We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
IV
SOUND-FILM
IN SWEDEN
AT first it seemed that the coming of the sound-film would mean the extinction of the Swedish cinema. The attempts at international co-operation and international films had failed, and in any case they meant nothing when sound had thrown language barriers round the overseas markets. Who would want to hear Swedish from the screen? Only a few million Scandinavians, and at first sight they did not seem sufficient to form an economic foundation for filmmaking. Meanwhile the American films were sweeping into the world's cinemas, while countries such as France and Germany provided within their own borders a large enough audience to make film production possible. The outlook was discouraging.
But film-making was not extinguished in Sweden. It was argued that, while Swedish films could command no audience overseas, they had a certain audience at home. Whatever the quality of the films, there would always be audiences who would prefer to hear Swedish from the screen than other languages interpreted by printed captions. The films could not be costly and would never make large profits; but if a level could be struck film production would be possible.
Other than economic arguments weighed with the Svensk Filmindustri in reaching their decision to continue production. There was an intense pride in the tradition which had been created and in the world reputation which Sjostrom and Stiller had won for the Swedish cinema. There may also have been a consciousness of the effect of abandoning so powerful a medium as the screen to the languages and cultures of foreign countries. This would have been a consideration within the Swedish character.
And so neither in 1928, nor in 1932 after the Kreuger crash, did the Svensk Filmindustri abandon production. The first film made with sound was Sag Det i Toner (1929), the story of a tram-conductor who became a composer of popular songs. %A quartet singing under Bellman's statue, the brass band at Hasselbacken, a noisy tram-ride through the town — these were the first sounds in the Swedish
18