Film books from 1920

My aunt found these film books from 1920 in her country house. They belonged to her husbands uncle, who passed away some years ago. She instantly thought of me and gave them to me. They're real treasures! I'm so thrilled. They're in Swedish, but a lot of Hollywood stars drape the pages of the books. I thought I'd share with you!



Here they are - Filmjournalen (The Film Journal) 1920 and Filmen (The film) from the same year. On the front of Filmen you see Swedish Actress Mary Johnson. She appeared as Elsalill in Sir Arne's Treasure (Herr Arnes Pengar), a film from 1919 by Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, who brought Greta Garbo to America in 1925.
Mary Johnson later made some films in Germany, and married the German silent star Rudolf Klein-Rogge.



On this page you see an article about the dangers actors are put through while shooting some films, they really earn their money! You can see Douglas Fairbanks Sr climbing a wall, and Olive Thomas at the top stating "And then they claim that shooting a film is so easy" while taming a bull.



Two Swedish profiles - actor Lars Hanson and director Victor Sjöström (Körkarlen or The Phantom Carriage, 1921), who would be successful in America working with Lon Chaney Sr among others. Lars Hanson starred opposite Lillian Gish in The Wind (1928).



"The audience's favourites" reads the head line. Among others we have:

Wallace Reid - Wallie is born in St. Louis and was in the film industry in the olden days of Vitagraph. And he has also been a newspaper man, before becoming the famous character actor he is today.

John Barrymore - "The Winnerstrand of the film" he was named, when he for the first time appeared for the Swedish audience in "Amatörtjuven" (Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, 1917) and won an incontestable success.
Mary Pickford - "All the world's Mary", America's most popular and lovable actress, that the Swedish audience only have heard about, but this season gets the opportunity to familiarize themselves with in Stockholm's newest ans biggest film theatre, Palladium.

Charles Chaplin - No one of the artists of the film is as controversial as Chaplin, but no one will deny, that he always gets the laughers on his side.

Marguerite Clark - A delightful little creature, with big brown child eyes and bushy brown hair - one of the America's as well as Europe's most celebrated stars in the film market.

"Norma Talmadge is an exponent of refined and tasteful toilette luxuaries."

A film director at work

"Put more feelings into it!" "No! No! Be natural!" "That's good, keep that position!"

Thomas Ince have given us many enjoyable moments.

On the right page the head line reads "Thomas H. Ince directing Dorothy Dalton."

[The mysterious death of Thomas Ince was an interesting story. He died on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924. The circumstances of his death were never fully revealed by the crew, that consisted of W.R. Hearst, his wife Marion Davies, Charles Chaplin, author Elinor Glyn and others. One theory is that Ince was shot by Hearst, who thought he had aimed on Chaplin who had been having an affair with Marion Davies.
That theory is the plot of Peter Bogdanovich's film The Cat's Meow (2001), with Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies, Eddie Izzard as Chaplin and Cary Elwes as Ince. Pretty good film, actually.]



Douglas Fairbanks raising money for America's war debts - five million dollars so far. (I wrote about his and his wife Mary Pickford's WWII efforts in this post.)



Mabel Normand, Mae Marsh, Marguerite Clark and Bessie Love on the same page!



An article called "The adaptability of the scenic art", showing pictures of Marguerite Clark, Juanita Hansen, Louise Glaume, Theda Bara and Mary Pickford.



Violet Mercereau. Born in New York 1897. Her father was a Frenchman and the mother English. Her scenic course started as early as when she was seven years old in a child role, which she played with a charm, that after that never left her. Norma Talmadge takes care of her garden with the same interest she has for film acting.

"Is it you who betrayed me, Elsalill?"

The autumn's first Swedish premiere was Sir Arne's Treasure, Mauritz Stiller's great film adaption of Selma Lagerlöf's short story. The premiere took place at Röda Kvar [The Red Mill] in Stockholm, now the film is on a journey aorund Sweden. The leading roles are played by Mary Johnson as Elsalill and Richard Lund as Sir Archi. The picture displays the scene where Sir Archi finds out that Elsalill has betrayed him.

Douglas Fairbanks - look how strong he is!

The kiss on film

"The film kiss demands grace and refinement to be beautiful. Eugene O'Brien and Norma Talmadge have enough of those products to teach others."

"For your information, this happy young couple is Harry Browne and Constance Talmadge."

"Regretfully the name of the film hero above is unknown to us. But it doesn't matter: the person that denies Norma a kiss is not worth being remembered."


A Christmas competition called "Where did they go?". Can you guess who the cut out actors are?

Charles Chaplin on the left, a caricature of Asta Nielsen, Die Asta, to the right. (Remember her from my post on The Abyss from 1910? You can see her provocative dance in my post on the film here!)

"The Talmadge girls".

- "But, it is my wedding day..." Poor Constance Talmadge.



And last but not least - Mary Johnson for the third time in this post!

I hope you enjoyed my post. If I screwed up the translation you can just ask me if something is unclear! Have a nice weekend.

The Abyss (1910)

Afgrunden
Director: Urban Gad
Denmark 1910
37 min

The Abyss is a Danish silent film starring one of the first international movie actresses, Asta Nielsen. (In Germany she was known as simply "Die Asta".) Her naturalistic acting style differed from the melodramatic acting most of the early movie actors used since working on stage. The erotic nature of most of her characters and the sensualism of her acting caused that she was heavily censored in the United States.



In the beginning of the movie Magda Vang (Nielsen) meets a nice man, Knud Svane (Robert Dinesen), riding a streetcar, and they quickly fall in love with each other. Knud invites Magda to live with him and his parents in the country for a while.
What happens is that a travelling circus comes to the village, and Magda is seduced by one of the artists, leaving her fiancé for him. Magda joins the circus and perform together with her lover.



Scene: Magda performes an erotic dance on stage, with her lover tied up with a lasso.




The relationship shows to be passionate and dramatic, and it's easy to see that it will soon fall apart. One day, after their erotic performance on stage, Magda realizes that her lover is attracted to another actress and starts a fight that gets both of them fired. She finds a job as a piano player instead.
But one day her and her fiancé's paths cross each other once again, leading to a dramatic settlement between them and her abusive lover.



The restoration of this soon-to-be 100 year old film is astonishing. Only a few scenes have been nearly destroyed, looking like the picture below. But that only gives the film a more eerie feeling.

This is the first film I've ever seen featuring Asta Nielsen. What a woman! Here I am, impressed by the frivolous flappers of the 1920's, and I'm being taken aback by one scene with Die Asta ten years before! (Perhaps Scandinavian women always have been more easy than American?)
Anyway, I'm impressed by this Danish woman!
The movie was very engaging and easy to take in and be moved by, probably because the acting, as I said before, wasn't as theatrical and melodramatic as other early silent films are. I strongly recommend this one.