Original subtitles

The man this is about,

Erich von Stroheim,

actor and filmmaker,

spent his life creating characters for himself.

Thus it is not useless to enumerate

what posterity retained of him.

Here it is:

The Dragoons lieutenant ,

the immortal character,

"Herr Direktor",

the eccentric actor,

the banned 'Caesar'.

Erich von Stroheim lands in America one day in 1909.

A 25 year old immigrant lost in the mass?

Not really.

Sure, like many others, he works hard, he slaves away, but misery doesn't undermine him.

Railway hand, swimming lifeguard, or salesman,

he retains the aristocratic manners and style in-keeping with his rank.

He clicks his heels,

for he is Erich Hans Oswald Karl Maria Von Stroheim,

former cadet,

Dragoons lieutenant in the Imperial army of Austria-Hungary.

In 4 years, the lieutenant's thousand jobs have him cross the continent east to west.

California, Hollywood, cinema...

are at the end of the rainbow, by chance.

In 1914,

Hollywood is just a place.

Progressively peopled by movie pioneers.

The most illustrious of which being

David Wark Griffith.

Whose story the Dragoon Lieutenant is about to become a part of.

Stroheim becomes one of many who people what is referred to as "the pen".

Some sort of paddock, visited every morning by Griffith's assistants,

To recruit, among the wishful crowd,

those who'll have the privilege, for 2 dollars pay, to become extras in the Master's movie.

In his first gig, the Lieutenant becomes a stuntman.

That's him falling off the roof in this scene of Birth of a Nation.

Take a good look at this footage.

It seals Stroheim's union with cinema, till death do them part...

Stroheim does not settle for jobs as an extra.

He puts his knowledge of uniforms and military etiquette to good use,

And becomes technical advisor or assistant to films that deal with the army, or anything teutonic,

Clicking his heels all the way through.

The turning point, however, is the American involvement in World War One.

It takes propaganda films to win the masses to the cause, and that's where Stroheim comes in.

He owes his fame to his roles as a despicable character.

And that's what gave him the idea.

He became "The Man You Love To Hate".

Playing the 'dirty Hun' enabled him to make his image and his face known.

He plays terrible, nurse-raping characters,

stripping them with his teeth, throwing babies out the window,

rolling his eyes... anyway, that's how he becomes known.

What he liked about Griffith was

his noble demeanor.

Griffith was no royalty, but his high-and-mighty profile seduced him.

His panama hats, his style, his behaviour

on a set - it all impressed Stroheim a great deal, who saw

in Griffith, nobility as it could exist

humanly, in America. So he said to himself: "This is what I have to be".

Stroheim immediately saw that this was where power was. Because on a set, the director is in charge.

And that's what he aimed for from the first.

His education was rather discreet, actually,

because a ruler, by definition, knows it all without having to learn it.

So he trained himself by looking over a lot of people's shoulders.

Just because you're there only to sweep the set doesn't mean you

can't watch who does what, how this is done or where that goes, and so on.

Basically he learned his trade by watching a lot of what was going on.

At once, Stroheim wanted to do it all.

He wanted to write, to direct, to act, he wanted to do it all.

He wanted his films to be his own.

In 1919, Stroheim takes the bull by the horns.

He's written a script he wants to direct himself.

He only has to convince one man: Carl Laemmle,

the almighty founder of Universal Studios.

An hour-long face to face conversation does the trick. It all happens in German.

Stroheim relinquishes all rights on the script, against the promise of a minimum budget allowance to film it.

And for 200 dollars a week,

he takes on the job of director and lead actor.

Putting yourself in Laemmle's shoes you'd think: "Well,

This young man has a project. It's a tossup, but in the end,

I don't have much to lose, and it might be worth a try.

Laemmle was a gambler, too.

Also, they were both of Mittel-European Origin.

That's where the film is set, and that rings a bell to Laemmle as well,

who was sensitive about his origins.

So I guess all these elements weighed on Laemmle's decision,

and accounted for his decision to trust Stroheim.

"Blind Husbands" is hardly a screen-test.

Stroheim doesn't fumble. He asserts.

His work methods are grueling and despotic.

He screams, he scolds, he rewards,

and swears like a sailor.

But his crew soon realizes that this very teutonic energy serves the film.

For all the qualities that will blossom and become his trademark in the masterpieces to come,

Are there already.

Realism, actor's direction, the emphasis on "decoupage" over "montage" (?) (editing)

Taste and use of the sets.

And although he keeps it all rather classical, his style already breaks from that of his revered master.

How did he evolve from Griffith's cinema to his own?

For they don't have the same culture,

They don't have the same past.

But there is

A common point, where grandiose is concerned.

