Erich von Stroheim: A Retrospective

Erich von Stroheim has one of those faces that people tend to recognize from the silent era. Helped in no small part by roles he had in two films by Billy Wilder (Five Graves to Cairo and Sunset Blvd.) as well as Jean Renoir’s Le Grand Illusion, Erich von Stroheim’s look as the stereotypical Teutonic officer was part of the marketing campaigns of even his very first film as a director, Blind Husbands. Born in Vienna in 1885 to a middle class hat maker, he moved to America in 1909 and slowly made...