30 Years of Brilliance: 1930-1959
Josef von Sternberg, not long ago would have been included in any serious list of the greatest filmmakers. In recent years, however, his ornate style has fallen out of favor. More is the pity, because von Sternberg was a true original, a visual stylist without peer, and one of cinema's great obsessives.
He made his name with the independently produced 'The Salvation Hunters' in 1925, and his fortune witn the first true gangster film 'Underworld' in 1927. None of his surviving silents are without interest - 'The Last Command' in 1928 is brilliant - and his first talkie, 'Thunderbolt' in 1929, shows an immediate grasp of how to use sound. But it was with 'Der Blaue Engel' in 1930 that von Sternberg came into his own, not least because of meeting legendary screen siren Marlene Dietrich.
He made six more films with Dietrich, obsessing over his star and their relationship. Those six films - 'Morocco' in 1930, 'Dishonored' in 1931, 'Shanghai Express' and 'Blonde Venus' in 1932, 'The Scarlet Empress' in 1934, and 'The Devil Is a Woman' in 1935 - are among the most remarkable ever made. The best of them, 'Shanghai Express', is a stunning foray into pre-design and stylized writing that transcends its form to become a moving drama of love and faith without losing its cynical psychosexual edge. Nearly as good is the baroque 'The Scarlet Empress', probably the most style-driven movie of the 1930's.
Von Sternberg's post- Dietrich work was often interesting, and 'The Shanghai Gesture' in 1941 was especially striking visually, with its glamorous casino and spinning roulette wheels, as von Sternberg showed the dangers of gambling addiction. But nothing else ever scaled the heights of his richest and most obsessive period, and his name will remain ever linked with that of Dietrich.
