Josef Von Sternberg (1894-1969)
Von Sternberg today is
probably best known as the discoverer of Marlene Dietrich, a visual
stylist he was obsessive about achieving an overall effect for his
exotic fantasies. He was a true auteur involved in every facet of film
production but was particularly interested in the photography which he
often did himself completely controlling the balance between light and
shadow. His actors had to fit into his overall vision and the leading
men opposite Dietrich found themselves being ignored because his main
interest was in her heroines.
Von Sternberg certainly established Dietrich's legend, no other director really added to it. Although his silent films particularly Docks of New York (1928) and The Last Command (1928) are by no means negligible the peak of his prestige and power was 1930-32. The failure of The Scarlet Empress (1934) at the box office and the end of his association with Dietrich with The Devil is a Woman (1935) signalled the end of the great years. His subsequent films were usually either not suitable subjects for him or like the ambitious I Claudius (1937) ran into production difficulties.
Many critics have attacked Von Sternberg for superficiality. This article by documentary filmmaker John Grierson is fairly typical :
JOE STERNBERG is one of the few directors whose every work one sees as a matter of course. He stepped rather suddenly into the film world in 1925 with a film called The Salvation Hunters which he had financed with his last five thousand dollars. He has been interesting ever since. The Salvation Hunters was a young man's gamble. His stars were taken from the ranks of Poverty Row extras; his story was right outside the Hollywood tradition.
It was a sad romantic affair of how a young man tried to escape from the dreary existence of a dredger. The dredger with its slime was, of course, symbolic. The ending, with its two young lovers moving off into the rising sun, was equally symbolic. Sternberg began with a great hankering for good things.
A great deal must have happened over the years to turn the simple romanticist into this sophisticated purveyor of the meretricious Dietrich. I wish I knew what it was. I knew Sternberg just after his Salvation Hunters and liked him immensely. He had made a fine picture for Metro called The Exquisite Sinner and had been heaved off the payroll for adding some genuine local color to a Breton scene. It struck me that sensibility of his peculiarly intensive and introspective sort was not a very healthy equipment for a hard world, and, in face of his strange progress, I am sure I was right. There is, as you can imagine, no place for the introspectionist in a commercial film world which is as objective in its conceptions as in its accounts.
A director of this instinct is bound to have a solitary and (as commerce goes) an unsuccessful life of it. Sternberg, I think, was weak. Hating the notion of this commercial unsuccess, he has thrown his sensi bility to the winds and accepted the hokum of his masters. His aesthetic conscience is now devoted to making the hokum as good-looking as possible. It is, indeed, almost pathologically good-looking, as by one whose conscience is stricken. I detail this Sternberg saga because it tells more clearly than any personal story I know how even great spirits may fail in film.
The temptation of commercial success is a rather damnable one. There are dollars past dreaming and power and publicity to satisfy every vanity for anyone who will mesmerize the hicks of the world. I watched Sternberg make still another picture, The Woman of the Sea for Chaplin. The story was Chaplins, and humanist to a degree: with fishermen that toiled, and sweated, and lived and loved as proletarians do. Introspective as before, Stemberg could not see it like Chaplin. Instead, he played with the symbolism of the sea till the fishermen and the fish were forgotten. It would have meant something just as fine in its different way as Chaplin's version, but he went on to doubt himself.
He wanted to be a success, and here plainly and pessimistically was the one way to be unsuccessful. The film as a result was neither Chaplin's version nor Sternberg's. It was a strangely beautiful and empty affair possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen of net patterns, sea patterns and hair in the wind. When a director dies, he becomes a photographer.
With Shanghai Express Joe Sternberg has become the great Josef von Sternberg, having given up the struggle for good: a director so successful that even Adolph Zukor is pleased to hold his hand for a brief condescending moment. He has made films with Jannings and George Bancroft: Paying the Penalty, Docks of New York, others of equally exquisite hokum; and Paramount has blessed his name for the money they made. Once from the top of the tree he made a last desperate gesture to his past in The Case of Lena Smith, a fine film which failed; but that is now forgotten and there will never be a repetition. He has found Dietrich and is safe for more dollars, more power, more success than ever.
What irresolute director would not launch a thousand cameras for Dietrich, giving up hope of salvation hereafter? Sternberg has. He has the "Von" and the little warm thankful hand of Adolph Zukor for his pains. Shanghai Express follows the progress of a train from Peking to Shanghai, finding its story among the passengers as The Blue Express did. Dietrich is Shanghai Lily, a lady of no reputation. Clive Brook is an old lover meeting her again, hating her past, but still very much in love with her. They fall into the hands of Chinese revolutionaries and Dietrich saves Clive, and Clive saves Dietrich; and in that last mutual service the dust is shaken out of the Lily's petals and the doubter damns himself for having doubted.
