Von Sternberg. John Baxter
boudoir buckling on a sword, only to realize that the belt belongs to a much slimmer man—her lover (Chevalier again), who slipped in as he left. Von Sternberg employs this device in Morocco. Legionnaire Tom Brown, visiting singer Amy Jolly in her dressing room for the first time, reaches, without looking, for a fan, which he’s surprised to find is not in the usual place. But von Sternberg’s use of the technique extends well beyond sight gags. Props become elements in a subliminal language. As Siegfried Kracauer says of The Blue Angel, “There is a promiscuous mingling of architectural fragments, characters and nondescript objects. Lola-Lola sings her famous song on a miniature stage so overstuffed with props that she herself seems part of the décor…. The persistent interference of mute objects reveals the whole milieu as a scene of loosened instincts.”1
Carnivals, masks, streamers, balloons, hats, puppets, statues, dolls, and toys run through his work, generally with some sexual connotation. His films often contain the phallic image of a pole topped with a bulbous knob, a hat, a skull, or a large shell. But von Sternberg reserved a special affection for feathers and birds. They are so ubiquitous in his films that it’s impossible to assign a single “meaning” to their use. The first shot of his first film as director, The Salvation Hunters, is of a seagull perched on a piece of flotsam. Birds permeate his subsequent work: Rath’s dead canary in The Blue Angel; the feathers of Lola-Lola’s postcard portrait; the aigrettes of “Feathers” McCoy in Underworld and “Ritzy” in Thunderbolt and the feathered caps of “The Magpie” in The Drag Net; doves cooing to Helen Faraday in Blonde Venus; imperial eagles in The Last Command, Dishonored, The Scarlet Empress, and I, Claudius; birdsong in Concha’s house in The Devil Is a Woman, plaster storks in her cabaret, and the silly duck she carries when trying to pass for a peasant; and most potent of all, the black plumes of Shanghai Lily’s hats in Shanghai Express. Even in his last film, The Saga of Anatahan, Keiko waves like a trapped bird to the waiting ship, and the castaways carve toy boats that will carry them away, in the words of von Sternberg’s commentary, “on the wings of their longing.”
When he brought Marlene Dietrich from Berlin in 1930, he gave her daughter a crimson and blue macaw. He also ordered Paramount studio carpenters to build an aviary in her garden and stocked it with exotic species. Even six-year-old daughter Heidede intuited that her mother’s newest friend “must have a thing about birds.”2 However, the captives in the aviary, chosen for their looks rather than compatibility, pecked one another to death, suggesting that von Sternberg’s interest was not ornithological but extended only to birds’ decorative qualities. As Raymond Durgnat wrote of these and other details in von Sternberg’s films, “They are not so much symbols (i.e., a code for something else) as carriers of atmosphere.”3 Further obscuring their significance, von Sternberg didn’t keep birds as pets, preferring dogs; nor did he write about them with any special enthusiasm.
We can only guess at the connection he intends us to see between the pigeons that flap away from the windowsill when Olga Baclanova shoots her unfaithful husband in The Docks of New York and the stone eagle Gustav von Seyffertitz eyes in the courtyard where X-27 has just gone to her death in Dishonored. Perhaps some sense of freedom attained or denied, responsibility accepted or flouted, love won or lost—and always the reminder that love, freedom, even life can disappear in a batting of wings, leaving no souvenir more substantial than the scrap of a plume, a hint of infinite possibility, that drifts down to “Rolls Royce” in Underworld as “Feathers” descends into his squalid life. In the manipulation of such materials, von Sternberg has no peer. “He can convey sensuality in a manner which baffles the censors,” wrote one admiring journalist. “They cannot put their finger on it.”4
In the emerging industrialized Hollywood, von Sternberg’s expertise in cinematography, design, and editing represented both strength and weakness. Sergei Eisenstein believed that having risen through the ranks from editing exacerbated von Sternberg’s sense of inferiority. Some colleagues even perceived his skill in lighting as a demeaning inclination to perform tasks not the province of the director, who, it was felt, should concentrate on performances and leave technical matters to cinematographers and set designers. Directors trained in Germany often wore white gloves on the set, signifying a refusal to soil their hands with anything physical, even the moving of a chair. This separation of skills irritated von Sternberg. Long before the ideologues of the nouvelle vague asked, “If film is an art, who is the artist?” and decided that the answer was usually “the director,” he had reached the same conclusion. “Whereas a painter uses his brushes, canvas and colors, following only the bent of his imagination,” he complained, “the film director has to consider other men and human material.” He didn’t hesitate to step on the toes of technicians. On Shanghai Express he climbed on top of a locomotive to paint in shadows that the director of photography had failed to provide, and on Crime and Punishment he not only dabbed paint on sets but also physically moved equipment. Nor did his practice of scrawling graffiti across mirrors and walls or plastering sets with posters endear him to art directors. Although the exclusive American Society of Cinematographers honored him with the first membership ever conferred on a director, and many lighting cameramen acknowledged him as an equal, if not their master, just as many resented him. He was to learn that “human material” could harbor a grudge for a dismayingly long time.
In Uniform
The apparel oft proclaims the man.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
IN APRIL 1917 THE United States entered the European war. As Hollywood whipped up hatred of the Hun in its films, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and other stars toured the nation, selling bonds. In July Congress ordered the Army Signal Corps to obtain photographs and create a comprehensive pictorial history of the war. With U.S. troops already in France and General John Pershing installed in Paris, the Signal Crops hurriedly formed a Photographic Section. Moviemakers who had been peeling potatoes, drilling, or learning the workings of an Enfield rifle were whisked to Columbia University in uptown Manhattan, where the School of Military Cinematography ran a six-week course for combat cameraman and photographers. Among them was Victor Fleming, former cameraman for Douglas Fairbanks and later director of Gone with the Wind, as well as future directors Wesley Ruggles; Ernest B. Schoedsack, creator of King Kong; Henry Hathaway, who would work as von Sternberg’s assistant and second unit director on Morocco and other films; and Lev Milstein, who, as Lewis Milestone, showed war from the German side in All Quiet on the Western Front.
Josef Sternberg and his brother Fred enlisted on the same day, June 5, 1917. Jo gave his profession as “lab expert” and his address as the World studios; Fred was listed as “salesman” with Sternberg Brothers, 902 Broadway. Jo went to the Signal Corps, Fred to the Marine Corps. Their ready acceptance into the armed forces is surprising, given the prevailing anti-Teutonic hostility. Many actors with German names adopted something more Anglo-Saxon for the duration. Gustav von Seyffertitz, who later acted in The Docks of New York, Shanghai Express, and Dishonored, became “G. Butler Clonebaugh,” and von Sternberg’s future scriptwriter Jules Furthman used the noms de plume “Stephen Fox” and “Julius Grinnell.” But apparently an Austrian-born editor with an unrepentantly German name working at the heart of the U.S. war information effort aroused no suspicion. His posting even made the trade paper Moving Picture World, which reported, “Joe Sternberg has been stationed at Columbia University, where he will be engaged in important work connected with the preparation of a film which will be used as an aid to training recruits.” It was a milestone of sorts—his first citation in the “trades,” where he would appear with some regularity. Von Sternberg probably planted the story himself.
Von Sternberg’s training films attracted attention, particularly one on the use of the bayonet. According to a 1931 profile, “officers at the cantonments had been complaining that they could order the doughboys to attend showings of these educational