Victor Sjöström

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Victor David Sjöström ( vikːtɔɹ ˈɧœːˌstɹœm ? / I ; born September 20, 1879 in Årjäng , Värmland ; † January 3, 1960 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish director , screenwriter , film producer and actor . He worked as an influential silent film director, first in Sweden, then later in Hollywood . With film dramas such as The Fuhrmann des Todes or The Wind he achieved film historical importance. He wrote the script himself and worked as an actor for many of his films. Sjöström received renewed attention in 1957 for his senior role as Professor Borg in Ingmar Bergman's classic Wilde Erdbeeren . Audio file / audio sample

life and career

Early life

Victor Sjöström (second from left) on the Trädgårdsmästaren film set (1912)

Victor Sjöström was born in 1879 in the village of Årjäng (then Silbodal municipality ) in the Swedish province of Värmland . In 1880 he and his family moved to New York in the United States, where his father Olof Adolf Sjöström (1841-1896) ran a company for remittances from migrants, which systematically cheated on its customers, which is why the father had to flee the USA in 1894. Victor Sjöström had already returned to Sweden after the death of his mother in 1886. There he lived with relatives in Stockholm before he began his acting career at the age of 17 as a traveling actor in Finland . As early as 1899 he worked as an actor and director at theaters in Gothenburg .

From 1912: successes as a silent film director

In 1912 he came to the film company AB Svenska Biografteatern (Svenska Bio) and made his directorial debut for the film in the same year. He was discovered and promoted by the director of Svenska Bio, Charles Magnusson .

Victor Sjöström's directorial work, along with Mauritz Stiller's work , set the tone for early Swedish film, which in the 1910s was one of the leading artists in Europe. His first commercial success was Ingeborg Holm (1913), a social drama which, through its convincing portrayal of the living conditions of underprivileged social classes, created political awareness of the need to introduce social benefits in early capitalist Sweden. Sjöström stood out in his films for his grandiose, poetic nature shots of Sweden. But these nature shots not only served the visual beauty of the film, but also often used them to clarify the mental states of his film characters, which was a film-historical innovation by Sjöström. The director often used literary sources, for example from Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf , whose mixture of legends and folklore influenced him deeply. His best-known films of this time include Terje Vigen (1917), Der Fuhrmann des Todes (1921) and Berg-Eyvind und seine Frau (1918), in which his future wife Edith Erastoff played the leading female role. From the end of 1919 he worked for the new film production company Svensk Filmindustri , where his films and those of Mauritz Stiller were in turn produced by Charles Magnusson.

Due to the international success of Der Fuhrmann des Todes , Sjöström received the offer to direct the film Who Was the Father for Samuel Goldwyn . He quickly rose to become one of the highest-paid directors in Hollywood, shooting with the greatest Hollywood stars of the time. His international reputation was so great that Charlie Chaplin , for example, described him in a newspaper interview in 1924 as "the best director in the world". After Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg founded the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio , the first film The Man Who Got the Slap was released , directed by Sjöström and starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer . While he had also appeared as an actor in his films in Sweden, in the United States he focused exclusively on directing. He made seven other films under the Anglicised name Victor Seastrom . These included the film dramas The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928), both of which starred Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson and for which Frances Marion wrote the script. In 1928 he also directed the drama The Divine Woman with Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson.

Sjöström stuck to his handwriting with nature photographs and subtle psychological character studies, which was rather unusual for the Hollywood film of the time and influenced it. While most of his films have received positive reviews from critics, many of his Hollywood films have flopped at the box office.

From 1930: later career and private life

In 1930 Sjöström returned to Sweden, but he only staged a few sound films as a director in Europe, as he felt uncomfortable with the sound film and the associated innovations. His last directorial work was the English historical drama Under the Red Robe (1937) with Conrad Veidt in the leading role. Subsequently, Sjöström was mainly active as a film and theater actor as well as a producer for Svensk Filmindustri . From 1939 Sjöström worked with director Gustaf Molander , and in 1943 he appeared in his film Ordet . As a theater actor, he played the captain von Köpenick and the role of Dr. Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen's drama An Enemy of the People . However, he delivered his most important acting performance in 1957 in Ingmar Bergman's film drama Wilde Erdbeeren (1957): Sjöström played the leading role of the old professor Isaak Borg, who is confronted with stations from his past during a car trip. Ingmar Bergman repeatedly referred to the director Sjöström as one of his most important role models. Wild strawberries received the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1958 , while Sjöström himself received excellent reviews for his performance and won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Prize of the National Board of Review .