Because Stroheim loves to set up splendor.

Griffith did the Babylonian era...

Stroheim sets his ceremonies in St-Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

These are two different forms of realism.

They are both in the melodrama, in a way,

But I'd say that Stroheim

Is more

Credible in his realism...

He's also much more of a Mittel-European, but then, how do you define that....

It's complicated, because he...

He captures the sordid, he.... He's more into the intimate, in fact.

There are a lot of things Griffith would never have allowed himself to delve into.

In fact Stroheim goes a lot further with everything that has to do with sexuality.

Undeniably, Stroheim went for the shock value.

He shocked profoundly because he brought about a revolution

In his depiction of sexuality,

And I think that this is a fundamental difference from everything that preceded him,

And what was it that preceded him? There's Griffith,

Who is after all a 19th Century man,

There's Dickens, the spirit of Dickens,

The pure maidens and all that, who, actually, also exist in Stroheim's world.

But it's still Griffith....

As Stroheim says: "At the end of a Griffith movie..."

"They marry and live happily ever after - and to me, that's where the film begins"

i.e., the consequences of marriage, and not marriage as a happy ending...

He said he found it surprising that people were allowed to attack banks in the movies

But they were not allowed to desire a woman, which, indeed, at the time, was not acceptable.

And so THAT was what Stroheim filmed.

The critics love "Blind Husbands", and the public flocks to see it.

The film is a huge commercial success.

Laemmle's not sorry about his gamble and produces Stroheim's second film,

"The Devil's Passkey", also a great commercial success,

but of which there are no extant copies today.

Laemmle now only swears by his newfound genius,

And for the next movie, he gives him "carte blanche".

Stroheim is given free rein to choose his story,

His script, his cast & crew.

And he has an unlimited budget.

Erich von Stroheim, former Dragoons Lieutenant,

has become "Herr Direktor".

"Foolish Wives" is his first masterpiece.

'Herr Direktor' spared no expense.

And even though censors cut out a great deal from the film,

They were unable to extinguish its poisonous charm.

Stroheim shows European crooks that are morally repugnant,

but extremely attractive.

Their luxury, their manners, their frivolity.

Their loose morals, their sophistication,

are in opposition with the simplicity of Americans,

Straightforward, well-meaning, clumsy.

Stroheim confronts these characters within so fascinating a Monte-Carlo,

So realistic, that Jean Renoir, discovering the film in Paris,

concludes that it was the real Monte-Carlo that was wrong.

There's something very interesting in "Foolish Wives", I think...

And it is that Stroheim plays with what HE is all about.

Like a virtuoso joggler, because...

The main theme of his film is "the fake".

He makes a film in which there's a fake Russian count, fake princesses, fake money...

Fake feelings... It takes place in Monaco, a city in which one's earnings

are fake - where everything is fake.

And nobody notices that he is denouncing what he is and the world he lives in.

It took 'Herr Direktor' almost a year to shoot his film.

His demands are boundless, and meet none.

The Monte-Carlo casino is entirely rebuilt in Monterey, near San Francisco,

300 miles away from Hollywood.

Armies of carpenters, masons, plasterers,

work on it for months.

Stroheim also demands that the buildings windows be made of real glass,

instead of wire netting, so that they may be lit at night,

and that they can be opened.

He also wants the hotel bells to ring for real.

It's a silent film, but he has bells

set up in the ceilings

to page the servants.

Seems absurd... why bother? For a silent film?

But it's really out of concern for realism.

To give the actors the feeling that...

Well, as far as they were concerned, they were in a talking picture,

While performing on the set of 'Foolish Wives'.

So you heard the bells because

some bellboy or other was being paged.

In Stroheim's case, the scenery

is of pivotal importance.

As if he came from the theatre.

Because very often, the directors who are known for their elaborate sets,

Like Welles, Losey,

Or Visconti... they are people who come from the theatre.

A man like Kubrick... his obsession

for accuracy and maniacal precision

echoes that of Stroheim.

Including where extravagant budgets are concerned.

The recreation of the hotel for 'The Shining', for example.

It was in Colorado.

He had it rebuilt completely

in studios near London.

That's really very Stroheimian.

Inevitably, the budget for 'Foolish Wives' is blown out of all proportion.

To the extent that Universal decides to advertize it,

Giving the film its famous tagline: "The First Million Dollar Picture".

Stroheim's extravagances are publicized,

exaggerated, and, if need be, made up.

Stroheim's actors are true,

even when the characters are over the top.

Stroheim wants, and obtains, that their gestures,

their gaze, their gait,

the way they pass each other, be credible.

Whether they are surrounded by dozens of extras, like in this scene,

Or alone, facing the camera, in a single shot,

like Dale Fuller, possessed here with homicidal jalousy.

