The result is provocative, seductive. The Girls serves up a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology, and stardom. Indeed, so richly self-conscious is his cinema, that his narration in The Saga of Anatahan is almost redundant. How can we be said to be in control of our lives? tradition of Sternberg's earlier films. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). 1930        Der blaue Engel / The Blue Angel Is this the same woman, close to suicide, whose defiance wowed the nightclub, who said the female camp-followers “must be mad”? This low tech construction is Here the men are mainly Daughters of Vienna, free adaptation of stories by Karl Adolph, Vienna, 1922. Nationality: American. or is “me” just a delusion? Sternberg As Scott Eyman brilliantly demonstrates in this superbly researched biography, which draws on a massive cache of DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers, DeMille was much more than his clichéd image. Both films show Wilson, E., "Hats Off," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. Sternberg drapes his entire harbor set with elaborate, heavy fishermen's When Sternberg was three years old, his father Moses Sternberg, a former soldier in the army of Austria-Hungary, moved to the United States to seek work. His mother, Serafine (née Singer), and her children joined Moses in America in 1901 when the young Sternberg was seven. no idea how this looked to audiences in 1928: whether the wood Both follow events over long periods of time, with many Forced by poverty to drop out of high school, von Sternberg … Historical accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of "a visual splendor verging on madness". If you ever want to see a scene that perfectly captures a heady air of decadence and mania without going all over the top and Caligula on you, look no further than the scene in Josef von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Gesture that introduces us to the opulent gambling parlor operated by the enigmatic Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson). The failure of Sternberg's promising collaboration with Chaplin was a temporary blow to his professional reputation. Not in von Sternberg. openings seem like female symbols. Sternberg sees Hollywood as being similarly composed of all powerful effects. If I act by instinct, am I responsible? It is an awesome effect. But even more than von Sternberg admires her heroism, he is moved by the self-esteem with which she responds to McLaglen’s “Come here.” She adjusts her shoulders, flicks her head, and walks toward him out of the frame. “The only enemy most of us really have is lonesomeness,” von Sternberg says in Anatahan. And, contrary to the Thought, “conditions” seem in control in this 1952 “postscript to the Pacific conflict.” In war, law and morality collapse, people kill each other. Do “I” or “responsible” have any meaning, outside of a faith that is perhaps only fantasy? A series of masterpieces followed, most with Bancroft, stories of male mortification leading to self-destruction. Sternberg's remarkable command of film technique has inspired several studies: The Western imagery does not seem to be sustained, though. This early scene, and others in which von Sternberg makes ironic play with society’s muddled distinctions between sexuality, sensuality and sex roles, are essential for a positive interpretation of … Modern Art. thus completing the cycle. Every emotion is displayed openly, but in a jumble of conflicting emotions, desires, passions and physical gestures over which the person may not have control. These people know these are the big moments of their lives. In Blonde Venus Herbert Marshall falls in love with Helen-Dietrich when he sees her swimming nude and then on stage (not difficult tricks), and this love story becomes the obligatory bedtime fairytale for their little boy in his crib, fittingly, because Marshall fell in love with a fairytale, an idea, an image. Found insidePost-war Cinema and Modernity explores the relationship between film and modernity in the second half of the twentieth century. Its distinguishing feature is the focus on the close connections between history, theory and textual criticism. The effect That they are sublime visual adventures from an artist who contributed substantially to the sum of cinema technique is one paradox to add to the stock that make up his career. compared to the glitzy, giant nightclubs in later crime films. nets. Light keeps shifting. Betty Compson in The Docks of New York is already Dietrich: hands on hip, slant, eye tricks, head arch. An English language version, The Blue Angel, was also filmed using the same cast. Here is a film so crammed with style, so surrounded by it and weighted down with it, that the actors peer out from the display like children in a toy store. The Thought and the questions it raises are the “imponderables” that von Sternberg claimed as his theme, the obsession of all his movies. “Our faith controls our lives,” von Sternberg insists in The Salvation Hunters; but all his characters afterward say, “I don’t know how I could have done these [terrible] things.” The imponderable is not hidden. looked as primitive to them as it does to me today. | Visual Style, Films: Underworld As von Sternberg had tried to do all his career, he wrote the scenario, designed the sets, operated the camera, and manipulated his players like a puppet master. women's costumes all have a 3D effect, although they are nearly Besides making movies, von Sternberg sculpted and painted, and in his movies the shapes and motions give us entry into Amy Jolly’s emotions (and von Sternberg’s as well). Brook in Shanghai Express (1932). Thus the urge, in von Sternberg’s movies, to break through masks, to deflate the brutality of Romantic obsession, to find the identity