Realizing the witch: science, cinema, and the mastery of the invisible
2016; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 53; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5860/choice.196981
ISSN1943-5975
Tópico(s)Film in Education and Therapy
Resumonat), which was celebrated for Christensen's intense per for mance in the tragic lead role of a man wrongfully jailed and separated from his child.Christensen demonstrated an impressive command of lmmaking well in advance of his contemporaries.These early successes established for Christensen a reputation as an ambitious, innovative, and commercially reliable director within Scandinavian lm circles.Now a proven auteur, Christensen signed with Svenska Biografteatern (renamed Svensk Filmindustri shortly after) in February 1919 and received full artistic control over his projects. 3 Rewarded for his previous efforts with unusually generous support, Christensen found the means to pursue the pioneering, bizarre, and lavish pro ject that is the subject of this book.Christensen's post-Häxan struggles are hardly surprising in retrospect.After previewing an uncensored print of Häxan in 1924, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer asked, "Is that man crazy or a genius?" 4 Banking on "genius," Mayer offered Christensen the chance to make lms in Hollywood, which Christensen accepted in 1926.As was often the case for Eu ro pean directors who moved to the major American studios in the 1920s, Christensen found that both his creative freedom and, crucially, his monetary resources were severely limited within the Hollywood studio system.After working on three lackluster projects for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 5 Christensen moved to First National Pictures in 1928, directing a number of largely forgettable lms, including The Hawk 's Nest (1928), The Haunted House (1928), House of Horror (1929), and with minor praise, Seven Footprints to Satan (1929).While at times these lms display some of the spark of Christensen's previous work, they are hardly remarkable and are today remembered only because the director of Häxan stood at their helm.Christensen, in uncharacteristically quiet fashion, left Hollywood behind in 1935 and returned to Denmark.After a period of reassessment, 6 he entered lmmaking again, this time for Nordisk, producing four sound features between 1939 and 1942.While several of the "social debate" lms Christensen directed at this time were critical and commercial successes, 7 the failure of his last pro ject, the spy thriller The Lady with the Light Gloves (Damen med de lyse Handsker), brought his lmmaking career to an unceremonious
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