It's true that Stroheim instantly knows how to direct his actors.

Stroheim has always used

- and I say "used" without any negative connotations -

actors who were not famous.

He favoured unknown actors,

so that he could shape them himself.

He had two methods:

Either he didn't say anything and had them go through retake after retake after retake,

And when I say "retakes"...

Generally, what could be considered reasonable would be five takes or so.

For Stroheim, 20 or 30 takes per scene would be the norm.

And what's more, he often retook it

without so much as giving his actors a clue on what he expected from them.

He just made retake after retake, without any indication whatsoever,

between the takes.

His directorial methods were also very tyrannical.

He was extremely demanding,

not unlike Kubrick in this respect.

He put his actors through terrible ordeals,

All he retakes and so on,

Putting them in Death Valley

for the end scene of 'Greed',

Without any water, in terrible conditions, in order to really

get that realism he was looking for.

Or he would have them live on the very sets,

On Polk Street,

in the filthy digs...

Despite all that, the actors loved him

Because they realized that he was getting the best out of them,

and that all these constraints, all these efforts yielded results.

Since 'Blind Husbands',

Stroheim surrounded himself with loyal cast & crew members:

Actors, seasoned technicians,

and rankless minions, all of whom constituted his 'Pretorian Guard'.

Among the actors were Dale Fuller

And Cesare Gravina,

Who were cast in almost every one of his films.

There is also Gibson Gowland,

who played Sepp in 'Blind Husbands',

and McTeague in 'Greed'.

And then there's ZaSu Pitts. The Great ZaSu Pitts,

who becomes after 'Greed'

the forced and unloved bride in 'The Wedding March'.

Also worth mentioning is the duo formed by Will Daniels and Ben Reynolds,

who photographed 6 out of his 10 films.

And Richard Day, Hollywood's most exacting art director,

contributed to even more.

There are two types of creators in the movies.

There are those who change collaborators all the time,

and those who like to have a company,

the most obvious example being Bergman,

And Griffith, as well.

And in my opinion he takes after Griffith in this respect.

I think he wanted a company....

Which, for one thing, proves that his actors loved him,

since they appeared several times

in his films,

And also because the kind of movies he made

Could get him in trouble with the producers,

He had to have a trustworthy,

homogeneous company around him,

who would be on his side.

He couldn't afford to be betrayed

by co-workers who could

takes sides with....

So when he gained people's trust,

He wanted to retain them.

After 'Foolish Wives' came 'Merry Go Round'.

A film from which Stroheim was fired.

But we'll come back to it later.

For time has come to speak of the film that gave the former Dragoon Lieutenant

His share of immortality.

The cursed,

the imperishable,

the mutilated...

'Greed'.

'Greed' as we know it, the film-library classic,

the film that dazzled Eisenstein, Bunuel and Cocteau,

is but the pale shadow of the film made by Stroheim.

Rex Ingram,

who directed 'The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse',

and a friend of Stroheim's,

cut the film down, upon Stroheim's request, to a 3:30 hour long version.

Ingram delivered his version warning him that

"If you cut out another inch, I'll never speak to you again".

But that was in vain.

Irving Thalberg ordered his editor

to cut the film down to the two-hour long version we know and love,

and which Stroheim disowned.

What was lost from 'Greed'

- the great mine scenes,

the subplot involving the old couple who live in Trina & McTeague's building -

remains in the form of set stills,

inert and evocative.

Reduced to its main plot, badly distributed,

'Greed' turns out to be an abyssal financial flop.

A film on the corruptive power of money,

'Greed' was the source of a massive financial loss to its producers.

And yet,

Everyone knows that the reasons that make 'Greed' a cursed film

lay elsewhere.

'Greed' was, to begin with,

rejected by the popular press,

who were outraged by the film. Truly outraged,

while at the same time being supported by art lovers,

by critics and other filmmakers.

The problem is that, besides 'Greed', which is set in the United States,

All of Stroheim's films are set in Europe.

And the fact that they are set in Europe, as costume dramas,

Either in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or in fictional countries,

Like Ruritania or Monte-Bianco, in 'The Merry Widow',

Or 'Queen Kelly''s Ruritania,

Made the pill easier to swallow, because to the American public,

The immoral behaviour that was under scrutiny was not American.

It was all transposed...

It was Old World decadence.

The Europe of sexual debauchery,

the Europe of the idle rich,

of corrupt aristocracy,

All this in contrast to the puritan ethics praising work for the sake of work.

So the foreign setting

sort of softened the shock

it could have provoked if he had set the same story

and characters in the American society.

Hence the public's violent rejection of 'Greed',

Because, this time, it was about America.

