FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

A for Adultery – The Scarlet Letter
If He Who Gets Slapped represents to some extent an exception in Sjöström’s
American career (during which he was able to develop his auteur qualities in a
unique way), The Scarlet Letter (1926) also brought forward certain specific
aspects of his auteurism, perhaps most notably his “Swedish” quality as director.
This fifth film in his career as a Hollywood director was based on the classic
mid-nineteenth-century novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was scripted by
Frances Marion. The year before Lillian Gish had been offered a contract by
MGM that gave her the right to choose her own scripts as well as her director
and paid her $800,000 for a maximum of six roles over two years. Gish had
wanted to make The Scarlet Letter for some time. This had, however, not
been possible as the Hays Office had put the film on an unofficial blacklist, in
spite of the novel’s status as a literary classic. But now MGM producer Irving
Thalberg agreed to pursue Gish’s choice for her next film, but only on condition
that she promise to deal with the story properly. Her personal guarantee immediately
led to the lifting of the ban by both women’s committees and church
groups, which had hitherto been strongly opposed to the making of the film.
In her dissertation Feeling Through the Eyes, a study of the films of Mary Pickford
and Frances Marion, Anke Brouwers deals at length with The Scarlet
Letter. She notes that this lift of the ban confirms Gish’s symbolical status as “a
moral woman of impeccable reputation”. 1 Gish had already found the ideal
Dimmesdale in Lars Hanson, whom she had seen and appreciated in his role in
Gösta Berling’s saga (The Story of Gösta Berling, Mauritz Stiller, 1924).
Her choice of Sjöström as director, according to general film history, “seemed
perfectly suited to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of love and retribution. His
sense of landscape emerged even more strongly here.” 2 In Lillian Gish’s own
words, however, the explanation was even simpler:
I wanted to make a film of The Scarlet Letter ... I was asked which director I would like,
and I chose Victor Sjostrom, who had arrived at MGM some years earlier from Sweden.
I felt that the Swedes were closer to the feelings of New England Puritans than
modern Americans. 3
The film was shot in February and March 1926 and became an immediate success
with the public and critics alike. (FIG. 9) The story, which is set in a Puritan
colony in New England in 1645, opens with a sombre establishing title: “Here is
recorded a stark episode in the lives of a stern, unforgiving people, a story of
bigotry uncurbed and its train of sorrow, shame, and tragedy – .”
The young Hester Prynne is branded as a sinner and is put in the stocks for
her innocent games in front of the mirror one Sunday morning. The Reverend
Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the pastors leading the Puritan flock, falls in love