fifteen Sternberg films

It’s difficult to place one work above another when one cherishes so many of them almost equally, and in Sternberg’s case, where there is such remarkable variation from one film to the next and yet they all belong together so well. They are all so much of a piece, yet each unique and all unlike the work of any other. Among the films recently added, there is the father of the gangster film, Underworld, which is as great as any of its progeny; and the unfinished adaptation of I, Claudius, with Charles Laughton as the eponymous Emperor and Merle Oberon as Messalina. Even his fragments deserve the closest examination. Finally,...