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Scott Lord Silent Film: Helen Holmes in The Wild Engine (1915)


Scott Lord Silent Film: Cliff Hanging Moments from the Silent Serials

Scott Lord Silent Film: Lon Chaney in Victory (Maurice Tourneur, 1919)

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Love Flower (D.W. Griffith, 1920)

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After having starred in the seven reel silent film “The Love Flower”, directed by D.W. Griffith in 1920, actress Carol Dempster went on to star in the 1921 film “Dream Street”, again directed by D.W. Griffith.

Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film:The Conquering Power (Ingram, 1921)

Scott Lord Silent Film: Robin Hood (Dwan, 1922)

Scott Lord Silent Film: Jesus of Nazereth (From The Manger to the Cross,...

Scott Lord Silent Film: La Vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (1903)


Sweden Talks, Waiting in Vain for Greta Garbo

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     Author Jon Wengatrom has noted that as early as October of 1933 director Gustaf Molander and cameraman Julius Jaenzon were among the founding members of the Swedish Film Society (Svenska Filmsamfundet), a body which eventually let to the forming of The Swedish Filminstite (Svensk Filminstitutet), established by Robin Hood, the critic Bengt Idestram-Almquist who wrote for Stockholms Tidningen. Other members included Vilhelm Bryde, Arne Bornesbusch, Eyvind Johnson and later Einar Luritzen.    
      In 1929, Edvin Adolphson directed his first film, it having been the first film made in Sweden to include sound, "The Dream Waltz" ("Sag debt I toner") co-directed by Julius Jaenzon and starring Jenny Hasselquist and Eric Malberg.  per Olov Quistad and Peter Von Bagh specify the place of the film in chronological history, "It had no talking parts, just a soundtrack with music and sound effects on disc, but it's immediate success convinced the direction board to continue."
Aside from the beginning of a discourse of modernity that would express Sweden as a new thriving culture while sharply contrasting the landscape film of the golden age of silent film and its affair with exterior action shots with the new dialogue shot reverse shot interior, it is a dramatic comparison between the limited number of sound films produced in Scandinavia with the more expensive photographic equipment and the startling number of early sound films that have been lost, of which no copies have been preserved. The Swedish Film Institute reports that 56 sound films made in the first decades of sound in Sweden are considered lost and have not survived on celluloid. One can begin with one of the earliest Swedish sound features, "Doctor's Secret" ("Doctorons hemlighet"), of which there are no surviving copies. Directed by John W. brunius, it is among one of the three screenplays written that year by Pelle Stille. The film ran a little over an hour and starred actresses Pauline Brunius, Marta Ekstrom, Anne-Marie Brunius and Ragna Broo-Juter. The film "Hjartats roast" also written by Pelle Stille in 1930 is also lost, with no present archived prints. it was directed by Rune Carlsten and starred Margit Manstad.
American Cinematographer in 1931 described the Svensk Filmindustri studio at Rasunda in the article "A Cinematographer in Sweden", two of their journalist having visited, "They still use the old style glass stages and, unlike most of our producers, instead of spending a Greta deal of money for sound proofing them, they have merely surrounded their sets with heavy monk's cloth drapes, which deaden the unwanted reverberation quite satisfactorily."
Julius Jaenzon, the legendary cinematographer of Victor Sjostrom went ahead to direct in 1930, also photographing the film "Ulla My Ulla" ("Ulla My Ulla") during 1930, the assistant director of the film having been Per Axel Banner, it having been the first film in which actress Karin Granberg was to appear. Also starring in the film were actresses Greta Soderberg and Brita Appelgren. The screenplay of the film was written by Solve Cederstrand. Rather than signaling an overnight change, it marked a technological shift from the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film, Sjostrom being far from absent from the screen, but returning to Sweden as an actor while Molander and Sjoberg prefaced are return to Strindbergian drama that would be championed by Ingmar Bergman. During 1930, Julius Jaenzon had also if fact been behind the camera to photograph the film "Frida's Song's" (Frida's visor) for director Gustaf Molander. The film starred Elizabeth Frisk, Tore Svennberg, Anna-Lisa Erikson and Lili Lani. Filmed at Filmstraden, Rasundra, Sweden, the script was written by Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius.
