The Divine Woman

There is something about the twilight of the silent era.  The refinement of the visual language of film and the complex narrative framework and character psychology that good movies were able to establish with an economy of motion are still in many ways unsurpassed.  I certainly have a hard time thinking of giving up dialogue when I write, and I always look at these movies with a sense of wonder and constant learning.

Victor Sjöström is someone I wish I have seen more of.  While I have seen The Wind, the rest of his available films are on my long list of "To Be Seen," the problem being my TBS keeps getting longer, not shorter.

Well, this is an easy one.  Only 10 minutes or so of The Divine Woman survive and it was used as an extra on the Garbo box set that came out a bit ago.  Maybe the rest will be discovered someday in an old box in a hospital or someone's garage.  Who knows?

Is there something extraordinary about this clip?  Sure there is the "multiple clock dissolve to suggest lovemaking" motif around minute eight but instead look at the shots after.  There is the casual lyricism of Garbo and Hanson by the moonlight lit win and then the dissolve into medium shot, where we realize the emotions and psychology of the first half of the scene have been reversed.  Their love has calmed Garbo but stricken Hanson, who now realizes what he is giving up  It is a simple dissolve and it tells us everything we need to know.