Erich von Stroheim’s consideration of a move to the USSR in 1934 remains an intriguing and mysterious detail in the Vienna-born American filmmaker’s biography. His meeting with Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein in 1930, which laid the groundwork for the considered relocation, is also a little-studied curiosity. This lecture takes a deeper look at the interactions between the two directors in the context of Stroheim’s reputation in the USSR. Among the first generation of Soviet filmmakers and critics, Stroheim’s films provoked discussion and garnered praise as visionary critiques of Western social inequality and vice. His conflicts with Hollywood bosses became notorious examples of American capitalism’s refusal to brook criticism. The Soviet image of Stroheim, which crystallized in a short 1927 monograph co-authored by Pera Atasheva (the journalist who would become Eisenstein’s wife), is a fascinating twist on the mythology the Austrian emigrant crafted for himself in America. Examining Stroheim’s particular reception in the Soviet film industry reveals much about the motivations for his hypothetical move and prompts further investigation into the reasons it never occurred.

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THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID.

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