He is a naturalist.

Which means that he is really a man of his era.

The difference being that

what was commonplace in literature,

was absolutely exceptional in cinema.

The quest for truth,

the quest for the genuine,

for the truthful impression,

this aspiration to get rid of all pretence,

to get rid of all the trickery,

that was what the great novelists aimed for,

ever since Balzac, Flaubert,

Zola being the culmination, as one shifts from realism to naturalism,

and in a way, that's what Stroheim attempted to do.

The whole corporeal aspect of 'Greed',

the physiological approach,

eating, gorging oneself,

it's all part of life.

To Stroheim, that's part of life, so he shows it.

He wants to show life as it is. Again,

This insistance on asserting

the importance of the real.

He is against all edulcoration.

And from there on,

Man is an animal also,

He is not ONLY an animal, but he is ALSO an animal,

So his animalistic urges are shown.

Had he been allowed to, Stroheim would have shown

copulation.

He would have done it artfully, but he would have shown

things that could have shocked people,

things that you can show today, but that you couldn't show back then.

Stretching over seven months, the shooting of 'Greed' was epic.

The scenes shot in the Valley of Death

Were also the film's end scenes.

A 37 day purgatory for the 41 crew members,

14 of whom had to be brought back to civilization.

'Herr Direktor' seemed to adapt to the scorching heat better than everyone else,

And managed to bring his little crowd exactly where he wanted.

What's more, it's August, so he just happens to be shooting this during the hottest month.

The ground, legend has it,

When you rub your body on the ground - and their skin was burnt by the sun by then -

So they had blisters, and the blisters burst when in contact with the ground.

The ground, itself, is littered with substances that make it burn,

When the skin comes in contact with it.

So these are the conditions in which the two actors have to wrestle in the scene.

And Stroheim tells them:

(These are the ultimate moments) And he tells them:

"Fight! Try to hate each other as much as you both hate me!"

And the fight he got was indeed realistic.

Stroheim created his characters in a very special way.

When there was someone who had to appear on screen,

He needed, for this person to have a genuine existence,

To invent his or her complete biography.

Screenwriters who worked with him attested to this.

They said: "I saw Stroheim come up with

This young girl's mother, her past, her childhood, her youth

- That of the mother! -

Even though that character was never even to appear on screen".

He needed to come up with the day of her communion,

The disease that struck her at this or that age,

All of which enabled him to set his characters on solid ground.

After the extravagances of 'Foolish Wives' and being fired from 'Merry Go Round',

The failure of 'Greed' gives Stroheim's reputation a detestable reek among producers.

Among them Thalberg, who has been mentioned already,

and whose path crossed his several times before.

So much so that the story of their infernal relationship

Long served as the exemplary fable

For all those who saw in it the triumph of the grocer over the artist.

The Stroheim / Thalberg relationship is particular.

Stroheim and Thalberg met

during 'Foolish Wives'.

Stroheim was shooting 'Foolish Wives'.

And halfway through arrives Thalberg,

Dropping in from nowhere thanks to Laemmle, who trusts him.

And it dawns on Thalberg that this project is beginning to be costly.

Running overboard both where the deadline and the budget are concerned.

Thalberg summons Stroheim, who replies:

"If you fire the director, you fire the lead actor as well".

And since he has started shooting the film with the scenes involving his character,

There's nothing Thalberg can do.

So much for controlling Stroheim on 'Foolish Wives'.

Then comes the next film,

'Merry Go Round'.

On 'Merry Go Round', Thalberg is suspicious.

Thalberg, by then, was made head of production by Laemmle,

And he says to himself: "I have to watch over that Stroheim fellow

Or else he's gonna explode budget and deadline all over again".

So he sets up a system involving a Director of Unit Production,

Some guy called Hum.

So this guy is supposed to

Watch over the proceedings and report everything to Thalberg.

Stroheim is incensed by the idea,

He dislikes the guy from the get-go,

He schemes to have the rest of the crew dislike him as well,

And basically, he stalls while the guy is around, and as soon as he leaves,

he says: "we can get to work now that the spy is gone".

"Now let's really get down to it".

He plays rotten tricks on him...

Rotten indeed.

So much so that Thalberg, who hasn't even turned 22 yet,

but who mesmerized Carl Laemmle,

takes a historical and definitive decision:

He fires Stroheim.

A self-effacing craftsman,

Rupert Julian, finished the film instead. "Herr Direktor" disowned it.

Then came 'Greed',

For which Stroheim signed with Samuel Goldwyn's company.

During shooting, it was bought and absorbed by Metro

and Louis B. Mayer, to form MGM.

