Memorable

[randy_byers]

This morning I opened my e-mail and found a message from notification@powells.com.

'What the hell?' I asked myself.

'Psst!' said the e-mail. 'A book on your Notification List at Powells.com is now in stock or available for backorder.'

'What the hell?' I asked myself.

'Cinema of Josef Von Sternberg by John Baxter,' said the e-mail.

Oh, right! I must have used the Powells notification service on a whim because I couldn't find the book anywhere online, which I kind of remember. That must have been, what, over a year ago? I dunno, I forget. Computers never forget, eh? Or at least they remember longer than I do.

Score!

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's good. Amazon has or used to have a user-generated notification service for new books, but mine seem to have terminated years ago. (Not to be confused with the Amazon-generated "You bought X, you might like Y" service which goes on for ever.) Nice to confirm that Powell's works, even the next year.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I was pretty amused by the "psst!" at the beginning of the message too. As though they knew I had stopped paying attention long ago.

[profgeek.livejournal.com]

Don't you just love it when you forget about something you ordered or put a search on months ago, then suddenly it pops up in your e-mails? It's almost like another Christmas!

BTW: who the hell's Josef Von Sternberg?

I'm serious about this; I really don't know the name. Please enlighten me as to some of his work.

Who was Josef von Sternberg?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

He was a Hollywood film director who got his first credit (as an assistant director) in 1919 and his last credit (on a film that was taken away from him by producer Howard Hughes) in 1957. He's most famous for the seven films he made with Marlene Dietrich, starting with The Blue Angel in 1930. His are among the most visually beautiful movies I've ever seen, and the stories are all astonishing explorations of sexual desire and power and humiliation, and identity as artifice. Here's Tag Gallagher describing one of the great moments in the second movie von Sternberg made with Dietrich:

"In Morocco Amy Jolly (Dietrich) walks out onto the stage in a man's tails and top hat, and simply stands there smoking, above the pit, while people boo. We understand without discourses but by myriad instants scattered through one mere minute, we understand identity, and why this was such a tour de force of shocking liberation in 1930, of both delight and terror, and still feels so today: an immense defiance; unashamed of sexual lust, prostitution, exhibitionism; indifferent to what people think: she kisses a girl and picks up a stud. And is applauded. Toward Menjou, in contrast, she is professional; in a flick of a second she looks him up and down and shows pleasure at what she sees. Most movies cannot express this much in two hours."

Criterion is rumored to be putting out a boxed set of his silent movies next year, and that would make me a very happy camper. Underworld (1927) is one of the earliest movies in the gangster cycle, with a story by Ben Hecht, who won an Oscar for it.

Re: Who was Josef von Sternberg?

[profgeek.livejournal.com]

Oh! I've seen Morocco, but that was many years ago. So von Sternberg directed it? Very cool. Now I can put another name to that movie, besides Marlene Dietrich, that is.