Victor Sjöström


Victor David Sjöström, also 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, He Who Gets Slapped, and The Wind. 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.

Early life

Victor David Sjöström was born on 20 September 1879 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 in 1886, when he was seven years old. 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.

Career

Drawn from the stage to the fledgling motion picture industry, he made his first film in 1912 under the direction of Mauritz Stiller. Between 1912 and 1923, he directed another forty-one films in Sweden, some of which are now lost. Those surviving include The Sons of Ingmar, Karin, Daughter of Ingmar and The Phantom Carriage, 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 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 anglicized name, Victor Seastrom, he made the drama film Name the Man 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. One of these was the 1926 film The Scarlet Letter, starring Lillian Gish as the adulterous Hester Prynne.
Uncomfortable with the modifications needed to direct sound 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. Over the following 15 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. Arguably his noted performance came with his final film role. On the cusp of turning 78, he played the elderly professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman's film Wild Strawberries.

Personal life

Sjöström was married three times. His daughter was actress Guje Lagerwall.

Death and legacy

Victor Sjöström died in Stockholm on 3 January 1960 at the age of 80, and was buried in the Norra begravningsplatsen.
A theatre in Filmhuset, home of the Swedish Film Institute, was named in his honour as "Bio Victor". His film The Phantom Carriage serves as an inspiration for the 2024 film Nosferatu.

Filmography

Director

Actor