And thus Thalberg,

Fresh off Universal,

and Executive Director of the new company,

was able to order and commission the butchering of 'Greed'.

Stroheim's contract with Goldwyn covered two motion pictures,

and it was again under Thalberg's close supervision

that he started working on the next feature:

'The Merry Widow'.

Thalberg thinks: "Okay, here's this genius director,

whom I must manage

to keep under control - how do I go about it?"

And Thalberg is going to set up a very ingenious stragegy.

The keystone of his system is to hire a star.

Stroheim had never worked with stars before.

And on this film, he's gonna have to deal with two at the same time:

Mae Murray and John Gilbert.

Gilbert doesn't pose any problem, he's relatively flexible.

There is a confrontation or two, but these get settled around a bottle, no big deal.

It's another story with Mae Murray.

Mae Murray is a star, and she wants to be in charge,

with the director at her orders.

Naturally, Stroheim won't hear of it, and he intends to keep the power.

She kept bitching: "He's doing this and that, it'll be terrible".

And Thalberg replied:

"Let him have his way: He depicts degeneracy, decrepitude,"

"this man is a genius, let him do it the way he wants".

I gues Stroheim disowned the film afterwards

because Thalberg managed to

demonstrate how one could direct Stroheim.

And THAT,

being ordered around, was not something he liked.

And especially to note that it had worked...

I guess that is really what disturbed him, in a way.

After 'The Merry Widow', Stroheim made 'The Wedding March'.

A realistic and melancholy fairy-tale,

another great popular success.

And yet, Stroheim's film-making career is nearing its end.

Inexorably, he becomes the great banished lord.

I think his films did make money,

so that is not the main reason

why he stopped making films.

The problem is actually Stroheim's behaviour

More than his financial disasters.

Stroheim was a director who could, potentially, make a lot of money,

but who had to be watched over. Someone who was unmanageable, in other words.

He lived at a turning point

in Hollywood history,

namely the fusion of the great companies, Paramount, Metro and so on,

that will become the 7 majors,

later, in the 30's.

Well, he did spend outrageous amounts of money.

And another problem with Stroheim was that you knew where it began,

but you never knew where it would end.

He kept rewriting scenes along the way,

extending shooting days,

- and when we say "days"...

it meant the nights as well...

So it was really extensible at will.

From 1924, 1925 onwards,

Scrutiny became tighter.

There was less and less room for the independant artist.

It becomes more and more difficult.

And it became even more difficult 5 years later,

with the advent of the talkies.

Because when the talkies come round,

films are a lot more expensive to make.

It is quite out of the question to reshoot scenes

when the audio has been worked on already,

or when there's been direct sound capture.

With silent pictures, it was easy.

Chaplin took a year to make a movie, he made retakes,

he reshot it, and so one, it wasn't quite as costly.

From the moment when the technical equipment became considerable because of talkies,

films are a lot more expensive,

scripts are extremely precise, while during the silent era,

there was a lot of improvisation,

there was a huge freedom on the set.

From the moment when costs had to be reduced,

and useless expenses had to be avoided,

scripts were being followed to the letter.

Very scrupulously.

So the script became a stranglehold.

Filmmakers were under surveillance.

He directs another picture. One last gem:

Queen Kelly,

Starring Gloria Swanson,

And Senator Joe Kennedy's money.

But it is an unfinished gem.

Swanson, however much she admires his films, and who doesn't have cold feet,

thinks that this time, he goes too far.

This S&M side of the film,

with this "venus with fur",

who was really the naked queen under her furs,

whipping the young maiden and all...

taking baths....

and young lovers and all that...

It was all very bold...

And I think that... already then, the puritan America is on the way...

The 20's are drawing to a close...

The Hays code is about to settle in....

- not at the time of Queen Kelly, but soon -

Puritan America of the Prohibition era is falling into place.

All that coincides with the advent of the talkies.

So all these elements together,

accounted for a rejection of Stroheim.

But then, did the talkies put an end to his career?

The anecdote...

Well, one could use that anecdote to say that

it was what triggered it.

From the moment the shooting of the talkie version of 'Blind Husbands'

had been set up,

- it had been written, everything was in place -

Shooting was about to begin,

and at some point, Stroheim asks for the bells to be placed over a lake,

because it's supposed to have a different sound over water.

But the sound people tell him that

the sound will be recorded from elsewhere and played over the footage.

And Stroheim goes berzerk,

because he wants his bells over the lake,

and he won't have it any other way.

That's when they pull the plug on him.

This was the incident that triggered

Stroheim being fired from this project,

and the project was cancelled.

I think that the advent of the talkies

gave the movie moguls a good opportunity

to get rid of someone who was

extremely complicated to handle.

Stroheim is 45.

