Sjöström, Victor

Sjöström, Victor

 or Victor Seastrom

Sjöström in Wild Strawberries, 1957

(credit: Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City)

(born Sept. 20, 1879, Silbodal, Swed.—died Jan. 3, 1960, Stockholm) Swedish film actor and director. Trained as a stage actor, he directed and starred in his first movie, The Gardener, in 1912. With notable films such as Ingeborg Holm (1913), The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), and The Phantom Carriage (1921), he established the artistic excellence of the Swedish silent film in the post-World War I era. In 1923 he moved to Hollywood, where he directed movies such as The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928). He returned to Sweden in 1930 and acted in numerous films, notably Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957). Sjöström's films are lyrically beautiful expressions of humanity's relationship to nature and to society.