Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

It really is amazing to think of how far cinema receded with the introduction of sound. By 1928, filmmakers like Murnau, Hitchcock, Ford, von Stroheim, Lang, and Dreyer were doing really interesting things with their cameras in terms of moving them, swinging them around, really embracing montage as a storytelling device, and doing really complicated…

Advertisement

The Best Picture Winners at the Oscars: A Statement of Purpose

I'm not doing this all at once. I don't think I could take that. I'm going to take this in stages, mostly just finding little holes in my schedule here and there to pop in five to ten movies at a time. It will probably take me a couple of years to complete this. So,…

Erich von Stroheim: The Definitive Ranking

Erich von Stroheim's directing career lasted little more than a decade from the middle period of the silent era right through the beginning of the sound era, though his first full sound film can hardly be called his at this point, reshot by two other directors and mangled by the studio. Several of his films…

Hello, Sister!

According to a pair of cinema historians, Erich von Stroheim directed either 60% or 75% of the final product that got the name, Hello, Sister! Originally titles Walking Down Broadway based on an unpublished play by Dawn Powell, Stroheim finally worked on time during production and within budget, but he ended up producing, reportedly, a…

Queen Kelly

Okay, so this requires a small bit of explanation. Erich von Stroheim was hired to write and direct a film for Gloria Swanson (acting as both star and producer), and Stroheim's tendency towards sadism eventually just angered Swanson enough that she had him fired from the production. Not wanting to waste any more money or…