CHAPTER 7

ERICH VON STROHEIM [1885–1957]

Erich von Stroheim: Form, Uniform, and Cruelty

Figure 42. Foolish Wives (1922); director: Erich von Stroheim

The films of Erich von Stroheim rightfully belong to the critics and filmmakers of the post-World War I period. And his work cannot be intimately known by anyone who is unfamiliar with the last five years of silent films. Perhaps because it is more recent than that of Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith, Stroheim’s work needs some time to acquire the objectivity bestowed upon it by retrospectives and historical criticism. Whether by coincidence, accident, or predestination, his films are among the most difficult to view today. His relatively small but brilliant oeuvre exists only in the memories of those who were dazzled by it at the time it was released, and in

165 Chapter 7 the respectful admiration they felt for him—an admiration shared by the present generation. I am not old enough to have seen Stroheim’s films when they were first shown, and this means that, when I write about him, I can never compensate for not having been on this particular cinematic road to Damascus. We not only lack enough historical perspective and critical documentation to appreciate Stroheim, but we are also dealing with a psychological complex unique in the annals of cinema. A kind of fear, a sacred horror, tacitly relegates him to the Hades of film history. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to find—among the comments and testimonials of those he most influenced (such as Jean Renoir) or those who most admired him—anything except wild superlatives and value judgments that one would be hard pressed to justify. We all know how original Stroheim’s subjects and his own character were, as we know that he turned upside down the erotic themes on the screen at a time when Valentino was at the peak of his glory in America and a new art film was emerging in France. We can still glimpse something of these themes in Stroheim-the-actor that we admire today. Nonetheless we must ask ourselves if his importance does not lie in the audacity of his subject matter and the tyrannical violence that is always present in his films. It thus becomes fairly difficult to understand the widespread influence he had—an influence that continues today. Because, ultimately, what is admirable about him is precisely the most inimitable portion of his work. If Chaplin has been influential, although less so than Stroheim, his influence comes almost exclusively from word of mouth. In his films when he does not appear as an actor one perceives ultimately the secrets of his style, his stage setting, and his direction. Just as Chaplin is at the core of his work, which cannot be discussed without somehow explaining the character himself, Stroheim cannot remove himself from Foolish Wives [1922] and Greed [1924], in which he otherwise has no acting part. If any work in film history, with the exception of Chaplin’s, has attained the strictly exclusive expression of its creator, it is that of Erich von Stroheim. That is why studying his work will perhaps allow us to unmask a false aesthetic problem and resolve a critical paradox. The paradox is this: an aesthetic revolution involving radical renovation in the formal design of the direction is often only the direct result of an actor’s performance, of his basic need to express his inner feelings. The perfect example is still Chaplin. But if we are wrong in thinking that Chaplin invented nothing so far as directing is concerned, and that his film cutting did not involve any particular narrative aesthetic, it is nevertheless true that his importance can be considered to be secondary in this respect. With Chaplin, the actor has almost totally taken over the film. This does not mean, however, that the same holds true for all actors’ films. It is simply that Chaplin’s style, deriving from music halls and Mack Sennett, had already found its full expression in films made before Griffith. Editing supplied almost nothing. Another actor might need other resources, and for his part Stroheim, working after Griffith’s Broken Blossoms [1919] and Intolerance [1916], found it difficult to express himself when faced with the rather strict laws of film editing. It was because

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