Charles Magnusson

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Charles Magnusson (around 1930)

Charles Fredrik Magnusson (born January 26, 1878 in Gothenburg , † January 18, 1948 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish cameraman , film producer and screenwriter . He is considered a pioneer of Swedish film .

Live and act

The son of an architect was a trained photographer . He took his first steps in the still young silent film in 1905 as a cameraman for the still young Swedish newsreel ; In 1907 he and colleagues founded the first professional association of cameramen in Sweden. In 1909 he became director and producer of the Swedish film production company AB Svenska Biografteatern (Svenska Bio), founded in Kristianstad in 1907 , selected the scripts (he wrote a few scripts himself) and influenced the film aesthetic style of the film company. He was the first ever in Sweden to produce feature-length films with an epic plot. In doing so, he largely gave the directors a free hand, but controlled the baseline: He encouraged the directors to go out from the studio into nature and not let the actors act theatrically and artificially as before, but as lifelike as possible in natural backdrops. This was formative for the Swedish silent film and brought it international success.

When the production company moved to the Swedish capital in 1911, the international importance of early Swedish silent films began to grow under Magnusson's leadership: he discovered the directors Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller and hired them for Svenska Bio. Swedish landscape, Swedish history , folk tales and Swedish literature were Magnusson's main interests and determined the choice of material for the films he produced. Magnusson acquired the film rights to all of Selma Lagerlöf's works and had Henrik Ibsen's works filmed. This is how Swedish silent film classics such as Terje Vigen based on a ballad by Ibsen and Das Mädchen vom Moorhof , both directed by Sjöström, or in 1919 Mr. Arnes Schatz based on Selma Lagerlöf under the direction of Mauritz Stiller were made. However, not all films made by Svenska Bio were personally produced by Magnusson, who was the overall director of the company.

In the meantime, investors had discovered the flourishing film business in Sweden as a lucrative line of business for themselves. After the merger of Svenska Bio and the film production company Filmindustrie AB Skandia to Svensk Filmindustri in December 1919, the main shareholder, the tycoon and billionaire Ivar Kreuger , made Magnusson the first director. In the following years, under Magnusson's direction, the company rose to become one of the leading film studios in Europe, with offices in Amsterdam , Berlin , London , Paris and New York City ; the own film city of Filmstaden , built in 1920, was known as "Swedish Hollywood".

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. , 1924 in Stockholm

In 1924 Magnusson, accompanied by Ivar Kreuger , the young Greta Garbo and their discoverer Mauritz Stiller, received the then world stars and co-founders of United Artists , Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks senior. , who had traveled to Sweden at the invitation of Svensk Filmindustri, and accompanied them on a tour of Stockholm with immense public sympathy. At that time Magnusson was no longer working as a producer, but was responsible for the operational business of Svensk Filmindustri. His last work as a producer was A Herrenhofsage after Selma Lagerlöf in 1923 under Stiller's direction. Shortly after meeting the Hollywood stars in Stockholm, Stiller and Garbo left Sweden for America; Sjöström had already taken this route a few years earlier. As a result, Svensk Filmindustri got into economic difficulties, internal disputes arose and Magnusson, who was considered economically inept, had to leave the company; his position as director was filled by a financial expert. From then on he withdrew completely from the film business at the end of the 1920s. One of his last activities in the field of film was the suggestion of building the Chinateatern cinema in Stockholm.

Filmography (as producer; selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On Magnusson's family, childhood and youth see in: Paolo Cherchi Usai (ed.): Schiave bianche allo specchio. Le origine de cinema in Scandinavia (1896-1918). Editioni Studio Tesi, Pordenone 1986, ISBN 88-7692-132-X .
  2. ↑ Original film about Pickford and Fairbank's stay in Stockholm (the man with glasses and hat behind Pickford on the stairs is Magnusson) ( Memento from February 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at svtplay.se (Swedish, accessed September 14, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Magnusson, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Magnusson, Charles Fredrik (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish cameraman, film producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Gothenburg
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1948
Place of death Stockholm