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76 Transition and Transformation
critics at the time. Their particular emphasis on continuity, as far as The Scarlet
Letter was concerned, may paradoxically be due to the fact that this was
actually the first time that Sjöström made a film based on a novel by an American
author – but the insistence of the critics in this case is particularly noteworthy
as the film that he had made immediately before was The Tower of
Lies, which was based on a Lagerlöf novel. Sven Stolpe in the earlier cited article
even dared to call the film “Swedish”, whereas the magazine Filmjournalen
proclaimed that “Sjöström has rediscovered himself, his old Swedish identity.
[...] The fact that the film strikes us as more Swedish than American recommends
it all the more. It is Swedish in the sense that characterized our films
during their glory days – its literary and artistic eminence is worthy of a master.”
27 Picture Play also wrote that “Victor Seastrom’s direction is that of a master,
and the Scandinavian sympathy with the traditions of our rock-bound New
England is strongly manifested in every scene.” 28
If contemporary critics on both sides of the Atlantic thus agreed on the Swedish
or Scandinavian feeling conveyed by the film, this has become a commonplace
in later film historical accounts. It is striking to what extent not only the
reception in the contemporary press, but also the reception of researchers
throughout the decades, appears as uncritically uniform in the assumptions
made. Several Swedish historians emphasize the thematic and stylistic continuity
with the director’s earlier Swedish works. 29 In his book on the age of the
silent feature picture, Richard Koszarski writes:
Choosing a Swedish director, Victor Seastrom, and a Swedish co-star, Lars Hanson,
Gish succeeded in giving the picture the aura of the early Swedish cinema classics.
Time and place became powerful characters, compensating for the necessarily delicate
handling of the adultery theme. 30
In this connection, Gish’s statement about the Swedes being “closer to the feelings
of New England Puritans”, quoted in the beginning of this chapter, might
again be recalled. Her initial wish to make the film, and to make it with Sjöström
as director, was grounded precisely in this vision, of a specific relationship
between the idea of “Swedishness” and the central themes of the story.
Also, according to Graham Petrie, “the film has the ‘Lagerlöf’ elements of
adultery, illegitimacy, the pressures of an intolerant public opinion, guilt, punishment,
atonement and repentance”, and he continues that: “Besides its ‘Swedish’
themes, the film allows for more interplay between human beings and their
natural environment, again along the lines of the Lagerlöf adaptations, than had
been the case in Sjöström’s American work so far.” 31
Thus, continuity may be traced on a general, thematic level as well as stylistically,
in the handling of light or landscape, and down to the smallest details,
such as the use of one specific device, the dissolve, which perhaps more than