     New Movie Magazine during 1930 announce,"Greta Almroth, star of Swedish pictures when Nils Aster was making a humble beginning was the Greta Garbo of Sweden. She plays a bit in "Dream of Love" as an infuriated revolutionist in a scene with with Warner Oland. As exciting as the listing is, the Svenska Filminstitutet lists Greta Almroth as not having appeared in film between 1924-1934. That is not to say that the scene could not have been film and later cut, or the she could have been uncredited for her work, it is just that it is difficult to find biography compelling enough to think that she ever visited Hollywood. Based on the work "Adrienne Lecoureur" by Photoplay dramatist Dorothy Farnum, the film is considered to be lost, there being no surviving prints that can be screened where the scene with Almroth can be viewed,  it being part of my sections on Lost Films,Found Magazines where the only way to experience cinema is look at surviving posters, stills and magazine reviews published during the first run of the film. Scandinavian actress Greta Nissen however was in fact in Hollywood during the advent of sound film, but does not appear with Oland and Asther in the film.
     There had in fact been a Swedish company that during 1928 advertised in the United States in providing the synchronization of motion pictures, Nordicphone in Stockholm, who recorded the human actor and sound effects on disc with the fiber stylus.
     Periodicals of the era reported that sound films were first shown in Sweden on May 2, 1929. A year later, the Roda Kvarn in Stockholm, "the permanent home of the silent film", would still be waiting to decide when it would install sound equipment. it was reported that while there was interest in sound film and that more theaters were being wired based on their success, Sweden currently then had its first two sound films in production, but manufactured no recording or production equipment. In that Nordisk Film had discontinued making films in Denmark entirely, it reformed in to the newly created Nordisk Tone-Film, which produced one reel sound films. American equipment was installed in theaters not using Danish made sound reproduction. Motion Picture News reported that although Svensk Filmindustri would release eight silent films and four that had both silent and sound versions and the production of short subjects with sound was currently in preparation, only one film would be presented with synchronized sound from Rasunda. It is uncanny to read of the difficulty entertained more than a decade earlier by inventor M. Sven Berglund and similar attempts to use telephone wires to synchronize recorded sound to five reel films.
     The appendices to the volume The New Spirit in the Cinema, Analysis, and Interpretation of the Parallel Paths of Cinema, published by Harold Shaylor, Gower Street, reported with a tone of optimism the modernity of the two film studios at Rasunda while it placed the then recent transition from silent to sound film into the bookshelves with hardcover accounts and appraisals of the new technology, "There is no doubt that Svensk Filmindustri has now entered upon another period of successful production. During the past year several films were produced which have enjoyed an extraordinarily great success in Sweden, namely the farce 'Konstgjorda Svennson', 'Norrlangningar', the magnificent film from the frozen polar regions, 'Den Starkaste' and not least, the first Swedish sound film, 'Sage Det i toner', which has beaten all previous records of popularity in Sweden. This year's production has already started with a farce and comedy founded on one of Selma Lagerlof's latest novels, 'Charlotte Lowenskold'. At the moment talking film equipment of the Tobias system is being installed. Svensk Filmindustri will henceforth produce sound films and talkies side by side with silent films." The volume noted that "the public is getting tired of American film and its jazzy mentality", which had flooded European theaters, and that it "feels again attracted to films of lyrical inspiration." It went on to discuss Europe and the fact that films made in Switzerland at the time seemed non-existent, but that there were a half-dozen that seemed worth of being noted.

