Man With A Movie List

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1934 Run-time: 1 hr 44 min - This at first seemed like one of the lesser films from von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, but on reflection I like it a lot.  The set design is phenomenal - the insane chairs with grotesques hovering above the backs, the skeleton at the dinner table.  It's a fever dream, and the fact that it's shot in enough darkness to make the cameras of the time period strain to pick up these backgrounds makes it even more astonishing. - This is from an era of period pieces when actors could just get away with American accents - I'm reminded of the excellent Youtube series on accents.  Surprisingly, I'm not entirely opposed to the old method - it allows the actors to be more naturally expressive.  It just sends a different directorial message, putting the emphasis more on commonalities between that time and place and now.  (It also inevitably comes off as insensitive to culture - I'm not saying we should ...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 20 min Source: DVD Notable for : This is the second, and not the last collaboration between von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich to appear on the last.  It's also perhaps the most iconic, since it concisely captures the strengths of both actress and director.  Like in Morocco, the "exotic" actress is paired with a rich, international setting.  But here Gary Cooper's "what you see is what you get" machismo is traded in for the more complex reservedness of the British actor Clive Brook.  There's also a diverse (i.e. Americans in make-up) and cosmopolitan supporting cast. Verdict : Dietrich is in top form here as the seductress with many layers, a master of expressionism.  Von Sternberg knows how to capture all of her little revealing moments, and there's a lot of brilliant shots, most famously the moment where she hides from the leading man with a cigarette, her face lit in pure black and whi...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1930 Run-time: 1 hr 31 min Source: DVD Wikipedia Notable for : Josef von Sternberg made a star of Marlene Dietrich earlier in 1930 with the classic film The Blue Angel (not on the list).  This is their second film together, made after Dietrich emigrated to America.  Set in French-occupied Morocco, it co-stars Gary Cooper as the devil-may-care French Legionnaire who catches Dietrich's eye - von Sternberg seems to have a penchant for anti-heros, considering Docks of New York , his first film on the list.  Morocco seems to be somewhat divisive among cineastes, who can't decide whether von Sternberg is breaking gender norms here.  There's an intriguing early scene where Dietrich's character kisses a female audience member during a vaudeville performance, but ultimately she falls head over heels for Cooper's character who spurns her after some wavering.  The final scene involves Dietrich throwing it all away and following ...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1928 Run-time: 1 hr 16 min Source: Youtube Silent films were certainly on their way out in 1928, at least if you were an American studio director who's not Chaplin or Keaton, and this was one of those little gems that went largely unseen due to that transition.  It feels a bit like both a proto-noir and a proto-gangster film, but neither of those labels quite fit.  It's actually an effective, unconventional romance film, something that starts out cynical but ends up very sweet. I enjoyed the film more than I thought I would, but with this entry in the list, I can't help but notice the big American studio system of the mid-century is falling into place, with Keaton now making films like The Cameraman  for MGM (a studio which would ultimately ruin his career), and this film released by the newly renamed Paramount Pictures.  Along with it, the rough edges are getting smoothed down a little bit.  Certainly, the standards in...