He will never direct again.

For the remainder of his life,

He'll have to act in other people's films.

Lesser films than his,

made by directors who don't necessarily have ideas,

and in increasingly broke productions.

For 5 years, Stroheim withers doing cheapies,

until a more serious proposal arrives from France.

And so leaves the great banished lord.

He leaves America and returns to the Old World,

where he was born,

where he grew up.

The year is 1935,

and like in 1909,

crossing the Atlantic is still done by boat.

It lasts 10 days.

It gives one time to think.

And Stroheim has plenty to think about.

He must be thinking about his mother,

whom he's going to see again after so many years,

Joanna Stroheim, nee Bondy.

He must be thinking that she,

Joanna, knows.

She knows that her son Erich

has falsified the family identity

to replace it with a new one he came up with,

when boarding off the boat at Ellis Island,

one day of November, 1909.

It only took 3 letters.

By putting 'Von'

between Erich and Stroheim,

the son of a Viennese hat maker,

the Jew Erich Stroheim,

became the former Dragoons lieutenant.

Later, those 3 letters made him into 'Herr Direktor',

and everything that followed.

He decided to become someone else.

That's interesting, and that's something he's going to hold on to,

even though he has no idea at this point

that he's going to work in movies.

In 1935, Benno Stroheim, Erich's father, is long dead.

His son had disappointed him.

He had shown no promise for commerce and keeping the shop.

Repugnance, rather.

Stroheim dreamt of being a Dragoon.

And that's precisely

what he pretended to have been.

The Dragoons are an elite unit.

He was really in a unit that's equivalent to the "train regiment".

Not a very prestigious unit,

an administrative unit. It's important, capital even,

but it's not a fighting unit. They don't go to the front.

And this unit, according to the era's antisemitic jargon,

(because Stroheim's youth also coincided with

a wave of antisemitism)

This unit was called "Moses' Dragoons",

because it was comprised of many Jews.

It must have irked Stroheim to be appointed to this unit,

as it was really an inferior unit.

The fact that he often showed photos

of him as a young officer,

- there are two that are commonly shown -

really demonstrates that this was his dream, one that he never accomplished.

Once we know

Stroheim's secret about his origins,

it sheds a light on his personality: There are three levels:

First, there is, deep down,

the little Stroheim, the young Jew,

who has gone into hiding, in a way.

Just one level above him there is 'Von',

'Von Stroheim', the persona

he plays in his everyday life,

the one he pretends to be,

And above that are the various characters he plays in movies.

And there is a permanent interaction between

the parts he plays onscreen

and what he is in real life,

the person he is, with his family and friends,

some of whom don't even know the truth.

Where the Hollywood community is concerned, I don't know.

I guess most of the Hollywood community knew about Stroheim's secret.

But in Hollywood,

being Jewish was no big deal.

Pretty much everyone was Jewish and it was a secret to no-one.

But Stroheim didn't want it to be known.

So out of respect for him,

people didn't talk about it.

All this only works because

there is a real vitality

to the character he has hidden.

And this vitality expresses itself

in an almost mathematical way,

meaning that Stroheim systematically presents the reverse

from what he was supposed to be, to begin with.

He was really

a commoner, originally.

And he pretends to be a nobleman.

He tried to join the army several times,

he was refused several times,

and he pretends to be a former officer.

He constantly pretends to be the opposite of what he really was.

And this is precisely what leads to this reinvention,

and gives this persona its strength.

The French proposal was

'Marthe Richard Au Service de la France', with Edwige Feuillere.

Stroheim resumes his "Evil Hun" persona.

'La Grande Illusion', made right after that film,

is not just going to restore his image.

It will give his character its immortality.

Playing "Von Rauffenstein",

the "career officer in the Imperial German army"

Stroheim solidifies once and for all

the image that all generations of filmgoers

will come to know and love.

Or at least those of France.

Jean Renoir directs the film.

And since Renoir admires Stroheim the filmmaker,

he heartily welcomes several of his suggestions.

Rauffenstein's notorious neckbrace, for one thing,

is a pure Stroheim touch.

And Rauffenstein is no "Evil Hun".

He's almost not even German.

In spite of the uniform and the accent.

He is much more:

The end of a world,

a world ruled by a pre-1914 aristocratic code of honour,

and which did not survive the Great War.

The character created by Stroheim completely revives his acting career.

He becomes "the eccentric actor".

First, 'Les Disparus de St-Agil',

which dazzled a whole generation of kids.

In it, Stroheim is soft-spoken, shy, and bold.

'Les Pirates du Rail'.

Stroheim plays the Chinese General Tchou-King.

'L'affaire Lafarge'

directed by Pierre Chenal,

another admirer.

