| |
|
|
| Erich
von Stroheim |
|
|
| Director
/ Screenwriter / Actor / Production Designer / Producer / Editor |
| 1885 - 1957 |
| Born September 22,
Vienna, Austria |
| Key
Production Country: USA |
| Key Genres:
Drama, Melodrama, Psychological Drama |
| Key
Collaborators: Ben
Reynolds (Cinematographer), Richard Day (Production Designer), Dale
Fuller (Character Player), ZaSu Pitts (Leading Player), Maude George
(Leading Character Player), Tully Marshall (Leading Character Player), George Fawcett (Leading Character Player), William Daniels (Cinematographer), Frank E. Hull (Editor), Sylvia
Ashton (Character Player) |
|
Highly Recommended: Greed
(1924) |
| Recommended:
Foolish Wives (1922), The Merry Widow (1925), Queen
Kelly (1928), The
Wedding March (1928) |
| Links: [
IMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
A Tribute to Erich von Stroheim
] [
Derek Malcolm's Century of Films: "Greed"
] [
von Stroheim Profile] [
Review of
"Citizen Kane" by Erich
von Stroheim ] [
Horror-Wood Webzine
Article ] |
| Books: [
Von:
The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim ] [ Stroheim
] [ Ethics
and Social Criticism in the Hollywood Films of Erich von Stroheim, Ernst
Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder ] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: Foolish Wives (1922), Greed (1924), Queen Kelly (1928), The Wedding March (1928) |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| |
    |
| |
| |
|
|
| |
"Only
the first two films of the nine directed by Erich von Stroheim
(Erich Oswald Stroheim) were released without studio
interference. Yet, despite the vandalism committed on his art,
he remains one of cinema's great figures...As a director, he was
profligate with studio money (for example, he rebuilt a large
part of Monte Carlo on the Universal backlot) so that Irving
Thalberg, Head of Production, called him a 'footage fetishist.'" -
Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006) |
|
| |
|
|
| |
"Stroheim's
combination of naturalism and melodrama, not to mention his
stately camera and editing styles, made a significant
contribution to the progress of film language and technique.
More importantly, his interest in the less salubrious aspects of
both the individual psyche and society at large ensure that his
films retain lasting sophistication and modernity." - Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
|
| |
|
|
| |
"Like
all the great silent directors he knew how necessary it was to
abandon taste for obsession. His reckless enlargement of
situations was a form of improvisation, even if it entailed
crazy expense and delay. Left to himself, Stroheim might never
have finished a film, so chronic was the fever for detail. For
all that he explored realism of character and delighted in
location work, nonetheless he was capable of sudden, exquisite
insights - usually into perversion, lust, malice, or pride. His
films amassed detail relentlessly, but never lost sight of
character or structure." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
|
| |
|
|
| |
"In the American silent cinema, von Stroheim was to cynicism
what Griffith was to idealism.
Andrew Sarris has noted that Griffith found purity even in the
lowliest places, whereas von Stroheim unearthed evil in the
highest towers of the rich and in the most heavenly marriages." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
|
| |
|
|
| |
"Since
that first showing of Foolish Wives I have seemed to walk
through vast crowds of people, their white American faces turned
towards me in stern reproof." -
Erich von Stroheim |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