Gustaf Bergman directed his first film during 1930, “The Dangerous Game” (Den farlinga leken) starring Jenny Hasselqvist, Olga Anderson and Elisa Wallin. The screenplay to the film was written by Elsa by Trolle.
Scholar Christopher Natzen, in his important paper “The Coming of Sound Film in Sweden, 1928-1932 notes that although the use of non-diegetic music within sound film had become common in Hollywood during 1933, it had already been introduced in Sweden during 1931. Natzen looks at the authenticity of sounds used within the diegesis of sound films made in Sweden while sharing with author Ann-Kristin Wallgren her look at the function of film music in sound film, that being “how Film music works in relating to the image either by relating to characters and objects or by relating generally to atmosphere and space.”

Film Daily magazine reported during 1931 that, "Scandinavian countries will produce about 32 talking features this year...Practically all important houses in Sweden are wired for sound."
     "One Night" ("En Natt", Molander, 1931) had been written by Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius and yet it owed much of its construction to its assistant director, Gosta Hellstrom. Hellstrom had been a film critic and had met with both Eisenstien and Pudovkin before returning to his native Sweden. The film is distinct from Molander's other film in its technique, it's editing. Appearing in the film were Gerda Lundequist, Unno Henning, Sture Lagerwall, Ingert Bjuggren and Karin Swanstrom.
     Included with the several film directed in Sweden during 1931 that are now unobtainable due to their being no surviving copies are the lost films "Karlek maste vi ha" and ""Generalen". Swedish film director Gustaf Bergman Had continued in 1931, writing and directing the film "General" ("Generalen"), photographed by Phillip Tannura and starring Edvin Adolphson, Inga Tiblad and Karin Sawnstrom. Also that year Gustaf Bergman directed Isa Quensel in her first film appearance, "We Must Have Love" ("Karleck maste vi ha"), written by Torsten Quensel and photographed by Fred Lagenfield. The film stars Margit Rosengren, Valborg Hansson, Isla Backstrom and Anna-Lisa Baude. Also that year Bergman directed Vera Schimterlow, a dear friend of actress Greta Garbo, with Anna Lisa Baude in the film "A Woman's Tommorow/Tommorow for a Woman" ("En Kvinnas Morgandag") written by Elsa af Trolle and photographed by Fred Lagenfield. The film is considered to be lost and the are no archival copies that have been restored. Also lost is the film "Dangerous Paradise" Swedish film director Rune Carlsten during 1931 directed the film "Dangerous Paradise" ("Faroranas Paradis"), adapted from a novel by Joseph Conrad, starring Ragnar Arvedson and Elizabeth Frisk. That year he also co-directed the film "Half to Heaven" ("Halvvags till Himlen"), starring Elisabeth Frisk, Edvin Adolphson and Karin Swanstrom.
     Swedish film director Theodor Berthels in 1931 wrote down and directed the film "His Majesty Will Have to Wait" ("Hans Majectat far Vanta") photographed by Adrian Bjurman and based on a play by Oscar Rydqvist. The film's stars Margit Manstad, Ragnar Arvedson, Aina Rosen, Britta Vieweg and Emmy Albiin.
     Swedish film director Per Axel Branner directed Astrid Bodin in her first film during 1931, "Under Roda Fanor", written by Fredrick Storm and photographed by Gosta Sandin. Also starring in the film are Ruth Weijden and Gertie Lowestrom.
     1931 brought the film "Love and the Homeguard" ("Karleck och Landstrom") directed by John Lindlof and produced by Europa-film, Stockholm. Scholar Christopher Natzenhus, Stockholm, noted that Europa and other emerging companies, then including Sandrews, were too small to compete with Svensk Filmindustri, who were in fact increasing their production output.
Gustaf Edgren during 1932 directed the film “The Varmlanders” (“Varmlanningarna”) with actresses Annalise Ericson, Hilda Borgstrom and Emmy Albiin. Based on a play by Fredreck pa Rannsatt and Andreas Randel, an earlier version of the film had been made in 1921 by Silent Film Director Eric A Petschler.
Guustaf Molander directed three films durng 1932, “Black Roses” (“Svarta rosor”), photographed by Ake Dahlqvist and written by Ragnar Hylten-Cavilius, it having starred Karin Sawnstrrom and Ruth Stevens, “We Who Use The Servants Entrance” (“Vi som gar koksvagen”) also photographed by Ake Dahlqvist while having been scripted by Tancred Ibsen and starring Karin Swanstrom, Tutta Rolf, Tollie Zollman, Rene Bjorling and Rut Holm, and “Love and Defecit” (“Karloch och Kassanrigt”), scripted by Gosta Stevens and photographed by Julius Jaenzon, which starred Tutta Rolf, Sigurd Wallen and Edvin Adolphson. It was also the first film in which actress Alice Carlson was to appear.
Gosta Rodin in 1934 wrote and directed “She or No One” (“Hon Eller Ingen”) produced by Europa and starring Inga Tiblad, Anna Olin and Sture Lagerwall. That year he also directed Lagerwall with actress Isa Quensel in the film “Adventyr pa Hotell”. It was the year the director married actress Aina Rosen.
     Out of the 23 feature films made in Sweden, and if the rate of competition from America listed for that year is accurate the country screened less than fifty films for viewing that year, Film Daily Year Book noted that during 1933 "Europa-film, Stockholm, produced four feature films, all sound on film." Accordingly, Svensk Talfilm produced only one film from its studio in Stockholm and only one was made by Irefilm, Stockholm.
