FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

Acknowledgements
This book traces its history back to my dissertation defence in March 1997,
where Lars Gustaf Andersson suggested that I should continue my work on
Sjöström. I am much indebted to him for this, as well as for later readings of
both project proposals and text versions. Without his inspiration, this project
would never have been completed.
When starting to work on Sjöström in Hollywood, I turned to two essays in
Swedish on The Scarlet Letter and He Who Gets Slapped that were published
in the legendary journal Chaplin, both written by my first film history
teacher, Örjan Roth-Lindberg, who also showed me He Who Gets Slapped for
the first time back in the 1980s. As I have worked on Sjöström, these essays, it
seems to me, have increased in richness in their condensed approach to the
issues that I have here attempted to explore in more detail. I am most grateful
to Örjan for his inspiration and his innovative approaches to film analysis.
I am also much indebted to my former supervisor Jan Olsson for his most
insightful remarks and his general encouragement when I first started to formulate
my new research project on Sjöström in Hollywood, and when we met in
Los Angeles.
In Los Angeles, I got invaluable help from Ned Comstock at the Cinematic
Arts Library at University of Southern California, for which I am extremely
grateful.
In Stockholm, I also owe deep gratitude to Jon Wengström of the Swedish
Film Archives for a continuous exchange and updates on new discoveries, and
for providing working copies of important research material. I am also grateful
to Mats Skärstrand and Ola Törjas from the library of the Swedish Film Institute,
but not least also to Ludvig Hertzberg, who worked at the library in the
beginning of the project and provided me with invaluable material. I am also
most grateful to Jan Holmberg, who at the time worked for the Swedish Film
Institute as director for the Cinematheque, and invited me to present Victor
Sjöström as director in a bilingual volume for an international audience – also
an important encouragement for this project.
My greatest thanks go to a couple of other colleagues. Anu Koivunen provided
a thorough reading and most stimulating suggestions concerning the
chapter on The Wind. Patrick Vonderau has been of invaluable help by providing
me with his critical remarks but also by inviting me to engage in a most