Lennig - Stroheim

This examination of the life and career of Erich von Stroheim stems from a number of personal factors. During my grade school days, I was drawn to the work of two actors, John Barrymore and Bela Lugosi. Soon, they were joined by Erich von Stroheim, whom I first encountered in The Lady and the Monster and, shortly after, in The Great Flamarion. Each of these three men had an overwhelming screen presence that radiated intelligence, personality, and panachethey were flamboyant characters with ironic twists. To me, as a young boy, they were extraordinarily fascinating.

In those days, I also became intrigued by silent films, Chaplins reissue of The Gold Rush probably being the impetus, followed soon by C.B. DeMilles King of Kings. Their silence was intriguing. I never missed the rare occasions when such golden oldies were shown. In them I found beauty and charm. For reasons I cannot quite explain, I became nostalgic about a time long before I was born. This looking backward was reinforced by my intense interest in pre-1925 recordings, which led me to Enrico Caruso and eventually to opera.

By the time I reached the eighth grade, I was attending the Metropolitan Opera, corresponding with Bela Lugosihe later visited me at my homeand trying to learn as much as I could about the art of the cinema, which, in those days, was considered almost a joke. I was most impressed by Lewis Jacobss The Rise of the American Film, Paul Rothas The Film till Now, and, a few years afterward, Peter Nobles Hollywood Scapegoat, the first biography of Stroheim. Later, I was entranced by Sunset Boulevard, for it combined silent film, nostalgia, and Stroheim all in one bravura production. When Gloria Swanson appeared in the play Twentieth Century on Broadway, I went backstage and interviewed her for well over an hour. As a teenager, I got in. Twenty years later, as a professor, I was refused an audience by her assistant!

I also began shooting 16 mm films, which made me more aware of lenses, composition, camera placement, and, of course, editing. Hollywood, however, seemed an impossibility in those days to an idealistic youth devoted to The Cinema. So when I went to college I majored in English. I consoled myself as an undergraduate by running a film society, which showed mostly silent films, and writing program notes.

In the late 1950s, while working on a doctorate in English and American literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I joined the Wisconsin Film Society, which showed classics and provided informative notes for its members. My main interest then was in the German and Soviet silent cinema. At the time, film was seen as a foolish preoccupation, looked down upon by my fellow doctoral candidates and most of my professors. Writing about film was even worse. Despite such derision, I became the film societys president and persuaded fellow students to write articles, which were printed in 1960 in a book called Film Notes.

The society indulged my curiosity about Stroheim by booking the only films then available on 16 mm, Blind Husbands, Foolish Wives, and Greed. In my program notes, I discussed the Stroheim persona and identified at least some of his obsessions. These notes were later reworked and published in Classics of the Film (1965), a volume that also included the first serious examination of Bela Lugosis career.

After receiving my Ph. D. in 1961 (my thesis was on Ezra Pounds Cantos), I traveled in Europe for a year, visiting film archives and attending many screenings at the Cinmathque Franaise. There I met Lotte Eisner, Jean Renoir, and Henri Langlois. I also screened films in Rome and visited the UFA studios near Berlin.