     The Kinetograph Yearbook of 1935, published in Long Acre, while providing an assessment of international film markets compared Swedish Film production to that of other leading countries while viewing Saedish Film as comprising a genre of its own, "The conditions prevailing in 1934 have been satisfactory as illustrated by the fact that after 14 years, Svenska Filmindustri...have resumed a payment of a dividend (6 percent) on the ordinary A shares. Film production has also kept its own...Most of the Swedish output is of a national character, inasmuch as the stories are taken from Swedish life and laid against a Swedish landscape." The periodical Cinema Quarterly during 1934 viewed Sweden as in financial competition with other foreign distributors, particularly in the home market, and in doing so it complemented the quality of films made in Sweden before the advent of sound while recognizing a new generation of Swedish filmmakers that were quickly beginning to be viewed outside of Sweden. They were led by the more experienced Gustav Molander, "He received his early schooling in the glorious epoch of Sweden's silent film when he worked as an assistant to, among others, Victor Sjostrom." The periodical gave credit to the photography of Ake Dahlquist in two of Molander's films, "En Natt" and "En Stilla Flirt". "'A Mild Flirt' has been a great success in Sweden. In spite of the fact that Sweden is the native country of Greta Garbo, a good Swedish film is generally a greater commercial success than a Garbo film. In 'A Mild Flirt', the principal part was taken by Tutta Rolf, who earlier this year, left for Hollywood. Where she is under contract with Fox." Author Paul Rotha, in his volume The Film till Now, a survey of world cinema, offered an alternative, more disillusioned, interpretation, "With their long and fine tradition in film making in the early silent days, the Scandinavian countries have experienced the utmost difficulties in trying to regain their place in world cinema. Severely limited by the dictates of dialogue, comparatively little of their work has been seen overseas. in Sweden, the films produced since 1930 have been strongly marked by national characteristics, but from Gustav Molander's 'En Natt'1931) through 'The Heavenly Play' (1944) and 'Torment' (1946), none of its productions we have seen has broken really fresh ground. Victor Sjostrom returned from Hollywood to Sweden to function primarily as an actor and until recently Gustav Molander and some of other veterans from the silent days have carried on."
     The 1934 film "En Stille Flirt" (A Quiet Affair), starring Birgitta Tengroth and Margit Manstad had been adapted for the screen by Gosta Stevens from the novel by Edith Oberg. It was directed by Gustav Molander. The following year, Gosta Stevens would return to script Gustav Molander's film "A Bachelor Father" ("Ungkarlspappan"), photographed by Einer Akesson.
Gustaf Edgren during 1934 directed the film "Karl Fredrick Reigns" ("Karl-Fredrik regerar") with Gunnar Skoglund, Pauline Bruinius and actress Brit-Lis Edgren in what lulls be her first film appearance. The cinematographer was Martin Bodin, the scriptwriter Oscar Rydvist. Oscar Rydvist also scripted the first film edited by Oscar Rosander, "Valborgsmassoafton", filmed in 1935. Directed by Gustaf Edgren, it stars actress Linnea Hillberg in a seemingly all-star cast which included Victor Sjostrom, Lars Hanson, Karin, George Rydeberg and Ingrid Bergman. Author Forsyth Hardy described the subject matter, or theme perhaps, of the film as being “The everyday life of the people.”
Ragnar Allberg of Cinema Quarterly praised Per Axel Branner as one of the young upcoming directors of Swedish film in 1935. He wrote, “His characters live, and are one with their surroundings, and the conflicts grow up out of the milieu in a way which is not common in film. His sketches in landscapes, and its people with broad powerful strokes and his characters have space and horizon behim them.” Per Axel Branner that year directed the film “Young Hearts” (“Unga Hjartan”), which he conscripted with Martin Rogberg.The Film stars Anne-Marie Brunius, Marta Ekstrom and Wanda Rothgardt. The cinematographer to the film was Valdemar Christensen.
G. Holmgren directed his first film in 1935, a short film titled "Havet lockar". Holmgren later directed the film "Sabotage" ("Se pop Spionen") during 1944, starring Marianne Lofgren and Inga Bodil Vetterlund.Holmgren is also notable for his remake of the film "Malarpirater", made in 1959 and photographed by Ake Dahlquist.
The Americans periodical Motion Picture Daily In 1936 review the film “On the Sunnyside” (“Pa Solsidan”), directed by Gustaf Molander. “It is finely photographed and a finished production. The yacht racing sequences are of particular merit. While the tempo lags at times it usually move slow gayly along.” Photographed by Ake Dahlqvist and adapted from a screenplay written by Gosta Stevens, the film starred Lars Hanson, Ingrid Bergman, Edvin Adolphson, Karin Swanstrom and Marianne Lofgren.
     Movie Classic magazine during 1936 paid tribute to a Swedish actress filming "Dressed to Thrill" in the United States, "Her name is Tutta Rolf. Jot that down in your memory book: you will be hearing it often when this picture gets around....The story revolves around three people, and she is two of them; the third is Clive Brook."
Although the film "Intermezzo" was screened first run in the United States in Swedish with English subtitles, Film Daily magazine looked at the film more than favorably, reviewing it with, "Powerful, Dramatic Story with Deft Comedy Touches, Should Appeal to Foriegn Fans." With a screenplay credited to Gustaf Molander and Gosta Stevens, when reviewed the film was said to include, "The direction of Gustaf Molander is praiseworthy."
Forsyth Hardy in the volume Scandinavian Film uses an unattributed block quote to relate the extratextural reception of the film, in which is included, "'Intermezzo', however, plunges right into the deep water and tries individualistic descriptions of human beings which are both beautiful and sensitive." He bookends the quite with an observation before chronicling a voyage of Julius Jaenzon and Tancred Ibsen to the South Pole, "It seems strange that it should have been necessary to urge Swedish directors to leave the studio, their concentration on comedies, and farces, drawn from stage examples had blinded them to the virtue to be drawn from the Swedish landscape."


