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Trilby06
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L'envers du paradis (1953)
Love and fate
The other side of Paradise (L'envers du Paradis) where a very tender, emotional and funny Erich von Stroheim plays the make believe captain in a movie filled with deep beliefs of love. The atmosphere turns around the lives of simple people living in a little town whose lives are not as simple as it seems at first sight. Among hilarious sequences and dramatic performances the story fulfills the aim of the director, to show a place that looks beautiful but is instead the other side of paradise, where life goes on and where some people belief that true happiness is when you make happy another one. The camera cuts the scenes and this gives suspense to the story of this little place in France that could very well be "any place in the world."
Greed (1924)
I had to see this movie
After having seen other films by the Excellent and Rare Director Erich v. Stroheim, I finally saw Greed. After having seen it I felt sad and could not stop thinking about how would happen if ever Stroheim could develop the human sins in other movies with the titles "lust" "anger" etc. I think that greed is clearly a movie study of human flaws. The surprises related with people we think are pure when in fact they only needed (money for example) to develop their inner darkness until incredible degrees. The end of the movie is devastating, all alone I felt as they do, with the heat falling down their bodies, their brains, hopeless. Stroheim made them go to the Death Valley. Now how could have they been able to transmit such hopeless feelings if they had shot in beautiful Hollywood? Their faces say it all. Their eyes, their movements. It's a sad and cruel movie. A human movie, after all.
The Wedding March (1928)
Good performances, excellent movie
Von Stroheim uses time as a way to isolate the surrounding events (even what surrounds the spectator) in order to fix our eyes and get mesmerized by the story. It's kind of hypnotic. European movies have a tendency to show movements and soul motions in a slower way. This is no change with Stroheim who, for example uses many minutes to show us a "coup de foudre" a "love at first sight". But the thing is, Von Stroheim didn't perhaps want only to appear dull, but he wanted to get dull with the situation then to understand the decadence of his situation, the impossibility to move and talk, being on horseback, keeping stern the way a militar does but having a Fay Wray moving her head and eyes so sweetly it makes a complete change in motion in this movie scene. Perhaps Stroheim aimed too much the detail. I think this is what makes his movies so different and personal. And the fetishist, arrogant examples in this movie indeed explain the complexity of his way to see and feel something like Love. How people kiss each other without feeling it and how the European Decadence caused so much pain in young hearts.