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Erich von Stroheim |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Actor |
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1885 - 1957 |
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Born September 22,
Vienna, Austria |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Drama, Melodrama, Psychological Drama |
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Key
Collaborators: Richard Day (Production Designer), Ben
Reynolds (Cinematographer), 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) |
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Highly Recommended:
Greed
(1924)*, The Wedding March (1928)* |
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Recommended:
Foolish Wives (1922)*,
The Merry Widow (1925), Queen
Kelly (1928)* |
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Approach with Caution:
Hello, Sister! (1933) [co-directed by Alan Crosland] |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Wikipedia
] [
Derek Malcolm's Century of Films: "Greed"
]
[
von Stroheim Profile] [
Review of
"Citizen Kane" by Erich
von Stroheim ] [
Silent Era ] [
Grapevine Video ] |
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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 ] |
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"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) |
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"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) |
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"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)
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"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) |
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"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 |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we
haven't seen include
Blind Husbands
(1919). |
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8 |
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"All
of his films are concerned with characters who degrade
themselves in the pursuit of money, sex, and/or status. What
is remarkable about von Stroheim’s representations of these
endeavors, however, is the density of sociocultural detail
against which they are enacted. His two masterpieces,
Greed (1924) and The Wedding March (1928),
recreate prewar San Francisco and Vienna in obsessive
detail... The exactitude of Von Stroheim’s vision and
struggles against the emerging studio system make him a
cause célèbre for auteur theorists. Conversely, studio
apologists reference his career as a cautionary tale for
egomaniacal filmmakers. Most of von Stroheim’s work is
incomplete, truncated, or has been lost entirely… Whatever
one’s opinions of his ambitions, von Stroheim remains one of
the most controversial and uncompromising filmmakers in
Hollywood history."
-
Aaron E. N. Taylor, Schirmer
Encyclopedia of Film |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
The Far Side of Paradise |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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●
Clarence Brown |
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D.W. Griffith |
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Charles Chaplin |
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Marcel
L'Herbier |
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Ernst Lubitsch |
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Max Ophüls |
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G.W. Pabst |
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Jean Renoir |
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Josef von Sternberg |
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Luchino
Visconti |
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Orson Welles |
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Billy Wilder |
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