London’s BFI Southbank will be celebrating Viennese-born visionary Josef von Sternberg in a five-film program, running December 27–30 and featuring some rarities from the director’s body of work, including his elusive final film, The Saga of Anatahan (1953). For the occasion, critic David Thompson has written a captivating career retrospective for the new issue of Sight and Sound, in which he argues that, whether working in Hollywood or Germany, Sternberg, “a man who always saw the medium as a vehicle for self-expression,” was a true auteur avant la lettre. Thompson looks at the filmmaker’s output, from Underworld and The Last Command (“subsequently credited as the first ‘gangster’ picture”) to his iconic works with Marlene Dietrich, including The Blue Angel, Morocco, and The Scarlet Empress, the last of which he calls “a censor-baiting cocktail of sensual excess and riotous design.”
1934
104 min
Black and White
1.33:1
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