FILMOGRAPHY

Josef von Sternberg is a director I came to admire fairly late. I saw a restored 35mm print of The Devil Is a Woman at the Stanford Theater last year — probably one of the best theatrical experiences of my life — and have also marveled at the fastidious technical bravado of Morocco and The Scarlett Empress and the inexplicable curiosity Anatahan, which I encouraged Criterion to release several years ago, along with bonus features I’d produce myself if necessary (my letter was…replied to).

As I’ve indicated in recent months, I’m a proponent of digital exhibition and proud that my theater is standardizing on Sony 4K projectors. Last night I had the opportunity to project a 16mm print of The Blue Angel and as charming as the experience qua experience may have been, I found the physical media cumbersome and the projected image horribly degraded to a degree that would have been difficult for me to fetishize with a straight face. The photos below were taken with my iPhone, which “improved” contrast considerably. The print seemingly represented by these images is one I would have preferred to the one I actually had my hands and eyes on.