he left for Hollywood, Sjöström was by far the most renowned
director in his home country. He had a unique relationship with Nobel
Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, who had shown the utmost confidence in Sjöström’s
way of bringing her novels to the screen – a confidence which he, however,
had to earn the hard way. As several scholars have shown, Lagerlöf was at
first extremely sceptical towards the film medium and its potential, and she also
had difficulties in cooperating, e.g. with Mauritz Stiller. 1 Sjöström had worked
with novelist Hjalmar Bergman, whom he brought to Hollywood in 1924; after
an unsuccessful attempt to write another script for Sjöström, Bergman however
went back to Sweden. Sjöström had acted in seven films directed by his colleague
Mauritz Stiller, and they had developed a close friendship over the years.
Stiller also left Sweden for Hollywood in 1925 together with Greta Garbo and
Lars Hanson, who both acted in Hollywood films by Sjöström.
It seems clear that Victor Sjöström has often been interpreted only as part of
this European – and not least Scandinavian – colony that was imported to Hollywood
in the 1920s. These Scandinavians – or Europeans – have generally been
regarded as a unity, in spite of the fact that they had very different experiences
within the new production culture. An additional perspective on the differences
between European and American film cultures, which also adds to the differen-