The man our grandmothers loved to hate

Just finished a book on Erich von Stroheim, the director, writer, and actor who was known for his movie roles as a cruel seducer of women who usually came to a bad end; in the silent era, he was called "The Man You Love to Hate." Producers weren't too fond of him, either, as he tended to spend a lot of money and shoot hours and hours of footage that was inevitably cut by the studios. Today, he's mostly known for two acting roles which fall outside of his silent movie persona: the aristocratic camp commandant in Grand Illusion (see the picture at right), and the creepy butler to (and ex-husband of) Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

The book, "Stroheim," was written by Arthur Lennig, a professor of cinema who supervised a restoration of one of Stroheim's early films, Foolish Wives. It presents itself (on the jacket flap and in the cover blurbs) as an in-depth biography, but it's really more an examination of Stroheim's work and public persona. Perhaps Lennig thought he couldn't compete with an earlier well-known bio, called "The Man You Love to Hate" (which I have not read), but despite its length (465 pages not counting the notes and bibliography), Stroheim the man remains at a remove here. Instead, Lennig devotes the bulk of the book to discussing in great detail the films Stroheim directed, and in slightly less detail the films he acted in--in some films, he did both. While I was glad to hear about these movies which are difficult to find today, the problem is that Lennig spends way too much time on plot summary (at tedious length). Anyone who reads my classic movie reviews on my other blog knows I like plot summary, but Lennig can take literally 20 pages to tell us what he should be able to tell us in two or three paragraphs. What little critical analysis he does is often confined to merely pointing out Stroheim's use of things like feet, Christmas, and the number 3 in his films, even in films in which he only acted. It's interesting but Lennig never develops these observations into anything that helps us know the man better. This is the rare movie personality bio that doesn't especially make me want to delve deeper into the subject's work--Lennig's earlier book on Bela Lugosi, reissued recently as "The Immortal Count," is similar in approach but better.