Erich von Stroheim's great acting career in French films
He was born in Austria and came to the U.S. at the age of 24. Larger than life, a writer, director, and actor, an Orson Welles type before Orson Welles, Erich von Stroheim starred in 74 films as an actor, with 27 of them in France. He started his acting career in silent films in Hollywood but failed to encounter great success. He directed an outstanding film, Greed, but he was constantly at odds with the studios because he would not compromise his artistic principles for commercialism. In 1936 he then departed for Paris and made 15 films from 1937 to 1940 which included such outstanding ones as Grand Illusion, The Alibi, and the Disappeared Of St. Agil. He returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War II (he was Jewish and would have been subject to deportation to a camp had he stayed). The Nazis banned von Stroheim's films from all occupied countries during the war.
In La grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) as an aristocratic German officer in World War I in charge of a POW camp.
In L'Alibi (The Alibi) as a nightclub performer of a mind reading act who murders an old enemy after he spots him in the audience and then pays one of the club's hostesses to act as his alibi witness. In this film he played opposite Louis Jouvet, France's greatest actor. (Great film clips of von Stroheim but they won't paste directly on this website)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xamkgo_l-alibi-1937-avec-louis-jouvet_shortfilms
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2datt_louis-jouvet-l-alibi_shortfilms
In Les Disparus De St. Agil (The Disappeared of St. Agil) he had the starring role as a professor in a boarding school from which children are disappearing.
http://vimeo.com/29681991
In Macao, L'Enfer Du Jeu (Macao, Gambling Hell) he played the hero opposite Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa (another expatriate who found great success in France and who worked for the resistance during the war).
Immediately after the war, in 1949 von Stroheim returned to France to make 5 films before returning to Hollywood in 1950 where he made Sunset Boulevard, for which he won an academy award nomination. In 1953, he returned to France and made six more films, including the very interesting "noir" Minuit, Quai de Bercy and L'Envers Du Paradis (The Other Side Of Paradise) in which he played a tender and emotional character. He died in France in 1957.