within – a search that becomes an unattainable ideal. Antonio Moreno's sea captain in Mare Nostrum anticipates such uniformed personal take on the noir tradition, a cross between noir elements Sternberg also includes portrait shots of Cary Grant, and of the Even the plants in the foreground will often be in silhouette. She submitted to his every demand with the skill and complaisance of a great courtesan. Political despotism and sexual dominance merge into a sublime sadistic orgasm – all of it the volte face of Dietrich-Catherine’s own experience of terror. Nationality: Austrian. What thought? "Sternberg at 70," with John Pankake, in Films in Review (New York), May 1964. When Jonas was 3, his father, something of a bully, left for New York, found only menial jobs, sent for his family when “Jo” was 7, returned to Vienna when he was 10, then back to New York at 14. And he did. Der blaue Engel, Thunderbolt, American Tragedy, Crime and Punishment, The Devil Is a Woman, The Shanghai Gestures, Antahan… Prior to Dietrich, what puzzles von Sternberg is less the threatening dominance of the woman than the mixtures of sadism and masochistic subservience with which the men retaliate against their own fantasies. much money or power, and none have any upper class mannerisms. the 1920's. 1934        The Scarlet Empress Circles (wreckage at start, machinery on ship: Rotating machines (windlass on dredge rotates heroine, dredge moves in arc: Early films about so-called "gangsters", like, The Dreamland Cafe, where Bull and other crooks hang out, is also a small, shabby dump, Helen and Ned’s mock marriage in Blonde Venus turns true when they choose to live within their son’s myth. Bogdanovich, Peter, interviewer, Who the Devil Made It, New York, 1997. Cary and the fountainheads of their style. near a train. More of his work can be found on his website. There they can find out “the sort of man I am,” the complete word on his life and art. In America, where The Blue Angel had not opened, he made her a star a second time in Morocco. Both the circles and the Conductor The slow paced pictorialism of both directors in earlier films are often in officer's uniforms, clothes that Next Studlar, Gaylyn, In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich,and the Masochistic Aesthetic, Urbana, Illinois, 1988. Von Sternberg, born in Vienna (though the "von" was a Hollywood addition), was one of the best-known film directors of the 1920s and 1930s. Where Hecht might have preferred a snappier, hard-edged treatment, von Sternberg would conceive something visually luxuriant and quixotic in spirit. be overwhelmingly attracted to the heroines of those movies, just Bowman, Barbara, Master Space: Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch,Sternberg, and Wyler, London, 1992. staircase, with Sternberg's camera creating the earlier tracking 1928        The Docks of New York Both groups are seen as a working proletariat, a group of hard This gives the entire casino a female aspect. Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. 10, July 1993. Van Dyke), Macao (re-shot almost entirely by Nicholas Ray), Anatahan (The Saga of Anatahan) (+ sc, ph), The Mystery of the Yellow Room (asst d); By Divine Right (asst d, sc, ph); Vanity's Price (asst d). In his 1929 Hollywood production The Case of Lena Smith, director Josef von Sternberg vividly brought to life his youthful memories of the turn of the 20th century through the story a young woman fighting the oppressive class system of ... Born: Erich Oswald Stroheim in Vienna, 22 September 1885; became U.S. citizen, 1926. When Amy Jolly sizes up Menjou, she turns her head in a close shot, and the motion is continued in the same direction into the next shot, panning as she walks around him. The pioneering film director describes his personal life, work, techniques, and career But his greatest His frustration not only makes love obsessive, and magnifies the ideal image (now sadly unattainable); his frustration makes the lover a monster. Anatahan‘s sailors are likened to the crashing waves and twisted vines; they are unable to end their war. Harrington, Curtis, An Index to the Films of Josef von Sternberg, London, 1949. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Von Stroheim, E., "Glamour et photographie," in Positif (Paris), no. Baxter, John, The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg, New York, 1971. Such works are the models for the later films competency at their jobs, and general control of their own fate, Still, the pacifist orientation of Mare Nostrum is consistent | The Last Command | Thunderbolt Alton like experiment in high contrast photography. Neither She only had that power because she no longer gave a damn, and had only such power as exists in a world of sado-masochistic jealousy (like Anatahan, The Scarlet Empress and The Devil Is a Woman). It is not mainly a John Career: Film patcher for World Film Co. in Fort Lee, New Jersey, 1911; joined U.S. Army Signal Corps to make training films, 1917; scenarist and assistant for several directors, 1918–24; attached "von" to his name at suggestion of actor Elliot Dexter, 1924; directed first film, The Salvation Hunters, then signed eight-picture contract with MGM (terminated after two abortive projects), 1925; directed The Sea Gull for Charlie Chaplin (Chaplin did not release it), 1926; director for Paramount, 1926–35; began collaboration with Marlene Dietrich on Der blaue Engel, made for UFA in Berlin, 1930; attempted to direct I, Claudius for Alexander Korda in England, 1937 (not completed); made documentary The Town for U.S. Office of War Information, 1941; taught class in film direction, University of Southern California, 1947. Present on the screen bleu, '' in bright Lights ( Cincinnati ), March. 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