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Sven Garbo

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Wedding March (Eric Von Strohiem, 1928)

Scott Lord Silent Film: Dorothy Gish in Nell Gwyn (Herbert Wilcox, 1926)

Scottt Lord Silent Film:The Three Musketeers (Niblo, 1921)

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Douglas Fairbanks the following year continued his series of films in which he starred as an adventure protagonist with the title role in the 1922 film “Robin Hood”, each film seeming to be a story in a different historical period and a different geographical country.

Greta Garbo photographed by Clarence Sinclair Bull

Greta Garbo photographed by Clarence Sinclair Bull

Greta Garbo Trade Magazine Covers


Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs (Brown, 1929)

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Greta GarboGreta Garbo 


     Mordant Hall writing in 1929, recounts his purported assignation with the 'Hollywood Hermit', "Soon the door of Miss Garbo's apartment was flung open and the sinuous figure of the alluring actress appeared as if from a ray of sunlight. In a low-toned voice that suited her beauty, she greeted the caller, whose eyes fell from her face to a bouquet of flowers on a table, and then to a carpet. 'Won't you sit down?', she asked." He continues to describe her pink, silk sweater and black velvet skirt, claiming that of all her films, 'A Woman of Affairs' was Greta Garbo's favorite. She evidently recounted preparing for a role on the Stockholm stage and having had studied the part, but later having decided against appearing in the theater. "She repeated, 'Delighted to have met you.'"
Biographer Rita Page Palmborg, author of The Private Life of Greta Garbo, wrote,”Garbo was anxious to make ‘A Woman’s of Affairs’. It was to be her first portrayal of a modern American girl. While the story had romance running through it, it was not filled with the passionate, exotic type of love-making that had been seen all through her other pictures. Garbo and Gilbert had several scenes heavy with romance. But the fact that their own relations were in a perpetual state of turmoil seemed to detract from the glamour of their love-making. The public seemed to sense that the Garbo-Gilbert romance was coming to an end. Hollywood could not keep track of the affair.It was a case of ‘off-again, on-again’.”

