One Hundred Fortieth Anniversary of This Man’s Birth
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In the motion picture Sunset Boulevard, lauded this year for the seventy anniversary of its release, three famous Hollywood directors appear on screen. The viewer sees Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille. Yet only the last is seen directing, perhaps because DeMille was still directing.
To those seeing the movie for the first time--or the third time or the thirteenth--it might come as a surprise that Max the butler, who claims to be a director, was portrayed by a director. Furthermore, the silent movie shown in Sunset Boulevard was really a movie, really starring the female star of Sunset Boulevard, and really directed by von Stroheim. These many touchstones of truth may subtract from the parabolic sum of the story, or was Billy Wilder determined to mimic von Stroheim’s passion for authenticity? Perhaps Wilder, with Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman, knew that a movie about Hollywood made in 1950 should borrow from four decades of Hollywood history. |
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ERICH OSWALD STROHEIM was born--allegedly--on September 22, 1885, in Vienna--presumably--then the capital, most certainly, of the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary. The person known to cinema historians and movie fanatics as Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim would not be born until November 25, 1909, when he arrived in New York City. “The Man You Love To Hate” would not be born until 1918, and this last incarnation outlived either Stroheim.
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Above Left: The mere functionary
Above: As von Steuben in Blind Husbands Left: Supervised in its entirety by the director who gave himself the oddest directorial credits. Right: “Gentlemen, that is question twenty one.” |
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My favourite film in which he acted is Five Graves to Cairo, also directed by Billy Wilder. Stroheim portrays General Rommel (Left) and his neck rolls over his collar just as his performance he rolls right over Franchot Tone who plays... somebody. “There will be no duet today.”
Storm Over Lisbon is Casablanca in, well, Lisbon. Somehow, even The Great Gabbo made its way to “The Simpsons” a half-life ago. (Right) |
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Of course, it’s not possible to say which of those movies “personally directed” by von Stroheim is my favourite, and I disregard ranking a director’s works. After all, there are movies taken away from him and these must be considered. There are movies despoiled by producers and this must be considered.
The Wedding March, which stars Fay Wray, is special to me for that reason. His adaptation of Dawn Powell’s Walking Down Broadway is astonishingly modern and very American. It was his only talking picture eventually released as Hello Sister!
My Dad liked The Merry Widow when he saw it a century ago.
The Wedding March, which stars Fay Wray, is special to me for that reason. His adaptation of Dawn Powell’s Walking Down Broadway is astonishingly modern and very American. It was his only talking picture eventually released as Hello Sister!
My Dad liked The Merry Widow when he saw it a century ago.
Oh, and to the Devil with you, Richard Koszarski.
