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Poll

What's your favorite film by Josef von Sternberg?

Underworld
0 (0%)
The Last Command
3 (13.6%)
The Docks of New York
5 (22.7%)
Thunderbolt
0 (0%)
The Blue Angel
4 (18.2%)
Morocco
0 (0%)
Dishonored
0 (0%)
An American Tragedy
0 (0%)
Shanghai Express
0 (0%)
Blonde Venus
1 (4.5%)
The Scarlet Empress
2 (9.1%)
The Devil Is a Woman
0 (0%)
Crime and Punishment
0 (0%)
The Shanghai Gesture
0 (0%)
Macao
0 (0%)
Anatahan
1 (4.5%)
other
0 (0%)
haven't seen any
6 (27.3%)
don't like any
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 21

Author Topic: Sternberg, Josef von  (Read 7427 times)

sdedalus

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #20 on: June 22, 2012, 10:55:28 PM »
I can see The Scarlet Empress as grotesque, but I don't know how that could be bad in the context of the film.  Certainly its grotesquery is entirely intentional*.



*We can never ever really know the true intentions of any other human being.
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worm@work

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #21 on: June 22, 2012, 10:58:16 PM »
LOL, yes indeed :). I love it regardless.

pixote

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #22 on: August 21, 2012, 04:00:31 PM »






The Docks of New York
Josef von Sternberg, 1928

The Docks of New York - The third and greatest film in the Silent Josef von Sternberg set, I find it hard to write about this without just gushing a nonsensical stream of superlatives. George Bancroft stars as a stoker on a ship who, while on shore leave, rescues a girl who'd tried to kill herself by jumping in the water. He fishes her out and takes her to the local bar, where they spend the evening while he gets drunk, pushes people around, and tries to cheer her up. The obnoxious engineer of the stoker's ship causes trouble (he doesn't like the stoker, and does like the girl), leading to a robbery, a wedding and a murder (not necessarily in that order). LIke Japanese Girls at the Harbor, another silent film I saw recently and adored beyond all reason, the plot is the least interesting thing about this movie. While that film was beautifully composed, this movie is literally breathtaking. The opening 30 minutes is visual storytelling at its greatest, not just interesting compositions, or striking uses of shadows and light, or weirdly expressive set design, but instead in unifying all those things it seems to represent the core of what cinema is all about. Like FW Murnau's Sunrise, really the only film I can compare it with, it is the absolute peak of silent filmmaking, by which I mean the peak of any kind of filmmaking.

The Docks of New York didn't strike me as a motion picture. That is, I didn't recognize it as photography in motion. It much more closely resembled a painting with breath. It was frustrating trying to capture screenshots because the frozen images never seemed to match my experience of the film's visuals as it played out in time. There are some pretty pictures above, sure, but to me they all seem to lack the luminescent, romantic vitality that von Sternberg brushes onto the screen for most of The Docks of New York's fairly brief running time. Likewise, no still picture of George Bancroft seems able to capture the larger-than-life physicality that he brings to the role Bill Roberts. He's so much smaller in the screenshots than in the film, so much more ordinary. The Docks of New York is cinema, and the magic of that, that painting with light, can be hinted at by still photography — but that's the limit.

It's telling, I think, that von Sternberg's previous film was The Last Command, because the attention given to the background actors here is quite remarkable. Just look at their faces! They bring such vibrancy to the mise-en-scene, giving the main players the perfect background to play against. And the casting is wonderful.

Jules Furthman's story is a bit slight, and it all plays out a little bit slowly. I didn't mind too much, happy as I was to soak in the visuals, but it is what keeps The Docks of New York from greatness, for me. For now. I think it would improve on a second viewing, especially if that viewing could be in 35mm.

Grade: B+

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

worm@work

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #23 on: August 21, 2012, 04:38:12 PM »
Woo! I can't really say that I found the story slight necessarily. Suicide, emergency wedding followed by separation, gunshots... so much drama! That said, am totally with you on screenshots not capturing it's beauty.. especially Bancroft's screen-filling presence in the film.

sdedalus

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #24 on: August 21, 2012, 04:38:34 PM »
woo!
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1SO

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #25 on: February 16, 2013, 08:38:11 PM »
Underworld
* * *

Last week I showed Mrs. 1SO Little Ceasar. Edward G. was great as always, but the rest of the film was stilted and stale. A problem I also had with The Public Enemy. So it's interesting that this first gangster movie feels quite fresh and exciting. Even though the story has been told many times since (recently in A Bittersweet Life) the combination of von Sternberg's direction, Ben Hecht's screenplay and terriffic performances by George Bancroft and Evelyn Brent make for a fun time.

I remember Brent stealing scenes from the great Emil Jannings in The Last Command, but while The Docks of New York is my favorite von Sternberg, this is my favorite performance by Bancroft. It's got all the joy and star power of the many great gangsters who would follow, but is able to do infinitely more, especially during the final scenes. He's a real joy to watch, but Bancroft also displays limitless ability. He doesn't waste film footage.

1SO

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2013, 11:05:58 PM »
Shanghai Express
* * *

Another winner from von Sternberg, although this one veers a bit close to the sillier stuff I didn't like in The Scarlet Empress. (The Shanghai Gesture is even loonier, but it kind of goes so far around the bend it ends up a winner on that excess.) The plot is  Stagecoach + Casablanca type stores spliced together by Pedro Almodovar. It never bogs down and is well acted and beautifully shot.

Like with von Sternberg, I've written both good and bad things about Marlene Dietrich. Her off-kilter accent and mannish singing voice never fit her legendary status as an International Superstar/Sex Bob-omb. After 11 films, including multiple rewatches of Destry Rides Again, I am definitely on board. The way she is photographed here is unbelievable at times. She's not just acting but using the camera to her advantage, allowing it to take her in to the benefit of the audience. It's a dance of confidence balanced with fragility. She gives something to every close up. Suddenly her Spock-tweezed eyebrows and hooded lids become the kind of face Gloria Swanson would envy.

I now crave more from both Von Sternberg and Dietrich. I've added The Devil is a Woman to my Watchlist. Haven't decided on Ernst Lubitsch's Angel (1937) which Mrs. 1SO may also like. We'll both definitely be watching Desire, which is a rom-com directed by Borzage and matching Dietrich with Gary Cooper.

sdedalus

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #27 on: February 19, 2013, 11:59:13 PM »
I hope you'll give Morocco another shot someday. Because it is (among) the best.
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1SO

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #28 on: February 20, 2013, 07:22:09 PM »
I'm going to make a list of acclaimed films I need to rewatch and Morocco will be on that list.

1SO

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Re: Directors Best Poll - Josef von Sternberg
« Reply #29 on: February 21, 2013, 10:50:13 AM »
The Devil is a Woman
* * 1/2

It's like there's two von Sternbergs. This is the silly one from The Scarlet Empress who covers everyone with confetti and plays it for laughs... I think. Starting with Edward Everett Horton doing stand-up and Dietrich cast as a Spaniard leads me to believe this is a comedy, but the humor is just his usual romantic melodrama cranked up to '11'. I can understand him not wanting to make the same type of film over and over, but then why not choose a different script? (The Shanghai Gesture worked because the story was a preposterous as the storytelling.) This makes me miss the more serious work. It's great that he can stage scenes like 1930s Baz Luhrmann, but this square peg of a story doesn't fit into the round hole.

 

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