The success of Sjöström’s 1917 Terje Vigen, adapted from Ibsen’s long poem, prompted Svenska Bio to change their production policies, radically reducing their output and concentrating on prestigious adaptations of well-known literary works, such as Sjöström’s Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru and his many Selma Lagerlöf adaptations. But well before the Ibsen film, Victor Sjöström had made a name for himself, and it was in fact the crime drama Dödskyssen that made him famous in France, where Louis Delluc and later Georges Sadoul praised the film. Sjöström is not only the director and co-writer of the script, he also plays both leading characters – two engineers, one stepping in for the other when the latter turns mysteriously ill trying to meet a deadline for a new design. Indeed, the film’s complexity originates from the interchangeable appearances of both protagonists. The film opens with the result of the crime, and the narrative then unfolds in flash-backs. Different statements by three different witnesses give us various portions of the story, much like in Rashomon thirty-five years later. As in so many Sjöström’s films from the 10’s there is a lot of use of depth-of-field, and characters move from background to foreground. Due to the dark interiors it sometimes seems as if the characters emerge from the dark strip of the celluloid itself. The film not only has an elaborate narrative structure but equally elaborative photographic effects, created by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon. The double exposures are expertly executed, particularly in the breathtaking scene where both Sjöström characters are standing in front of a mirror, the director thus quadrupled in front of the camera.

Jon Wengström