Customer Reviews

Stroheim

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Few Hollywood notables have been the object of more distorted,misinformed,or outright fabricated profiles than Erich Von Stroheim.Now that Arthur Lennig has come forward with his long-awaited biography,we are finally given the amazing truth of a maverick star/director who bit every hand that tried to feed him.Lennig has made a serious study of Stroheim for over fifty years---he restored "Foolish Wives" back in the sixties---he traveled to Austria to uncover the real story of Stroheim's humble beginnings---in short,Lennig,who prevously gave us the first and still best of the Bela Lugosi bios,has done it again with "Stroheim"---in fact,he has surpassed himself,and that's saying plenty considering the fact that Arthur Lennig is one of the most well-informed and reliable of all the pioneer film historians.Has there ever been a more fascinating(and ultimatly tragic) figure in the whole history of Hollywood than Erich Von Stroheim?Here's a guy that took on every front office in town---gambled it all for creative control that he invariably lost---but kept returning to the Hollywood arena again and again until they finally broke him.Yes,he took on the system and the system won---or did it?Stroheim's incredible films,even in their truncated latter-day forms,are here to give evidence that this was a director generations ahead of his time---already it's 2000 and we still haven't caught up with him.Read this book and get the dope on how "Greed","The Wedding March",and all the rest came to be. It's riveting.They should give AFI awards for books this good----it's from University Of Kentucky Press,so I don't know how big the print run is,but I suspect it would be a good idea to grab a copy(or two)quick,because this one's going to end up being a collector's item.

What can I add to all the glowing reviews of this book except for my own enthusiasm for it! Arthur Lennig has done a spendid job recounting the life and work of Erich von Stroheim, presenting him as the man and genius he was while also debunking a lot of the myths. Not only is it THE definitive Stroheim biography, it's also highly entertaining reading! A must-read for all film lovers.

I was eagerly anticipating reading Lennig's bio of von Stroheim. After the first chapter my joy turned sour. Very little is revealed that was'nt already discussed in Richard Kosyarski's The Man You Love To Hate, and Weinberg's Stroheim: A Pictorial Review Of His nine Films. Both of these books are out of print but I beseech you to try to find at your local library or through Amazon's out-of-print service. Lennig prose is rather dry, the subject rarely comes to life, and when he does offer insights Stroheim the man seems sad forever the outsider, a two bit Viennese hustler with visions too great for his talent as a director. I was entranced by Stroheim when I was barely in my teens more than twenty years ago. I know about his losing battles against the studio heads, his public freaks and failures. It is the real man behind films like the breathtaking Greed, the unfinished Queen Kelly and the oftimes painfully erotic Foolish Wives that I wanted brought to life. Perhaps I'm only wishing that he could be brought back to life.

Although rich in description and detail (and complete with many wonderful images) the writing was, at times, rather poor. Worse, it was repetitive. The author described a scene in a film in the chapter "The Artist," and then described it in the same way in the chapter specifically dedicated to that film. THEN, if the scene was similar to one in another film, the author felt the need to describe it once more, as if the reader were too stupid to remember. Additionally, he often made a scant reference to piece of information that could have added to the topic being examined, but instead of briefly detailing it, he simply mentioned that it was available in another book. (This might have been excusable once, but he did this multiple times!) He was dedicated to his subject, having quoted interviews he conducted, etc, but the book would have been much better if he had been even half as devoted to the reader.