Joseph Von Sternberg
Joseph Von Sternberg
Plagued by financial trouble throughout the 30’s, Paramount studio depended on its stars more than before to give its picture a more expensive and lavish look. The better movies were the successful star-director partnerships such as between Joseph Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich that lasted couple of years after seven movies. The Viennese born director was unquestionably one of the cinema’s finest and most elaborate stylists. He was considered a modernist and achieved in his work a kind of mysterious splendor, a lushly decadent sensuality mingled with spiritual transcendence for his wonderfully egocentric characters. His films are extremely rich in metaphors, in symbolisms and in subconscious messages and signs. Its’ rare to understand the full meaning of his art in one viewing: He was able to allude the most highly eroticized parts of Dietrich’s body such as her legs and deals with themes, such as sexuality , fetishism, the erotic, love, passion, betrayal and manipulation, without being stopped by the censorship board. Sternberg, whose films are centered on psychological and sexual problems, put the accent intensively on the “Mise en scene” instead of the action to enhance the dynamics of desire. He was a master in making his picture more lavish than they actually were by putting great accent on the art direction (From the visual motives such as props to the costume and set design), the strategic lighting, the aesthetic of the camera (from the framing and the composition of a shot to the camera movements), the specific blocking of the actors and finally the use of sound. The essay will cover the “Mise en scene” of the Joseph von Sternberg-Dietrich films and will give example for some of his movies such as “The Blue Angel” (1929), “ Shanghai Express”(1932), “The Scarlet Empress” (1934) and “the Devil is a woman” (1935).
Sternberg, especially with his Mise-en-scene and the utilization of the frame and narrative, managed to create a unique Stylized and complex world that is his own imagination. He only wanted to work in studios to have full control of his vision and to develop his work to new boundaries without having external interference. He was often considered as an expressionistic artist.
He always built his sets, from the narrow street of Germany in “The Blue Angel’’, to the train station in China in “Shanghai Express”, focusing on every detail and overloading the frame with all sort of objects and patterns to give his pictures a clutter effect where the visual information is jammed in space. The first images of “The Blue Angel” are the rooftops of houses crammed together in the wake of winter. It then cuts to the streets of Germany where we see the small shops and the people working. Then we find ourselves in the professor’s apartment that is rather dark, dusty and surcharged with all kind of books and files: Those details give a sense of a heavy atmosphere of a man who lives for his knowledge and have no place for pleasure. The only place he seems to be heading towards is his classroom that is also well organized; where the objects are well aligned and have a specific place (Like the notebook that is always on the same side of the table). All those locations are in heavy contrast with the cabaret of Lola that is chaotic and that privilege the fun, the non sobriety and the temptations of vice. A man like the professor who has a specific well organized life style would immediately see it as a barbaric and non civilized place.
More over, Sternberg uses the props, the dйcor, the furniture and the visual motives in such an intelligent way that all those elements would often speak more of the film’s themes and ideas than the plot could ever be allowed to. Those elements that are very symbolic often reveal to the spectator the destiny of the characters. For example in “The