FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

From Scientist to Clown – He Who Gets Slapped 59
that came to mind when picking an actor to play a child in one of his films. 47
(FIG. 8) He Who Gets Slapped also features a picture composition in which the
Forsberg influence clearly shines through. Thus, both literary and pictorial frameworks
may serve as historical and intertextual references to Sjöström’s work.
Fig. 8: Nils Forsberg: Acrobat Family before the Circus Director – a source of
pictorial inspiration.
As already discussed, the general metaphor of the circus as a privileged arena
for life itself as well as for outsidership in society is suggested in He Who Gets
Slapped by Sjöström’s additional intertitles as well as by the presence of the
symbolic clown and the dissolves from globe to circus ring. But it also becomes
obvious, not least in comparison to The Devil’s Circus, where an actual circus
is represented, but the title must be read as symbolic, as an image of earth itself,
with its inhabitants performing strange acts in what may appear as precisely a
devil’s circus. 48 Thus, it would seem just as relevant to interpret He Who Gets
Slapped in relation to these more fundamental questions – questions of love, of
how to lead one’s life – though probably at the same time not unrelated to the
director’s own life and his change from Sjöström to Seastrom.
It is also quite obvious that these films, just as I have shown to be the case in
connection with Name the Man, were attempts to recreate a number of other
films within a framework that had already proven to generate both commercial
and critical success, as seen in Christensen’s The Devil’s Circus, where Norma