Victor Sjöström
Swedish filmmaker, born Saturday September 20, 1879, in Silbodal, Värmlands län, died Sunday January 3, 1960, in Stockholm
Victor Sjöström (Victor Seastrom aux États-Unis) (1879-1960) est un acteur et réalisateur de cinéma suédois. Il doit être considéré, tout à la fois, comme l'un des pères fondateurs (avec Mauritz Stiller) de l'école suédoise et l'un des pionniers de l'art cinématographique.
Victor Sjöström, original name Viktor David Sjöström, Sjöström also spelled Seastrom (born Sept. 20, 1879, Silbodal, Swed.—died Jan. 3, 1960, Stockholm) motion-picture actor and director who contributed significantly to the international preeminence of the Swedish silent film in the post-World War I era. Influenced by the novels of Selma Lagerlöf, whose art is rooted in sagas and folklore and imbued with a reverence for nature, Sjöström’s films were lyrically beautiful expressions of man’s relationship to nature and to society.
Trained as a stage actor, Sjöström directed and starred in his first film, Trädgårdsmästaren (The Gardener), in 1912. Other notable films were Ingeborg Holm (1913); Terje vigen (1917; Third Way, or A Man There Was [U.S.]), an experiment in the integration of setting and theme; and Berg-Ejvind och
Emigrating to Hollywood in 1923, Sjöström directed pictures in which he further refined his visual techniques—e.g., He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Scarlet Letter (1926), The Divine Woman (1928), and The Wind (1928). Their pictorial beauty and realism were reminiscent of his finest Swedish films. Although his American films were critically acclaimed, they were not outstanding box-office successes.
In 1930 Sjöström returned to Sweden. Though he directed a few more films, it was primarily as the artistic director (1943–49) at Svensk Filmindustri, the main Swedish film studio, that he participated in the post-World War II Swedish film revival. He acted in several films, and one of his outstanding performances was that of the aged hero of Ingmar Bergman’s Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries).