Abstract
This article examines four Danish filmmakers whose careers took them across borders: Urban Gad, Gunnar Sommerfeldt, George Schneevoigt, and Carl Theodor Dreyer, focusing on the films the last three made in Norway, Dreyer's Prästänkan (1921, a Swedish production) and Glomdalsbruden (1926), Sommerfeldt's Hamsun adaptation Markens Grøde (1921), and Schneevoigt's Laila (1929), as well as Gad's unsuccessful attempt to set up an inter-Scandinavian film company. At the same time, the article tries to assess the usefulness of a theoretical concept that seems suitable for the investigation of such bordercrossing filmmakers: Jurij Lotman's concept of the boundary. The article concludes that this concept is useful as a heuristic device, because it calls attention to figures and works often treated as marginal by national film historiographies, but also that Lotman's model of cultural dynamics, which emphasizes the periphery, does not fit well with the centrality of the dominant Swedish film industry to the development of Scandinavian silent film during the 1920s.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | European Journal of Scandinavian Studies |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 168-187 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| ISSN | 2191-9399 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2015 |