LET'S LEARN LIGHTING WITH JOSEF VON STERNBERG

Recently I've been re-reading Kevin Brownlow's majestic oral-history of the silent film era 'The Parade's Gone By'. In it, a chapter is devoted to Josef Von Sternberg and contains an account of a lighting masterclass he conducted in the late 1960s that was filmed by a documentary crew for television broadcast in the UK. I think I found it--it's posted above. (The only reason I say that I 'think I found it' is that the model in the above footage is dressed differently than the one seen in the stills in Brownlow's book, so either this is just a portion of the doc or one of a series of masterclasses that Von Sternberg was filmed doing).

This is absolutely fascinating viewing, not just because we see Von Sternberg in action lighting a set with the particularity and precision which he lavished on Dietrich, but also because we get a sense of how Von Sternberg directed. At the end of the clip, he instructs the model (who is now being filmed in close-up) to look right, left, at his hand, turn quickly, look down, look up, look left etc. This is what passed for direction on a Von Sternberg set and it's not surprising to see if you've ever heard Marlene describe working with him. He would literally tell actors to count to ten before delivering a line (as opposed to discussing any sort of character motivation) and, surprisingly, he was usually dead on. The unaffected, unadorned performances in his films can sometimes be puzzling but often are part of the overall effect that Von Sternberg was aiming for. Actors, lighting and camera were all one element to him and when you see the test footage of the model following his instructions--lit only with a hot high lamp, one fill and cut with a cookelauras (or however you spell the full word for a 'cookie')--you're looking at a pure Von Sternberg moment.

 Subscribe in a reader