After wild strawberries , Victor Sjöström withdrew into private life. He died in January 1960 at the age of 80 and was buried in the Norra gravningsplatsen cemetery in Stockholm. Sjöström was married three times: from 1900 to 1912 with Alexandra Stjagoff, from 1913 to 1916 with Lili Beck and from 1922 to 1945 with Edith Erastoff. While his first two marriages ended in divorce, he remained married to his third wife, Edith, until their death. Sjöström was the father of actress Guje Lagerwall (born January 13, 1918 - January 8, 2019), who appeared in several films from the 1930s.

Filmography (selection)

As a director

  • 1912: Ett hemligt giftermål
  • 1912: The gardener (Trädgårdsmästaren)
  • 1913: Äktenskapsbyrån (also screenplay)
  • 1913: Ingeborg Holm (Ingeborg Holm) (also screenplay)
  • 1914: Waina the young Laplander (Högfjällets dotter)
  • 1916: The Kiss of Death (Dödskyssen) (also screenplay)
  • 1917: Terje Vigen (Terje Vigen) (also screenplay)
  • 1917: Das Mädchen vom Moorhof ( Tösen från Stormyrtorpet ) (also screenplay)
  • 1918: Berg-Eyvind and his wife (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru)
  • 1919: The Ingmarssons (Ingmarssönerna) (also screenplay)
  • 1919: Hans nåds testamente (also screenplay)
  • 1920: The Secret of the Monastery / The Monastery of Sendomir (Klostret i Sendomir) (also script)
  • 1920: Karin vom Ingmarshof (Karin Ingmarsdotter) (also screenplay)
  • 1921: The Carter of Death (Körkarlen) (also screenplay)
  • 1922: Beatrix (Vem Döner) (also screenplay)
  • 1924: who was the father? (Name the man)
  • 1924: The man who got the slaps (He Who Gets Slapped) (also screenplay, production)
  • 1925: Confessions of a Queen
  • 1926: The Scarlet Letter (also production)
  • 1928: The wind (The wind)
  • 1928: The Divine Woman (The Divine Woman)
  • 1931: Fathers and Sons (Markurells i Wadköping)
  • 1936: Under the Red Robe (Under the Red Robe)

Only as a producer

As a performer

  • 1912: The gardener (Trädgårdsmästaren)
  • 1916: The Kiss of Death (Dödskyssen)
  • 1917: Terje Vigen (Terje Vigen)
  • 1918: Berg-Eyvind and his wife (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru)
  • 1919: The Ingmarssons (Ingmarssönerna)
  • 1921: The wagoner of death (Körkarlen)
  • 1931: Fathers and Sons (Markurells i Wadköping)
  • 1939: The old man comes (Gubben kommer)
  • 1943: The Word (Ordet)
  • 1944: The Emperor of Portugal (Kejsarn av Portugallien)
  • 1947: Rallare
  • 1950: To Joy (Till glädje)
  • 1952: You shall not covet (Hård sounded)
  • 1957: Wild strawberries (Smultronstället)

literature

Web links

Commons : Victor Sjöström  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arjang: Victor Sjöström (Swedish)
  2. ↑ TheyShootPictures article about Victor Sjöström
  3. ^ Victor Sjöström in Encyclopædia Britannica
  4. ↑ 1938, found silent film "Der Fuhrmann des Todes". Schweizer Film = Film Suisse: official organ of Switzerland, accessed on June 12, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Biography at the Internet Movie Database
  6. ↑ TheyShootPictures article about Victor Sjöström
  7. ↑ Dödsannonser i SvD . In: Svenska Dagbladet . ISSN  1101-2412 ( svd.se [accessed January 19, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Guje Lagerwall at the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved January 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Sjöström, Victor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sjöström, Victor David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Silbodal , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1960
Place of death Stockholm , Sweden