Word: vonsternberg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Harvard-Epworth Film Series. Josef vonSternberg's "An American Tragedy." Harvard-EpworthUnited Methodist Church, 1555 Mass...
...noisy, busy trading center through which the West did business with the East, and both made money. No adventurer worth his 38 hasn't been there sometime. Along the South China coast they say that all roads lead to Macao. It seems a shame that RKO's director, Josef vonSternberg, never went there. Macao could have made a good movie...
...Director vonSternberg only visited Sound Stage 17, the one cluttered with all that scenery left over from Hong Kong, Saigon, Maylaya,andCaptain China, carrying formula six--"Exotic Movies"--in his pocket. Sticking to the letter of the recipe, he called in a tough guy, Robert Mitchum, and a seductress, Jane Russell, who really want to spend the rest of their lives on a rubber plantation in peace and senility. He added a nice, but clever, international cop, William Bendix, who gets stabbed, and rounded out the cast with a glassy-eyed, crooked, gambling-hall owner surrounded by inscrutable orientals...
...Director vonSternberg keeps interest and excitement high throughout the picture, however, by an old, Confucius-like beggar, who masters the minor fault of being totally blind by telling all the characters what the rest are doing at any given moment. The audience sits, fascinated to the end, wondering how he did it. But with a shrewd twist, in which the director daringly departed from formula six, the movie never explains this feat, thus keeping the audience in suspense even after the lights...
| 1 |