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conceived as the needs of a world market; but when the Konstantinopel project failed, he too left for Hollywood.
It is difficult to-day to recapture the impact of the Swedish cinema during its golden period. Two contemporary comments may help to convey the impression left by the films.
In their 'History of the Film' Maurice Bardeche and Robert Brasillach wrote: 'In the first years after the war the Scandinavian film and the Swedish film in particular attained such importance that there were many who believed that the northern countries had become the chosen land of motion pictures. No month passed, in 1920 and 1921, but there appeared in Paris some new film by Sjostrom or Stiller, in all of which the beauties of the landscape and the nobility of their simple plots constantly expressed a love of nature and a heroic attitude to life. The influence of Selma Lagerlof, most of whose books were filmed during this period, continued to be extremely strong for several years. Thanks to this talented woman, both purity of heart and devotion to duty took on new meaning, and, whether under her inspiration or not, men like Sjostrom, Stiller, Hedqvist, Brunius and Petschler for an all too short period set before our eyes a sort of solemn and spiritual beauty such as the screen was seldom to give us again.'
In her 'Cinema' C. A. Lejeune wrote: 'The Swedish film had only a short season of maturity. For three or four years, at a time when Russia was unknown in the cinema, when Germany was still cut off from a foreign market and France was developing a timid avant-garde, Sweden created and sent out into the world a mass of strongly nationalized and richly considered production that embodied new ideas of cinema material, and presented new combinations of cinema technique. But although its patent sincerity, force and craftsmanship excited the attention of every film-goer who had found the American movie inadequate for his needs, the Swedish film came too early in the cinema to win a place and hold it. The movie was still a popular form of entertainment; the group feeling, the experimentalist feeling, the sense of a modern expression for a modern generation, had not yet invaded it. There was not yet a big enough audience for Sjostrom; Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness was made half a dozen years before its time.'
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