A Method of Reconstructing Lost Films

Abstract

The major and, even in its earliest days, dominant Swedish film production company was called Svenska, Svenska Biografteater or Svenska Bio. It still exists as the company Svensk Filmindustri in Stockholm. All the classic Swedish films, among them all the films directed by Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjistr6m, were produced by this company. Today it consequently is the company of Ingmar Bergman's pictures. Up to September, 1941, all their negatives from the beginning of 1907 were preserved. But at that time a violent explosion and a terrible fire destroyed them all in a very short time. The whole Swedish film tradition blew up. Two people were killed. Seven years later, in July, 1948, in the middle of the night, lightning struck the great literary archives of the same company and nothing was saved. A complete series of shooting scripts, the whole correspondence with film directors, producers, exhibitors in Sweden or abroad, all reviews and commercial reports-everything was destroyed by fire. Suddenly all our continuing knowledge of how the producers, directors or authors estimated and discussed their production problems was gone. This accident was a new catastrophe. From the silent period only a few old, much-used prints remained and almost none of the negatives. No one could say if these remains were complete. The Swedish film archive tried to find prints of Swedish films all over the world, and some were collected. Other remains saved from the fire were stills, and their negatives, which were stored elsewhere. Also there were some scripts and a lot of title lists which, as duplicates, had been handed over to the Swedish film archive, and some odd material on loan or occasionally on deposition in the Swedish film archive or in private hands. Twenty years later, in 1967, I retired as a film director and film producer and went to the University of Stockholm. I had in mind to find a way to work with these few remaining fragments of the silent Swedish film period. Behind me I had a close knowledge of film production. I had 30 years of work as author, editor, producer and director. I had directed a great number of films, including documentaries, short films and seven feature films. Facing my new task, I knew that I had practical experience of how a story ought to be told in a film, how a sequence should be opened or finished,