Josef von Sternberg (; born Jonas Sternberg; May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an Austrian-American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the silent to the sound era, during which he worked with most of the major Hollywood studios. He is best known for his film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s, including the highly regarded Paramount/UFA production The Blue Angel (1930).Sarris, 1998. P. 219 He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, for Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932).Sarris, 1998. p. 499
Sternberg's finest works are noteworthy for their striking pictorial compositions, dense décor, chiaroscuro illumination, and relentless camera motion, endowing the scenes with emotional intensity.Sarris, 1966. P. 8: "The colorful costumes, the dazzling decors, the marble-pillared palaces ..." and p. 6: "His purpose is to reveal the emotional significance of a subject by a series of magnificent canvasses." And Sternberg "relies on long, elaborate shots, each of which is developed internally – by camera movement and dramatic lighting [producing] the effect of emotional percussion." (Sarris quoting Aeneas MacKenzie) He is also credited with having initiated the gangster film genre with his silent era movie Underworld (1927).Weinberg, 1967. P. 34: "... the genre it so eloquently established started a vogue that lasted an entire generation until the outbreak of the Second World War ..."Sarris, 1966. P. 15: "... the first in a tradition" of the [gangster] genre. Sternberg's themes typically offer the spectacle of an individual's desperate struggle to maintain their personal integrity as they sacrifice themselves for lust or love.Sarris, 1966. P. 54: Themes involve "the spectacle of man's dignity and honor crumbling before the assault of desire" bound up with adoration of a woman "which obliterate reason, honor, [and] dignity" and p. 34: the "dilemmas of desire"
Shortly before his death in 1969, his autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, was published.
Biography Early life and education Josef von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to an impoverished Orthodox Jewish family in Vienna, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.Baxter, 1971. P. 8: "... a poor Orthodox Jewish family ..." and p. 9: "Extract from official [birth] certificate ... christened 'Jonas Sternberg' ..." When Sternberg was three years old, his father Moses Sternberg, a former soldier in the army of Austria-Hungary, moved to the United States to seek work. Sternberg's mother, Serafine (née Singer), a circus performer as a child,Bach, 1992 p. 98: "...a child circus performer...a tightrope walker in the circus…" joined Moses in America in 1901 with her five children when Sternberg was seven.Bach, 1992 p. 98: Sternberg's birth order.Baxter, 1971. P. 8: "... when Jonas was three, his father left for the United States ..."Graves, 1936, in Weinberg, 1967. P. 182: Born in Vienna to "Polish and Hungarian parents."Baxter, 1971. P. 9: Mother's name is listed on the birth certificate photo. On his emigration, von Sternberg is quoted as saying, "On our arrival in the New World we were first detained on Ellis Island where the immigration officers inspected us like a herd of cattle."Bei unserer Ankuft in der Neuen Welt wir erstes auf Ellis Island interniert, wo die Einwanderungsbeamten uns wie eine Herde Vieh inspiezierten p. 16, Freulein Freiheit by Uli Besel and Uwe Kugelmeyer (Berlin: Transit Buchverlag, 1986) Jonas attended public school until the family, except Moses, returned to Vienna three years later. Throughout his life, Sternberg carried vivid memories of Vienna and nostalgia for some of his "happiest childhood moments."Baxter, 1971. P. 60Bach, 1992: p. 98-99: Sternberg "born within sight of the Prater...fed circus horses for pocket money'"
The elder Sternberg insisted upon a rigorous study of the Hebrew language, limiting his son to religious studies on top of his regular schoolwork.Baxter, p. 8: His "overbearing" father "denied [Sternberg] all [non-religious] books ..." Biographer Peter Baxter, citing Sternberg's memoirs, reports that "his parents' relationship was far from happy: his father was a domestic tyrant and his mother eventually fled her home in order to escape his abuse."Baxter, 1993. P. 86, 153: "... after each beating [his father Moses] demanded that Jonas kiss the hand that had administered it." Sternberg's early struggles, including these "childhood traumas" would inform the "unique subject matter of his films."Sarris, 1966. P. 22Baxter, 1971. P. 14Bach, 1992 p. 99: "The language of the Torah was thrashed into him…his Hebrew schoolmaster no less tyrannical than his father."
Early career In 1908, when Jonas was fourteen, he returned with his mother to Queens, New York, and settled in the United States.Silver, 2010. He acquired American citizenship in 1908.John Baxter, Von Sternberg, University Press of Kentucky, 2010, p. 15. After a year, he stopped attending Jamaica High School and began working in various occupations, including millinery apprentice, door-to-door trinket salesman and stock clerk at a lace factory.Baxter, 1971 p. 9 At the Fifth Avenue lace outlet, he became familiar with the ornate textiles with which he would adorn his female stars and embellish his mise-en-scène.Baxter, 1971. p. 9Sarris, 1966. P. 5
In 1911, when he turned seventeen, the now "Josef" Sternberg, became employed at the World Film Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey. There, he "cleaned, patched and coated motion picture stock" – and served evenings as a movie theatre projectionist. In 1914, when the company was purchased by actor and film producer William A. Brady, Sternberg rose to chief assistant, responsible for "writing [inter]titles and editing films to cover lapses in continuity" for which he received his first official film credits.Weinberg, 1967. P. 17"... found work as a film-patcher for the [former] World Film Company, gradually working himself up to cutter, writer, assistance director and finally personal manager to William A. Brady of the World Film Company."Bach, 1992 p. 99: Sternberg's early employment with Brady
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Signal Corps headquartered in Washington, D.C., where he photographed training films for recruits.Baxter, 1971. p. 23Sarris, 1966. P. 5Weinberg, 1967. P. 17 "... Sternberg joined the [US] Army Signal Corps" in 1917 [when the United States entered WWI], stationed at eh G.H.Q. in Washington, D.C., where he made training films for recruits ... cited for exemplary service."
