“Film is a collaborative medium, or so people say, unless by “people” we mean Josef von Sternberg. To become a director is, more often than not, to reveal yourself as a control freak, but von Sternberg was the original micromanager, and his arrogance was legendary. Even long after his career was over, he was reluctant to discuss colleagues. Screenwriter Jules Furthman was responsible for much of the script of Shanghai Express, but von Sternberg always maintained that the entire treatment was one page written by story creator Harry Hervey. Von Sternberg biographer John Baxter cites the gifted Paramount art director Hans Dreier as a major stylistic influence, taking the director from a realistic approach to the “veiled sensuality” he would develop over the course of his career—and adds drily, “It goes without saying that [Dreier] receives no mention in Fun in a Chinese Laundry,” von Sternberg’s notoriously cranky memoir.” Farran Smith Nehme rectifies some of the oversights that von Sternberg’s own ego helped fuel, citing crucial contributions to the director’s Paramount masterpieces by studio mainstays, reminding you that for a director with such a monstrously exacting and domineering vision, von Sternberg could sometimes glance over found objects and imperiously claim them as his own.
“In La première nuit, shadows, rather than obscuring or blocking our vision, often allow us to see further. The metro becomes a site of enhanced visibility, prone to projections, hallucinations, lyrical associations. In a remarkable series of shots, the hero’s highly contrasted shadow is casted over a map of the Parisian metro; the black shape raises its head, following the blinking lights that signal the different stations, as if trying to decipher a treasure map. Under the boy’s enchanted gaze, the successively flashing paths traced by the various metro lines remind us of wondrous constellations of stars flickering in the firmament.” Cristina Álvarez López explores Franju’s short film La première nuit, finding a marvelous confection of documentary and oneiric fantasy, and one of the cinema’s finest portraits of first love.
Read More “The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 7”