Erich von Stroheim is considered one of the most popular and discussed directors of motion pictures of the twentieth century. He is very well known for his categorical accuracy and realistic portrayal in his films and had written a lot of screenplays and won outstanding commendation as an actor, particularly for his roles as a megalomaniac and as a sadist. Stroheim was also considered to be a notorious fabricator, who is being a master actor of the silent films had created for himself a past that made him known as an Austrian nobleman who had served a distinguished career in the military.
Born in Austria, von Stroheim was considered a military expert, and his popularity was such that he could get away with making long films of up to eight hours duration which remained popular for the entire period of his life and for a considerable time after his death also. Although the films during that time were of the silent era, he was able to successfully convey his depiction of love, seduction, passion, cruelty, hunger, and lust very effectively among film enthusiasts and critics. In his later years, von Stroheim had become a very familiar figure and had come to be popularly known as “the man you love to hate”. But the large-scale popularity that was once associated with his capacity to pull large crowds could not be maintained for a very long time. During his heydays he could literally move around like a colossus in the film circles and gatherings of the time and millions of dollars could be spent by film producers and enthusiasts at his command. He was born in Vienna to a Czech mother and Silesian father and having been fed up with working in his father’s factory as a manager, he shifted to America in 1906. Initially, he had a difficult time there and had to struggle for some time in the film industry. He had to wangle for jobs as an advisor on war films and was able to get a break as an actor from 1914 onwards. He started acting in good roles and was able to grab some assignments in the films made by DW Griffith such as Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation, which surely gave him the means to live through the extravagant lifestyle that he came to be accustomed to by then. As he became more popular he got good assignments from Universal Studios such as The Devil’s Pass Key and Blind Husbands, both of them being in the nature of being squalid films that were stories of people engaged in distasteful activities. However, the silver linings in these films were the remarkable performances by von Stroheim in regard to the erotic nuances, dazzling details, and hypnotizing feats which easily won him the popularity that was to come for him as an actor of extraordinary attributes.
However, von Stroheim was not able to maintain cordial relations with the management of Universal Studios and by 1922 he had crossed swords with the general manager of the studio, Irving Thalberg, who was considered a very powerful figure in the film circles. As a consequence of the strained relationship with Thalberg, Stroheim’s third film with the studio, Foolish Wives, which portrayed him as a conman in the guise of a nobleman who blackmailed his way through in the entire film, was cut in size from thirty-two reels to fourteen. Further, it is believed that with the bitter connection that had now assumed big proportions with Thalberg, von Stroheim could not complete his next film with Universal, and he then tied up with Goldwyn in making Greed which is considered his masterpiece work. Much to Stroheim’s tribulation, Thalberg had by then joined Metro due to the merger of the two companies, and Greed was minced from the original forty reels to only ten. The film still proved to be a grand success in portraying the subtle moments involving the display of greed for gold by a San Francisco dentist and his wife, which ultimately led to their decline and death.
Stroheim is known to have acted mercilessly in driving his actors, especially while he was filming in the Mojave Desert, the climax scenes in which two of the main characters are tied with chains and are made to fight with each other to die ultimately. It was not surprising that the film was a failure since it was again reduced in length by the producers and flopped miserably in not being successful commercially. Stroheim was however able to snub Thalberg with the grand success of his film The Merry Widow which was though not the very pleasant kind that people expected since it was full of perversion and sadistic overtures; nevertheless it was indeed a triumph for him especially during a time when most of his films were not doing too well. This was the last grand success for von Stroheim as a director and subsequently, there were only films half-completed along with a substantial career as an actor. Stroheim died at the age of 72 due to a spinal ailment that he suffered for some time.
References
- Arthur Lening, Stroheim, 2003, University Press of Kentucky
- Herman G, The Complete Greed of Erich Von Stroheim, 1972, Arno Press
- Peter Noble, Hollywood Scapegoat, the Biography of Erich Von Stroheim, 1951, The Fortune Press
- Richard Koszarski, The Man You Loved To Hate: Erich Von Stroheim and Hollywood, 1983, Oxford University Press
- Richard Koszarski, Von – The Life and Films of Erich Von Stroheim, 2004, Limelight Editions
- Tom Sutpen, The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim, 2007, Issue 55, The Pinnacle