This high argument is staged with stupendous care, stupendous skill, and with an air of most stupendous importance. I remember one shot of the Shanghai express pulling into a wayside station in the early evening. It is one of the half-dozen greatest shots ever taken, and I would see the film for that alone. It is, however, the only noble moment in the film. The scenes of Chinese life are massive, painstaking to the point of genius in their sense of detail and presented very pleasantly in dissolve; the minor acting is fine; but the rest is Dietrich. She is shown in seven thousand and one poses, each of them photographed magnificently. For me, seven thousand poses of Dietrich (or seventy) are Dietrich ad nauseam. Her pose of mystery I find too studied, her make-up too artificial.
Among later films in which Sternberg directed Marlene Dietrich were The Devil Is a Woman and The Scarlet Empress. In 1938 Sternberg visited Britain and announced his intention to make a film version of Zola's Germinal. During the war Sternberg directed a short documentary, The Town, for the U S O.
Sternberg perhaps is still after that ancient intensity. When themes are thin it is a hankering that can bring one very close to the ridiculous.
John Grierson was largely responsible for the wide use of documentary films by the British Government Service public-information program in the 1920s. He was the first to use the word "documentary" in describing Robert Flaherty's Moana, In writing about feature "story" films he inevitably based his criticisms on their social and political content. The above material is taken from Grierson on Documentary : it gives a kaleidoscopic view of the work of some of the well- known directors of the 1930s.
© Derek McLellan 2007,on editing or revisions if any.
Filmography
1925 THE MASKED BRIDE director
1925 THE SALVATION HUNTERS director, screenwriter, editor
1926 THE EXQUISITE SINNER director, screenwriter
1926 A WOMAN OF THE SEA director, screenwriter
1927 UNDERWORLD director
1928 DOCKS OF NEW YORK director
1928 THE DRAGNET director
1928 THE LAST COMMAND director
1928 THE WEDDING MARCH co-editor
1929 THE CASE OF LENA SMITH director
1929 THUNDERBOLT director
1930 THE BLUE ANGEL/ DER BLAUE ENGEL director
1930 MOROCCO director
1931 AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY director, producer
1931 DISHONORED director—from story "X-27", additional music
1932 BLONDE VENUS director, story
1932 SHANGHAI EXPRESS director
1934 THE SCARLET EMPRESS additional music, director, screenwriter
1935 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT director
1935 THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN director, director of photography
1936 THE KING STEPS OUT director
1938 THE GREAT WALTZ uncredited director
1939 SERGEANT MADDEN director
1941 THE SHANGHAI GESTURE director, screenwriter
1944 THE TOWN director
1952 MACAO director
1953 ANATAHAN/ THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN performer, director, screenwriter, director of photography
1957 JET PILOT director
Von Sternberg certainly established Dietrich's legend, no other director really added to it. Although his silent films particularly Docks of New York (1928) and The Last Command (1928) are by no means negligible the peak of his prestige and power was 1930-32. The failure of The Scarlet Empress (1934) at the box office and the end of his association with Dietrich with The Devil is a Woman (1935) signalled the end of the great years. His subsequent films were usually either not suitable subjects for him or like the ambitious I Claudius (1937) ran into production difficulties.
Many critics have attacked Von Sternberg for superficiality. This article by documentary filmmaker John Grierson is fairly typical :
JOE STERNBERG is one of the few directors whose every work one sees as a matter of course. He stepped rather suddenly into the film world in 1925 with a film called The Salvation Hunters which he had financed with his last five thousand dollars. He has been interesting ever since. The Salvation Hunters was a young man's gamble. His stars were taken from the ranks of Poverty Row extras; his story was right outside the Hollywood tradition.
It was a sad romantic affair of how a young man tried to escape from the dreary existence of a dredger. The dredger with its slime was, of course, symbolic. The ending, with its two young lovers moving off into the rising sun, was equally symbolic. Sternberg began with a great hankering for good things.
A great deal must have happened over the years to turn the simple romanticist into this sophisticated purveyor of the meretricious Dietrich. I wish I knew what it was. I knew Sternberg just after his Salvation Hunters and liked him immensely. He had made a fine picture for Metro called The Exquisite Sinner and had been heaved off the payroll for adding some genuine local color to a Breton scene. It struck me that sensibility of his peculiarly intensive and introspective sort was not a very healthy equipment for a hard world, and, in face of his strange progress, I am sure I was right. There is, as you can imagine, no place for the introspectionist in a commercial film world which is as objective in its conceptions as in its accounts.
A director of this instinct is bound to have a solitary and (as commerce goes) an unsuccessful life of it. Sternberg, I think, was weak. Hating the notion of this commercial unsuccess, he has thrown his sensi bility to the winds and accepted the hokum of his masters. His aesthetic conscience is now devoted to making the hokum as good-looking as possible. It is, indeed, almost pathologically good-looking, as by one whose conscience is stricken. I detail this Sternberg saga because it tells more clearly than any personal story I know how even great spirits may fail in film.