The titles of movies that Greta Garbo had signed under contract to appear in were subject to change during the end of the the silent era. On March 31, 1928, Exhibitor's Herald World ran an announcement titled, "Clarence Brown's Next To be Greta Garbo Production", which read, "Clarence Brown will again direct Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The picture that brings the two together again is 'The Sun of St. Moritz' by Oskar Houeker."
 Photoplay Magazine announced, "Rumor has it that Clarence Brown and Dorothy Sebastian are married." Of her playing against Greta Garbo in A Woman of Affairs, Sebastian was thought to "present an interpretation, brief but classic." It reviewed the performance of John Gilbert as having played, "the difficult role of lover with dramatic repression." It went on, "Miss Garbo's interpretation is all the greater because she puts it all over without a single clinging dress or a single Garbo slink." Of the intertitles, or subtitles, Photoplay Magazine was exact in its estimation of their "devastating effect" as continuity- "When Miss Cummings wants to think of something sweet for John to murmur to Greta, she orders up a flock of chocolate sodas from the studio lunchroom. Miss Cummings wrote the titles for A Woman of Affairs and there wasn't a spoonful of ice cream left in Southern California." The magazine later reviewed the film with, "Why waste space urging you to drop everything to see this one." Film Daily credits Bess Meredyth as having written the scenario and Mariona Ainslee and Ruth Cunningham as having provided the titles, "Greta Garbo does her best work of her career in a part that all women will rave over. John Gilbert has a very secondary role....Director Clarence Brown has done a masterly job. He cunningly dodged the censor stuff by treating the many-lover episodes as a series of photos taken from a newspaper's files...Synchronized sound effects." Motion Picture Classic magazine favorably reviewed the film, "The picture has been carefully plotted, so much so that it is filled with subtle asides in its scenes and titles. This procedure was necessary to pass muster. But the original meaning is incorporated in the central ideas and it is fully emphasized by Garbo's finely shaded performance. There are some gorgeous settings. The atmosphere gives it quality, too...It is Greta Garbo's work that makes it enjoyable. John Gilbert is nothing much more than a figure-head here." Motion Picture magazine reviewed the film by viewing Garbo and Gilbert, "Perhaps I'm getting old. Or perhaps it is just that Jack Gilbert finds a full dress suit happening to his style of lovemaking. At any rate, something was missing in the high-powered scenes where he and Greta Garbo show what sex can be at its best...the tempo of the picture is decidedly slow and episodic."
Author Richard Corliss looked at the directing of the film, "Faced with a plot as convoluted and predestined as a Chinese ballet, what can Clarence Brown do but direct actors like traffic. He simply discards the flamboyant eroticism of Flesh and the Devil and concentrates as much as possible on elaborately paired shots, some half a film apart, which suddenly reinforce, or undedrcut, the story's plodding ironies." He, maybe importantly to the study of the photoplay, notes that one character dies "at the exact moment" when Greta Garbo and John Gilbert are consummating their love affair, illustrating the effect of pacing the action and timing in plot exposition during the photoplay- in fiction, in classical narrative, not only can plotlines structured on character development intersect and intertangle, as counterpunctal or counterpoint, but they can occur simultaneously, editing to serve a delineating purpose of narrative structure. Screenland Magazine offered to its readers Greta Garbo's neglgee, or her "boudoir gown" rather, which would be given to the contestant who wrote the best letter on the tragic roles of the actress. The Garbo Nile robe worn in A Woman of Affairs was to be sent to the writer of the most interesting letter along with a Christmas greeting from the actress herself. Screenland asked, "How do you feel after a sad ending?" It also, two pages earlier had offered to its readers John Gilbert's Gruen Swiss wristwatch for the most intelligent letter. "Write your opinion. Does a picturesque costume add to the glamour of romantic roles or is there more interest in a modern lover? Why?" It claimed, "The watch which John Gilbert has offerred for your Christmas is an exact duplicate of the one he wore in the scenes with Greta Garbo. We asked for his watch but he said he had given it very hard wear and the winner should have a new one."
During the first run of the film appeared the article "There is a Style Trend Inspired by the Graceful Garbo. Can Every Woman Follow". The article was subtitle, "What the Garbo Girl should Wear", but the writer, Gilbert Adrian, as well as having included three costume sketches and an exclusive photograph of himself with Greta Garbo during a fashion conference, also added how the Garbo Girls present during 1928 in the circulation of Screenland Magazine should wear their hair, and should not wear their hair being a Garbo Girl type. Adrian wrote, "In following Miss Garbo, one realizes that simplicity is the key note to her smartness, as it should be of all women of taste. her natural aloofness and manner of bearing make it possible for her to put meaning into simple clothes. The girl who feels she is the Garbo type should be truthful and analyze her nature to