FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

62 Transition and Transformation
cultures, as well as of the stylistic mode which remains one of his particular
characteristics: a truly transformational mode.
But even though Sjöström, as I hope to have shown, remained free within the
American mode of production to make the kind of film that he might have
wanted to, and actually did make several important changes in relation to the
original play, he still remained faithful in spirit to Leonid Andreyev, the Symbolist
poet, and seems to have tried to include his symbolism in the film, be it in a
way adapted to the cinematographic style. In spite of the fact that Sjöström’s
inserted philosophical intertitles were mostly additions to Andreyev, framing
his own cinematographic reinterpretation of the play, they still remain faithful
to the spirit of the play, “a symbolist exploration of the dispossession of the
righteous in a world of false values”. 58 Sjöström as a film director, however,
would be better equipped to express this than Andreyev, as he stated in an
interview in 1924: “Many of the things we know are learned through imagery
and symbolism. The screen is the best medium to get these things to the audiences
of the world.” 59 In spite of these convictions on the superiority of the
screen, however, Sjöström mostly chose to remain true to his original sources.
In his next film, Confessions of a Queen, based on Alphonse Daudet’s realist
novel, the differences in approach would become all the more apparent.