Retrospective Josef von Sternberg

The Austrian Film Museum shows from 1 - 23 April 2007 the complete existing works of Josef von Sternberg, accompanied by lectures of film scholars Janet Bergstrom (LA) und Werner Sudendorf (Berlin).

Josef von Sternberg (Jonas Sternberg) was born 1894 in Vienna. When he was a kid, his family moved back and forth between Austria and the USA, until he settles in the States in 1909. He enters the movie business by chance: 1911 he works for a man cleaning film prints, and after this workshop is sold to “World Film Corporation” he starts editing and subtitling on new films. 1923 he moves to Hollywood and becomes the Director’s Assistant for By Divine Right. He is credited Josef von Sternberg and from then on keeps this name.
Subsequently he works for almost all the big Hollywood studios; first still as DA, until he manages one really big achievement: it takes him three days only to re-shoot a failed movie starring Clara Bow and Gary Cooper (Children of Divorce, 1927) and made it a big success. After that, he directs the film Underworld for Paramount. Although the production company stays very sceptical, the film becomes an even bigger success and since then is claimed to be the hour of birth of the gangster film genre.
Sternberg becomes one of the great names in Hollywood, and an unknown German actress rises to stardom with him: Marlene Dietrich. She acts in 6 of Sternberg’s big films between 1931 and 1935 –
Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress und The Devil is a Woman.
After 1935 Hollywood starts to change. Self censorship, visual taboos and elaborate scripts become more important, and the “visual” generation of filmmakers is followed by a generation of former theatre artists and reporters – it’s the time of directors like Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder.
Sternberg then gradually withdraws from the. No big projects are realized any more, or the fail for different reasons 1960, Sternberg becomes am member of the Berlin Art Academy, and is awarded the German “Bundesfilmpreis” in 1963. 1969 he dies of heart failure in Hollywood.