The temptation of commercial success is a rather damnable one. There are dollars past dreaming and power and publicity to satisfy every vanity for anyone who will mesmerize the hicks of the world. I watched Sternberg make still another picture, The Woman of the Sea for Chaplin. The story was Chaplins, and humanist to a degree: with fishermen that toiled, and sweated, and lived and loved as proletarians do. Introspective as before, Stemberg could not see it like Chaplin. Instead, he played with the symbolism of the sea till the fishermen and the fish were forgotten. It would have meant something just as fine in its different way as Chaplin's version, but he went on to doubt himself.
He wanted to be a success, and here plainly and pessimistically was the one way to be unsuccessful. The film as a result was neither Chaplin's version nor Sternberg's. It was a strangely beautiful and empty affair possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen of net patterns, sea patterns and hair in the wind. When a director dies, he becomes a photographer.
With Shanghai Express Joe Sternberg has become the great Josef von Sternberg, having given up the struggle for good: a director so successful that even Adolph Zukor is pleased to hold his hand for a brief condescending moment. He has made films with Jannings and George Bancroft: Paying the Penalty, Docks of New York, others of equally exquisite hokum; and Paramount has blessed his name for the money they made. Once from the top of the tree he made a last desperate gesture to his past in The Case of Lena Smith, a fine film which failed; but that is now forgotten and there will never be a repetition. He has found Dietrich and is safe for more dollars, more power, more success than ever.
What irresolute director would not launch a thousand cameras for Dietrich, giving up hope of salvation hereafter? Sternberg has. He has the "Von" and the little warm thankful hand of Adolph Zukor for his pains. Shanghai Express follows the progress of a train from Peking to Shanghai, finding its story among the passengers as The Blue Express did. Dietrich is Shanghai Lily, a lady of no reputation. Clive Brook is an old lover meeting her again, hating her past, but still very much in love with her. They fall into the hands of Chinese revolutionaries and Dietrich saves Clive, and Clive saves Dietrich; and in that last mutual service the dust is shaken out of the Lily's petals and the doubter damns himself for having doubted.
This high argument is staged with stupendous care, stupendous skill, and with an air of most stupendous importance. I remember one shot of the Shanghai express pulling into a wayside station in the early evening. It is one of the half-dozen greatest shots ever taken, and I would see the film for that alone. It is, however, the only noble moment in the film. The scenes of Chinese life are massive, painstaking to the point of genius in their sense of detail and presented very pleasantly in dissolve; the minor acting is fine; but the rest is Dietrich. She is shown in seven thousand and one poses, each of them photographed magnificently. For me, seven thousand poses of Dietrich (or seventy) are Dietrich ad nauseam. Her pose of mystery I find too studied, her make-up too artificial.
Among later films in which Sternberg directed Marlene Dietrich were The Devil Is a Woman and The Scarlet Empress. In 1938 Sternberg visited Britain and announced his intention to make a film version of Zola's Germinal. During the war Sternberg directed a short documentary, The Town, for the U S O.
Sternberg perhaps is still after that ancient intensity. When themes are thin it is a hankering that can bring one very close to the ridiculous.
John Grierson was largely responsible for the wide use of documentary films by the British Government Service public-information program in the 1920s. He was the first to use the word "documentary" in describing Robert Flaherty's Moana, In writing about feature "story" films he inevitably based his criticisms on their social and political content. The above material is taken from Grierson on Documentary : it gives a kaleidoscopic view of the work of some of the well- known directors of the 1930s.
© Derek McLellan 2007,on editing or revisions if any.
Filmography
1925 THE MASKED BRIDE director
1925 THE SALVATION HUNTERS director, screenwriter, editor
1926 THE EXQUISITE SINNER director, screenwriter
1926 A WOMAN OF THE SEA director, screenwriter
1927 UNDERWORLD director
1928 DOCKS OF NEW YORK director
1928 THE DRAGNET director
1928 THE LAST COMMAND director
1928 THE WEDDING MARCH co-editor
1929 THE CASE OF LENA SMITH director
1929 THUNDERBOLT director
1930 THE BLUE ANGEL/ DER BLAUE ENGEL director
1930 MOROCCO director
1931 AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY director, producer
1931 DISHONORED director—from story "X-27", additional music
1932 BLONDE VENUS director, story
1932 SHANGHAI EXPRESS director
1934 THE SCARLET EMPRESS additional music, director, screenwriter
1935 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT director
1935 THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN director, director of photography
1936 THE KING STEPS OUT director
1938 THE GREAT WALTZ uncredited director
1939 SERGEANT MADDEN director
1941 THE SHANGHAI GESTURE director, screenwriter
1944 THE TOWN director
1952 MACAO director
1953 ANATAHAN/ THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN performer, director, screenwriter, director of photography
1957 JET PILOT director
Don't forget our sister site the Golden Age of Hollywood Messageboard
The Golden Age of Hollywood Banners by Ktrek.
Written content of the Golden Age of Hollywood Website (except where indicated) copyright Derek McLellan, 2007.