STUDIES

Beginnings and Golden Age of Swedish Cinema: disclosing autonomy

The topic of the Swedish silent film, especially in the last twenty years, produced a group of texts in Sweden and abroad which today represent the core literature if you want to examine the epoch which is often seen as the peak of the Swedish cinema and a relevant part of the history of film in general. Drawing on historic studies of the (silent) R. Waldekranz's film, detailed study of the then film discourse by E. Liljedahl Stummfilmen i Sverige — kritik och debatt (1970) and Olsson's analyses of censorship debates in Sweden, the authors examine a wide spectrum of formal and contextual characteristics out of which two thematic units should be distinguished — the first unit starts from the subtext of the appearance and influence of censorship in the period of the early silent film, while the other deals with the so called golden age of the Swedish film in the later period, from mid-1910s to early 1920s. The idea of this text is to organize an overview of more important elements of the mentioned texts, which are almost impossible to find outside Sweden, around those problems, i.e. to link those problems with the beginner's fascination with early film theories and the Scandinavian silent film.

Janica Tomić