Victor Sjöström

Victor David Sjöström (; 20 September 1879 – 3 January 1960), sometimes known in the United States as Victor Seastrom, was a pioneering Swedish film director, screenwriter, and actor. He began his career in Sweden, before moving to Hollywood in 1924. Sjöström worked primarily in the silent era; his best known films include The Phantom Carriage (1921), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), and The Wind (1928). Sjöström was Sweden's most prominent director in the "Golden Age of Silent Film" in Europe. Later in life, he played the leading role in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957).

Biography
Born in Årjäng/Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886. Sjöström returned to Sweden where he lived with relatives in Stockholm, beginning his acting career at 17 as a member of a touring theater company.

Drawn from the stage to the fledgling motion picture industry, he made his first film in 1912 under the direction of Mauritz Stiller. Between then and 1923, he directed another forty-one films in Sweden, some of which are now lost. Those surviving include The Sons of Ingmar (1919), Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), all based on stories by the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf. Many of his films from the period are marked by subtle character portrayal, fine storytelling and evocative settings in which the Swedish landscape often plays a key psychological role. The naturalistic quality of his films was enhanced by his (then revolutionary) preference for on-location filming, especially in rural and village settings. He is also known as a pioneer of continuity editing in narrative filmmaking.

In 1923, Sjöström accepted an offer from Louis B. Mayer to work in the United States. In Sweden, he had acted in his own films as well as in those for others, but in Hollywood he devoted himself solely to directing. Using an anglicised name, Victor Seastrom, he made the drama film Name the Man (1924) based on the Hall Caine novel, The Master of Man. He directed stars of the day such as Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Lon Chaney, and Norma Shearer in another eight films in America before his first talkie in 1930.

Uncomfortable with the modifications needed to direct talking films, Victor Sjöström returned to Sweden where he directed two more films before his final directing effort, an English-language drama filmed in the United Kingdom Under the Red Robe (1937). Over the following fifteen years, Sjöström returned to acting in the theatre, performed a variety of leading roles in more than a dozen films and was a company director of Svensk Film Industri. Aged 78, he gave his final acting performance, probably his best remembered, as the elderly professor Isaak Borg in Ingmar Bergman's film Wild Strawberries (1957).

Personal life 
Sjöström was married three times. His daughter was actress Guje Lagerwall (1918-2019).

Victor Sjöström died in Stockholm at the age of 80, and he was interred in the Norra begravningsplatsen (Northern cemetery).

Filmography

As director 

Ett hemligt giftermål (1912)
Trädgårdsmästaren (1912)
Marriage Bureau (Äktenskapsbyrån) (1913)
Laughter and Tears (Löjen och tårar) (1913)
Lady Marion's Summer Flirtation (Lady Marions sommarflirt) (1913)
The Voice of Passion (Blodets röst) (1913)
The Conflicts of Life (Livets konflikter) (1913)
Ingeborg Holm (Margaret Day) (1913)
Half Breed (Halvblod) (1913)
The Miracle (Miraklet, Within the Gates) (1913)
The Poacher (Kärlek starkare än hat eller skogsdotterns hemlighet) (1914)
The Clergyman (Prästen, Saints and Their Sorrows, The Parson) (1914)
Judge Not (Dömen icke) (1914)
The Strike (Strejken) (1914)
A Good Girl Keeps Herself in Good Order (Bra flicka reder sig själv) (1914)
Children of the Streets (Gatans barn) (1914)
Daughter of the Peaks (Högfjällets dotter) (1914)
Hearts That Meet (Hjärtan som mötas) (1914)
One of the Many (En av de många) (1915)
Guilt Redeemed (Sonad skuld) (1915)
 Det var i maj (1915)
The Governor's Daughters (Landshövdingens döttrar, Det var i maj) (1915)
Stick to Your Last, Shoemaker (Skomakare, bliv vid din läst) (1915)
In the Hour of Trial (I prövningens stund) (1915)
The Price of Betrayal (Judaspengar) (1915)
The Ships That Meet (Skepp som mötas) (1916)
The Sea Vultures (Havsgamar, Predators of the Sea) (1916)
She Triumphs (Hon segrade) (1916)
Kiss of Death (Dödskyssen) (1916)
Therèse (1916)
A Man There Was (Terje Vigen) (1917)
The Lass from the Stormy Croft (Tösen från Stormyrtorpet, The Girl from the Marsh Croft, The Woman He Chose) (1917)
The Outlaw and His Wife (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru, Eyvind of the Hills, Love: The Only Law, You and I) (1918)
Sons of Ingmar (Ingmarssönerna, Dawn of Love) (1919)
His Lordship's Last Will (Hans nåds testamente, His Grace's Last Testament, His Grace's Will) (1919)
The Monastery of Sendomir (Klostret i Sendomir, Secret of the Monastery) (1920)
Karin Daughter of Ingmar (Karin Ingmarsdotter, God's Way) (1920)
A Lover in Pawn (Mästerman) (1920)
The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen, The Phantom Chariot, The Stroke of Midnight, Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness) (921)
Love's Crucible (Vem dömer, Mortal Clay) (1922)
The Surrounded House (Det omringade huset, The House Surrounded) (1922)
Fire on Board (Eld ombord, Jealousy, The Hell Ship) (1923)
Name the Man (1924)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Confessions of a Queen (1925)
The Tower of Lies (1925)
The Scarlet Letter (1926)
The Divine Woman (1928)
The Masks of the Devil (1928)
The Wind (1928)
A Lady to Love (1930)
 Father and Son (1930)
Markurells of Wadköping (Markurells i Wadköping, Father and Son, Vater und Sohn) (1931)
Under the Red Robe (1937)

As actor 
Terje Vigen (A Man There Was, 1917) as Terje Vigen
Thomas Graals bästa barn (Thomas Graal's First Child 1918) as Thomas Graal
Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage, 1921) as David Holm
The Fight Continues (1941)
The Word (1943)
Till glädje (To Joy, 1950, directed by Ingmar Bergman), as professor Sönderby
Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries, 1957, directed by Ingmar Bergman), as professor Isak Borg

References

External links
 
 
 Victor Sjöström at Virtual History
 "Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller" UC Santa Barbara Research Paper (2005) by Maximilian Schmige

Category:1879 births
Category:1960 deaths
Category:People from Årjäng Municipality
Category:Swedish film directors
Category:Swedish male stage actors
Category:Burials at Norra begravningsplatsen
Category:Swedish male silent film actors
Category:20th-century Swedish male actors
Category:Swedish screenwriters
Category:Male screenwriters
Category:Swedish male writers
Category:Swedish male film actors
Category:Cinema pioneers