find out whether the appearance is only skin deep, or if her mental qualities and manner can carry, with the same dignity and charm, the simplicity that Garbo knows how to handle. Garbo's flair for and understanding of drama is coupled closely with the clothes she wears...without being clothes conscious, the most conscious kind of clothes..The girl of the Garbo type should wear pajama ensembles; geometric designs in vivid colors; scarfs wrapped around the head...should NOT wear negligees of taffeta with ruffles or hand-made flowers, dainty pinks or blues, or bandea with ribbon streamers...I remember that I designed a two-piece sports costume in Boi de rose duvet even, made with a sleeveless jacket and a short skirt with roomy kick pleats for Miss Garbo to wear in A Woman of Affairs. A tucked in blouse with boyish collar and leather belt, further carried out the athletic type of costume in this instance. Topping this was a trench coat of the same material finished with a bright plaid tuxedo collar...One of Miss Garbo's favorite costumes is a two piece dress of dark green camel's hair jersey."
As soon as 1930, A Woman of Affairs was reported in hardcover as a film on which dramatic and thematic limitations were imposed. The volume Censored, The Private Life of the Movies directed it's scrutiny on the film and went so far as to imply there was a cutting of the film before release "in order to avoid showing a scene intimating that mePn and women love out of wedlock and cited other films that contained "information and dialouge infinitely more suggestive than the dropping of a ring from the hand of Greta Garbo" and yet it still went on to note that the aegis of the time period would only release the film, as with a rating, if the director was to "shorten to flash of five feet scene of Diana and Holderness on couch, embracing and kissing and eliminate view of Diana's hand except after she has dropped the ring." Close Up magazine during 1928 also referred to the film's reputation and the publicity that had preceded it, "Michael Arlen's The Greet Hat, done in celluloid, under the direction of Clarence Brown is M.G.M.'s latest vehicle for Greta Garbo. to placate the moralists who have registered objections to the screening of the story, the picture will be released under another name- A Woman of Affairs. This simple device will no doubt prove effective here as it did with the protested Rain, which under the film info into of Sadie Thompson, successfully satisfied the American puritanical conscience." Motion Picture News during 1928 addressed the quickly growing reputation of the film, as though there were something more sinister in the new sexuality of Garbo, rather than a young woman only immoral due the the inexperience of a vamp, or its new incarnation, vamping flapper, "A Woman of Affairs illustrates the fallacy of official bans on stage plays that are regarded in stage form as too daring or immoral for screen production. A Woman of Affairs proves that questionable or objectionable things in stage plays can be treated from other angles without the least offence to decency or good taste...A Woman of Affairs hasn't the slightest offensive situation."
The Film Spectator objected to the film. It’s reviewer thought to explicitly describe the mechanics of the licentious kissing of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert onscreen. “They could not call it ‘The Green Hat’ for it is supposed to be an immoral book, but they put things in the picture more filthy and disgusting than Arlen ever dreamed of.”
     Recently, Scholar Carmen Guiralt, writing in Film History, an International Journal, has added what may be an important source to the distinctions of diegetic and non-diegetic discourse and of textural and extra-textural discourse involved in the thematic and metaphorical rendering of content within context and its exhibition in the public sphere, almost to where we might revisit the theory of a cinema of attractions and reconsider it within a pre-code public sphere. The author looks at the censored image with discourse- particularly when those images are used to transpose the discourse of the novel during its adaptation. The central premise of the paper Self-Censorship in Hollywood during the Silent Era : A Woman of Affairs (1928), is almost too direct to not be stunning. An abstract reads," This article studies, from a historical view as well as an aesthetic point of view, the constraints placed... On the production and on Clarence Brown's use of visual images to convey the full content of the novel. As a result, A Woman of Affairs presents two contradictory story lines, the narrative revealed by the images and the difficult speech supervised by the censors and featured in the intertitles of the film." The film had been vastly altered by the censors in regard to its screenplay and a corresponding new plot had to be devised.

Scott Lord Silent Film: Rudolph Valentino in Cobra (Henabery, 1925)

Scott Lord Silent Film: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Neilan, 1917)

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In addition to directing Mary Pickford in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, during 1917, Marshall Neilan directed Pickford in the film “The Little Princess Princess”. Both photplays were scripted by Frances Marion.

Silent Film

Silent Film

Scott Lord Film: Douglas Fairbanks in The Private Life of Don Juan (Kord...

Scott Lord Silent Film: A Fool There Was (Powell, 1915)

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