FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

34 Transition and Transformation
However, the perspective on this difference in production culture changes if
the scope is widened from the individual director’s biography to the more general
history of circulation within and between production companies. Here, the
general Hollywood practice also includes, for example, the useful concept of
recycling, which turned out to be most rewarding in the case of Sjöström. In
1922, Goldwyn Pictures produced The Christian, with a script by Paul Bern
based on a novel by Hall Caine from 1897, with Mae Bush playing the female
lead. A European, Maurice Tourneur, directed the film with Charles van Enger
as cameraman. As this film became a box office success, the company decided
that the concept was worth renewing. Between May and August 1923, Goldwyn
Pictures shot Name the Man from the Hall Caine novel The Master of Man: The
Story of a Sin, first published in 1922, still with Paul Bern as scriptwriter and
Charles van Enger as cameraman. Only the director (Maurice Tourneur) was
replaced by another European: Victor Sjöström, who didn’t want Mae Busch as
the female lead. However, the company had already made its decision on this
point and Sjöström had to give in. Not only the lead, but also Aileen Pringle, in
a minor part, reappeared in the cast. That this kind of recycled concept could be
useful in several respects is suggested by Paul Bern’s script for Sjöström’s film,
at this point still called “The Master of Man”, where the first scene starts with
the following description: “Here insert two or three atmospheric shots – cutouts
from The Christian.” 24 This film had been shot on location on the Isle of Man,
and the insertion of cutouts was thus supposed to set the mise-en-scène for the
Sjöström film, which takes place on the same spot. (FIG. 1)
Name the Man, which is only partly preserved, tells the story of Victor, a
young lawyer who quarrels with his girlfriend Fenella and has a brief affair
with a peasant girl Bessie, who becomes pregnant and kills the baby. Victor is
appointed judge and is reconciled with Fenella. His first case is to try Bessie for
child-murder. Fenella guesses the truth, but Bessie refuses to name the father
and is sentenced to death, whereupon existing copies end. In the last part of the
film, Victor was shown first helping Bessie to escape, then to confess his own
guilt, be thrown into prison and thus wins back Fenella’s love.
The parallel to The Sons of Ingmar is obvious (as Forslund has also noted)
with the theme of a young woman secretly giving birth to a child only to kill it,
and the father then being ridden by guilt and remorse. It is also interesting in
this context to recall August Brunius’ earlier mentioned parallel from 1919 –
before this particular novel was even published – between The Sons of Ingmar
and the work of Hall Caine. Another parallel to Sjöström’s Swedish years has
been drawn in film history accounts concerning his portrayal of nature, as
Name the Man “contained several landscape shots that recalled his earlier feeling
for natural environments”. 25