In Edmond Greville's 'Mademoiselle Docteur',

he plays yet another German spy.

But in 'Rappel Immediat', sudden change:

He portrays an American officer.

In Robert Siodmak's underrated 'Pieges',

he plays a fallen fashion designer, who presents his collections to empty rooms.

The declaration of war, in September 1939 forces him into exile.

Stroheim leaves France with his wife-to-be,

Denise Vernac.

He goes back to America,

where his status as an actor is rather modest,

and where everyone is oblivious or pretends to be

to the fact that he was, twenty years earlier, 'Herr Direktor'.

Stroheim does one acting gig after another.

As usual, he plays one "Kraut" after the other.

The films are mediocre.

And even 'Five Graves to Cairo', directed by his fellow countryman Billy Wilder,

is far from sublime.

Stroheim plays Rommel. Naturally.

But as soon as the war is over,

he goes back to France to play under the direction of Jean Delannoy.

Stroheim goes on being an actor.

But unlike his pre-war engagements,

the French films are, for the most part, really bad.

While working on one of them, he makes the acquaintance of a young extra

who is overwhelmed with admiration.

I was a humble

assistant of sorts.

I was something of a spectator of his life.

But I was not intimate with him.

Very few people.... well some people saw me with him, but

nobody knows I knew Stroheim.

I say it sometimes, just to boast.

I knew him from 'L'Alibi',

'L'Affaire Lafarge', all the films we just talked about,

i.e.

'Macao', 'Menaces',

and really I didn't see 'Menaces' until much later, because it was forbidden...

But of all the films, 'Les Disparus de St-Agil'...

Because to the kid that I was,

Well yes I was very impressed.

And I used to go with him to a place called "L'Elysee Matignon"

Which was a sort of place a bit like the Fouquet's, but

He went to L'Elysee Matignon,

He went there like some extras do,

to be seen.

Even though he didn't have to. He was...

Everybody knew who he was.

But I never saw him ask anyone

for money.

He didn't go from table to table saying: "Hey could you..."

Producers were there.

The Akim brothers were there.

They were often there, and they were very important people back then.

The two brothers.

He didn't go ask them for a job.

Or to ask them to make a film. He was very proud.

He confided in me.

He kept telling me

about the fact that he hadn't directed a picture in 25 years.

He was tormented by this.

He used to tell me: "When you're a director"

or "when you try to become a director"

"Don't disappoint the producers. Don't do what I did".

"Don't destroy your sets"

"Don't make them go bankrupt"

"Because even if you only lead one of them to bankruptcy"

"All the others will resent you for it".

"Not just the one you ruined".

"Because if you do that,"

"Then it's the desert. They will..."

"They cast you out".

"They go 'This guy is a nutcase',

'He made you lose money',

'He had his set destroyed',

'Something horrible'",

So they took their revenge on him.

He didn't direct anything for 25 years.

Stroheim didn't like comedies.

He found them stupid.

I remember, at the time there were those comedies with Sophie Desmarets,

with Annie Ducaux...

Stuff like 'Florence Est Folle'...

He hated that.

He was my master in that respect,

because when I tackled comedies,

I remembered what he told me.

That is, not to make empty comedies.

Always make a comedy that is also a social satire.

He did, on the other hand, love Feydeau.

Loved Feydeau.

Because he said that in Feydeau there was a social criticism.

That is the main problem with this type of actor, like Orson Welles,

Who had the same problem when he worked with Chabrol.

Namely that when you hire such a legend,

as a director,

you're overawed.

You say to yourself: "Shit, he's so great!"

"Who the hell am I to direct HIM?"

And even Renoir, who was...

Renoir was extremely...

humble.

He was not pretentious at all.

So he was afraid of Stroheim.

He used to say to himself: "Geez, I'm directing a guy who..."

Well, he considered him to be much greater then himself.

So he suffered a lot from this, Erich.

Because

People were afraid of hiring him.

So he was only getting hired by guys who were former assistants,

and he used to say to me:

"All the films I make, I make them because"

"I want to stay involved in movies, somehow".

"I can't give it up".

Stroheim's problem,

And Jouvet's problem, and that of this kind of actors,

the character actors,

was that they had 3 days of shooting.

They weren't given leading roles,

they were given supporting parts.

For example, Louis Jouvet, in 'L'Alibi', had 3 days of shooting

to play the part of the police inspector.

So

Actors were hired on a gig-by-gig basis.

And their name was added to the casting.

And Erich von Stroheim, in, for example, 'Minuit'...

'Minuit, Quai de Bercy',

was scheduled to shoot for 2 days.

Christian Stengel said, "Okay",

"Let's have Stroheim for 2 days".

