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.
Who was Josef von Sternberg?
"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.