SOURCE: "Erich von Stroheim," in Films in Review, Vol. VIII, No. 7, 1957, pp. 305-14.

In the following essay, Everson surveys Stroheim's films.

Erich von Stroheim's death in Paris on May 12, 1957, has further reduced the rapidly diminishing number of directorial "giants" of the silent screen. First Murnau, then Griffith, Eisenstein and Pudovkin. With Stroheim's death, only two are left—Carl Th. Dreyer, the greatest living silent director, and probably the greatest director making films today, and Charles Chaplin, whose latest film appears to be a disappointment and an unhappy swan song.

Though not the most important of the seven "giants" just named—any such selection is necessarily arbitrary—Stroheim was certainly the most colorful, the most publicized, and the most maligned. He was attacked out of all proportion to his "crimes" by his enemies, and defended out of all proportion to his achievements by his friends.

From the beginning, Stroheim...