The soul of the moving picture (1924)

The Compass of Poetry 137 It is rare that the manager of a Swedish picture strives for such brilliant effects, or for such a wealth of ideas, as characterizes the American and German film manager. Swedish film technique stands nearly still; if it moves at all, it is a cautious move. This is true, indeed, of Swedish film art as a whole — that art which came as a direct revelation to, though it left its imprint upon, the film art of other peoples, and especially upon that of the Germans. Swedish photography is not infrequently dull; it seems to have been lighted up from underneath; it makes no attempt to compete with the chiaroscuro for which American and German operators are noted. The Swede creates for himself. He loves the figures of his native land; in them and through them he improvises; he rings changes on the same motives. Does he really wish to create art? SVill the seed he has been sowing grow? While the Swede was quietly engaged in his dreamy plays, the American and German — stimulated by him to a rather high degree — were chiseling from the stone blocks of their own folk souls stronger and more delusive pictures which, in their innermost nature, were no less true than the film of the Swede. Since the Swede makes no attempt to speak to the world, but only to a limited circle of intellectually inclined people, he