For 'Serie Noire' I think he also had 2 or 3 days,

'La Madone des Sleepings", 2 or 3 days,

On 'Macao', he worked for 5 days, I think.

It was always reduced to a bare minimum. And in some films he was there for a day.

Shooting over a period of two days

gave him the status, not quite of an extra, but

of a meaningless supporting part.

To the assistants, it was like: "Well, that guy there, the..."

"the Mittel-European guy there, he's here for 2 days". The guy didn't know who Stroheim was.

Didn't know his films as an actor and even less those he had directed.

'Greed' or 'Queen Kelly', he hadn't ever heard of any of it.

I learnt about that part of his career eventually,

but long after I had met him. Long after that.

I witnessed an incident that shocked me tremendously.

From a young

assistant who has now become a revered director...

I won't give his name, out of charity.

It was on the set of a movie he was making,

One of those movies in which he had one of those bit parts,

for two days, and so on...

At some point,

the assistant went and knocked on his dressing room door,

and - Stroheim told me that story -

the guy knocked on his door,

and said: "All righty Erich, on the set! Chop chop!"

"Come on!"

(using the French "tu", familiar form of "you")

The last glimmer of hope comes from America after all.

Billy Wilder has written the part of Max von Mayerling for him.

A fallen film director,

Who has become the butler of another fallen idol of the silent era.

And to play her part,

Wilder casts Gloria Swanson,

the very one who starred in 'Queen Kelly'.

'Sunset Boulevard' is a masterpiece.

Beautiful,

mean,

funereal.

Stroheim ended his life in France.

He died in Maurepas.

In Ile-De-France.

He had settled in a house that was very much like him.

If I had to describe it, I'd say it was a sort of "neo-Normandy fantasy".

Some sort of little manor,

with half-timbering, old stones...

He had decorated it in his likeness, so with military paraphernalia all over the place,

many of which were in fact film props.

There are a few famous pictures showing

Stroheim sitting at his desk, perched on a horse saddle,

He had placed a saddle over a wooden trestle and he sat on top of that.

Stirrups were used as ashtrays...

There were ashtrays made from sculpted horse heads,

Various objects of that kind...

Stained-glass windows in the house...

Objects that made you think of

A former military officer...

And nobleman... a very special house.

Erich von Stroheim

died peacefully

in his Maurepas manor

in the spring of 1957.

The actor,

and film director, Stroheim and von Stroheim,

were buried a few steps away,

in a small graveyard in the countryside.

A gypsy band followed the parade.

You view Stroheim's death differently, depending on where you stand.

If you're American,

He's a bit forgotten. You may remember that there was once, long ago,

Someone by the name of Stroheim.

But if you're French, you know that Stroheim was this cursed filmmaker,

You know that he was crushed by the Hollywood system,

You know that he was a great actor,

At the time of his death, he is, to French audiences, first and foremost, a great actor.

Film buffs may remember the great filmmaker,

But he's especially known as an actor

at this point.

What killed me about his death was

that I wanted to cast him.

And I was like...

It's like when something's just within your reach,

You reach out for it and it escapes you.

That thing is just inches away...

And that's amazing because

I chose to do this just to be able to direct

Stroheim, Jules Berry, Raimu...

And they're all dead!

I managed to catch a few of them...

I made it happen, but not HIM!

Can you imagine? Stroheim... in one of MY films...

How happy I'd have been.

I think that Stroheim's heirs

Must be found in European cinema,

as it gave more freedom.

For example, Renoir,

Who said himself: "I saw 'Foolish Wives' ten times"

"It was the film that impressed me most".

Undeniably, Renoir, after seeing 'Foolish Wives',

was influenced by Stroheim.

And then Bunuel,

Undeniably, the same naturalism

as Stroheim's.

- a naturalism that is not incompatible with surrealism, contrary to common belief -

Orson Welles,

The only one in America,

who can boast direct influence...

His famous ceiling-shots

are the ceilings from 'Greed'.

They are both great revolutionaries.

They transformed the cinema of their respective eras,

They are both

patsies, both outcasts,

expelled from the film industry.

The revenge, in a way, is when you watch one of my films,

or Stroheim's or anyone else's,

is the pleasure people have in rediscovering them 20, 40, 50, 60 years afterwards.

And that's really what success is.

It's not scoring 20 million admissions.

That's what I find fascinating about Stroheim's persona.

That, film after film,

he creates himself.

Stroheim's films are, in themselves, fabulous.

But to me, his greatest masterpiece is himself.

In a way,

it's the fusion of his films with himself.

And the creation of his persona, through his films.

He has used cinema for personal ends,

namely to create himself.

- Wow! - But... It's artistic.