SCMS observations

from Robert Keser,
National-Louis University (Chicago)


Below are some quickly jotted observations and recollections about a couple of notable SCMS sessions that I attended. These were presentations that closely fit my own film-history interests, which is why I took more than casual notes. I’m posting them here because I ran into Jason Sperb and Scott Balcerzak at yet another session and was invited (I think!) to add my thoughts. I hope they’ll be useful to readers, and give an idea of the range and depth of these very valuable sessions.

Janet Bergstrom and three students from her UCLA seminar (called “Project Sternberg”) received special dispensation to present together (normally SCMS mandates a mix of institutions in any one session). Bergstrom led off with fascinating material about Sternberg’s beginnings, showing almost 15 minutes of clips from his reputation-making THE SALVATION HUNTERS (which features a river dredging machine as a kind of character, and has been called America’s first avant-garde feature). She pointed out certain features of Georgia Hale’s performance (which apparently led Chaplin to make her his heroine in THE GOLD RUSH the following year). An interesting factoid is that the film’s unexpected success gave Sternberg the opportunity to sign a contract to direct two films for Mary Pickford (though “Little Mary” later changed her mind). The presentation also featured stills and traced the history behind EXQUISITE SINNER, THE MASKED BRIDE, and THE SEA GULL/A WOMAN OF THE SEA (the latter credits “the Pacific Ocean” in its cast of characters). Apparently the seminar’s advocacy may result in a restoration (and DVD release?) of THE SALVATION HUNTERS soon.

Jason Skonieczny discussed his Deleuzian take on the meaning of close-ups in the Dietrich films, especially THE SCARLET EMPRESS with its use of veils for entrapment. He rather memorably described the ending of MOROCCO as “the screen is cleared of star bodies, leaving only the desert”. Is this a quote?

Andrew Woods laid out his research about Sternberg at RKO, which could equally be called Sternberg and Howard Hughes. He presented a very lucid run through the numerous changes made by various hands to JET PILOT and then sorted through what remains from Sternberg in MACAO and what was added by Nicholas Ray (and others), including an entirely new opening sequence.

Sachiko Mizuno addressed ANATAHAN, first sketching out Sternberg’s longtime relation to Japan and emphasizing his surprisingly widespread influence there (Japanese critics voted DOCKS OF NEW YORK the best picture of 1928). Along with some eye-popping Japanese posters for THE DRAG NET, MOROCCO and THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, she showed a still of Sternberg visiting Arnold Fanck (Leni Riefenstahl’s mentor) on the set of Fanck’s 1937 German-Japanese co-production, A DAUGHTER OF SAMURAI, explaining that the film’s producer (Kawakita) was expelled after WW2 but then returned . . . to produce ANATAHAN! After discussing the historical incident behind ANATAHAN, she described some of the key personnel (the special effects maestro soon afterward worked on GODZILLA/GOJIRA) and showed production stills of the studio in Kyoto (including a shot of Cary Grant visiting the set). Apparently the English narration was also recorded by a Japanese speaker but it was decided to go with Sternberg’s own voice.

A different presentation earlier on the same day also featured some Sternberg research: USC’s Richard Jewell presented “Two Hollywood Joes: Von Sternberg Shows Breen the Way”, detailing some of the censorship tussles between the two Joes. It seems that after viewing the Oriental characters in SHANGHAI EXPRESS the Chinese authorities demanded that Paramount withdraw the film from circulation or risk a nationwide boycott of all Paramount films (though the U.S. ambassador was able to squelch the protest). Then the same thing happened regarding THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, with Spain objecting to the portrait of their Guardia Civil as corruptible, Dietrich-besotted careerists, but the Spanish also demanded that Paramount burn the negative of the film (the studio actually did enact a ritual incineration of an extra print). Breen, however, was aghast at the film’s ending (which Jewell rightly calls very modern), wherein Dietrich remains unpunished and free to ply her wares, so to speak. Breen himself apparently suggested that Sternberg shoot a new ending, with Dietrich abjectly begging forgiveness from the now blind [?] Atwill, who then follows the sound of her voice and chokes her to death, whereupon the police (Guardia Civil?) drag him away.

On the same bill, Brandeis’s Thomas Doherty presented “Uncensorable Subtlety: Ernst Lubitsch and the Breen Office”, an appropriately witty discussion of the skills that 1930s Code-era audiences developed to decode evasive “Lubitsch Touch” type references to sexual behavior, in what Doherty terms a kind of mass demonstration of cryptography. Illustrations included a clip from the Borzage/Lubitsch DESIRE wherein Dietrich visits a psychiatrist to complain about her husband’s waning “performance” and a more visually-oriented clip from the opening of ANGEL where Lubitsch gradually signals that we are seeing a high-class brothel by having the camera follow the madam through five rooms as she eventually brings together one woman and a male client.

Also in the same presentation, Amy Wood (U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) discussed “FURY, Censorship, and the Politics of Lynching”: her research found that, despite predictions to the contrary, FURY encountered little resistance in the U.S. South, possibly due to the film’s curious de-racialization of lynching, leaving an innocent white male as the ostensible victim!