The Life and Afterlife of Swedish Biograph

Swedens early film industry was dominated by Swedish Biograph (Svenska Biografteatern), home to star directors like Victor Sjstrm and Mauritz Stiller. It is nostalgically remembered as the generative site of a nascent national artform, encapsulating a quintessentially Nordic aestheticthe epicenter of Swedens cinematic Golden Age. In The Life and Afterlife of Swedish Biograph, veteran film scholar Jan Olsson takes a hard look at this established, romanticized narrative and offers a far more complete, complex, and nuanced story. Nearly all of the studios original negatives were destroyed in an explosion in 1941, but Olssons comprehensive archival research shows how the company operated in a commercial, international arena, and how it was influenced not just by Nordic aesthetics or individual genius but also by foreign audiences expectations, technological demands, Hollywood innovations, and the gritty back-and-forth between economic pressures, government interference, and artistic desires. Olssons focus is wide, encompassing the studios production practices, business affairs, and cinematographic conventions, as well as the latter-day archival efforts that both preserved and obscured parts of Swedish Biographs story, helping construct the companys rosy legacy. The result is a necessary rewrite to Swedish film historiography and a far fuller picture of a canonical film studio.