Although Victor Sjostrom (1879-1960) with his command of the English language and his sunnier nature would fare better than most of his fellow emigre directors in America, the cruel fact was that he never properly achieved Hollywood's high hopes. Sjostrom went so far as to change his surname to Seastrom, so that Americans might be ransomed from the rotundities of Swedish pronunciation , and more impressively would complete a whopping nine features in his six-year stay in Hollywood, among them a standout Garbo vehicle, The Divine Woman (1928) . From this point of view, he proved much more successful than his contemporary Mauritz Stiller who famously discovered lady Garbo yet worked on five underwhelming and forgettable films, three of which were taken out of his hands and completed by journeyman directors.
Consequently, few of the American films of either director have actually survived. But 1924's He Who Gets Slapped is an astonishing achievement, in which Sjostorm not only masters the more sophisticated technical apparatus available to him in Hollywood but brings to this story of humiliation and avenging - a blistering irony that is absent from his Swedish pictures.
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| It's me, I'm Lilly I've Come Home Let Me In Your Window (Gish,The Wind,1928) |
Two films that star actress Lillian Gish would assure the success of Sjostorm's career in Hollywood. The Scarlet Letter (1926) was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, a stern tale of New England Puritan intolerance.
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| Slap Me With Your Rhythm Stick ( He Who Gets Slapped,1924) Featured above - one of he many faces of Lon Chaney |
1928's The Wind would mark the respective peak of Sjostrom's and Gish's careers. Although the film was inspired by a book written by Dorothy Scarborough, set in a desolate stretch of Texas; the film exemplifies a particular theme of Sjostrom's - the man that drifts ultimately at the mercy of his environment and the elements. As Letty, the naive young woman is forced to murder an mysterious assailant during a hellacious storm, Gish delivers a chilling portrayal of raw-nerved hysteria harking back to her calling card in Broken Blossoms (1919). Few sequences in silent cinema are so compelling as the climax of The Wind, with the gale whipping the sand inexorably away from the shallow grave where Letty has buried her victim.
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| Divine Woman |
In April of 1930, Sjostrom returned home to roost in Sweden, where he would make the occasional feature film, but would turn increasingly to his greater passion - acting, becoming a father-figure to many a Swedish director. Among them was fellow countryman Ingmar Bergman who had paid homage to the maestro by starring him in both Till Gladje (1950) and the acclaimed 1957 feature and perhaps Bergman's finest hour, Wild Strawberries.