Shortly after the war, Sternberg left Brady's Fort Lee operation and embarked on a peripatetic existence in America and Europe offering his skills "as cutter, editor, writer and assistant director" to various film studios.Sarris, 1966. P. 5
Assistant director: 1919–1923
Sternberg served his apprenticeship years with early silent filmmakers, including Hugo Ballin, Wallace Worsley, Lawrence C. Windom and Roy William Neill.Weinberg, 1967. P. 17 In 1919, Sternberg worked with director Emile Chautard's on The Mystery of the Yellow Room, for which he received official screen credit as assistant director. Sternberg honored Chautard in his memoirs, recalling the French director's invaluable lessons on photography, film composition and the importance of establishing "the spatial integrity of his images."Sarris, 1966 p. 6 This advice led Sternberg to develop his distinctive "framing" of each shot to become "the screen's greatest master of pictorial composition."
Sternberg's 1919 debut in filmmaking, though in a subordinate capacity, coincided with the filming and/or release of D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms, Charlie Chaplin's Sunnyside, Erich von Stroheim's The Devil's Pass Key, Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Victor Sjöström's Karin Daughter of Ingmar and Abel Gance's J'accuse.Sarris, 1966. P. 6
Sternberg travelled widely in Europe between 1922 and 1924, where he participated in making a number of movies for the short-lived Alliance Film Corporation in London, including The Bohemian Girl (1922). When he returned to California in 1924, he began work on his first Hollywood movie as assistant to director Roy William Neill's Vanity's Price, produced by Film Booking Office (FBO).Baxter, 1971. p. 24Weinberg, 1967. P. 18-19: "Sternberg travelled widely in Europe and the United States. In 1924, Sternberg acted as assistant director to Neill on Vanity's Price at FBO (Film Booking Office) studios in Hollywood, California." Sternberg's aptitude for effective directing was recognized in his handling of the operating room scene, singled out for special mention by New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall.Baxter, 1971. P. 25-26: see footnote "October 8, 1924" review
United Artists – The Salvation Hunters: 1924
The 30-year-old Sternberg made his debut as a director with The Salvation Hunters, an independent picture produced with actor George K. Arthur.Silver, 2010: "... in essence an independent film ..."Baxter, 1971. p. 26-27 The picture, filmed on the minuscule budget of $4,800 – "a miracle of organization" – made a tremendous impression on actor-director-producer Charles Chaplin and co-producer Douglas Fairbanks Sr. of United Artists (UA).Sarris, 1966. P. 10Weinberg, 1967. p. 19, p. 22 Influenced by the works of Erich von Stroheim, director of Greed (1924), the movie was lauded by cineastes for its "unglamorous realism", depicting three young drifters who struggle to survive in a dystopian landscape.Weinberg, 1967. P. 22: "The Salvation Hunters highly praised by artists and critics for its "artistic composition" and "rhythm of presentation"Baxter, 1971. P. 28
Despite its considerable defects, due in part to Sternberg's budgetary constraints, the picture was purchased by United Artists for $20,000 and given a brief distribution, but fared poorly at the box-office.Baxter, 1971. P. 31
On the strength of this picture alone, actor-producer Mary Pickford of UA engaged Sternberg to write and direct her next feature. His screenplay, entitled Backwash, was deemed to be too experimental in concept and technique, and the Pickford-Sternberg project was cancelled.Sarris, 1966. P. 12Baxter, 1993. P. 54
Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters is "his most explicitly personal work", with the exception of his final picture Anatahan (1953).Sarris, 1966. P. 10, p. 53 His distinctive style is already in evidence, both visually and dramatically: veils and nets filter the view of the actors, and "psychological conflict rather than physical action" has the effect of obscuring the motivations of his characters.Baxter, 1971. P. 29-30Sarris, 1966. P. 11
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: 1925
Released from his contract with United Artists, and regarded as a rising talent in Hollywood, Sternberg was sought after by the major movie studios.Weinberg, 1967. P. 24Baxter, 1971. P. 32 Signing an eight-film agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925, Sternberg entered into "the increasingly rigid studio system" at M-G-M, where films were subordinated to market considerations and judged on profitability.Baxter, 1993. P. 57Weinberg, 1967. p. 24 Sternberg would clash with Metro executives over his approach to filmmaking: the picture as a form of art and the director a visual poet. These conflicting priorities would "doom" their association, as Sternberg "had little interest in making a commercial success."Sarris, 1966. P. 7-8Baxter, 1971. P. 32-33Weinberg, 1967. p. 25, p. 26-27: Florey declared, based on two reels, that The Masked Bride (had it been completed) "would still be showing today in cine-clubs and film societies everywhere; it was a masterpiece ..."