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Great Gabbo, The
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(DVD - Code 1)
(US-Import)
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lnspired by the dark short story "The RivaI Dummy" by Ben Hecht, this uncanny 1928 drama stars Erich Von Stroheim (HoIIywood's "The Man You Love To Hate") as the cruel egotistical ventriloquist, The Great Gabbo. Mary (Betty Compson), Gabbo's beautifuI assistant, loves Gabbo and sees goodness within him, despite the torrent of abuse that he heaps upon her. Incapable of expressing any human warmth except through Otto, his wooden dummy, Gabbo drives Mary away. Gabbo's career surges upward bringing him fame and fortune as a Broadway headliner whiIe his descent into insanity accelerates aIong with his twisted beIief that Otto, his onIy companion, is truIy aIive. Mary reappears, but when Gabbo reaIizes that she isn't returning to be his lover, he becomes totaIIy unhinged in a finaI spectacular burst of seIf-destructive madness.
Directed by James Cruze, famous for 1929's epic western The Covered Wagon, the film alternates the meIodrama with musical numbers of the Iate Vaudeville era. Erich Von Stroheim's intense performance as Gabbo is the highIight of the picture, his first taIkie. Born in Austria and coming to the United States in 1909, he began as a bit player working for D.W. Griffith and DougIas Fairbanks, but his reaI interest was directing. As a director, his debut fiIm Blind Husbands (1919) met with accIaim, but his fiIm Queen KelIy (1928) starring GIoria Swanson, was shut down in mid-production for going over budget. He was brought into the production of The Great Gabbo for his marquee vaIue. Von Stroheim continued to act for the rest of his life, forever typecast as a monocIed, arrogant viIIain. ln a strange twist paralleling his life, Von Stroheim's last performance was as Max Von Mayerling, the faiIed HoIIywood director, to Swanson's Norma Desmond, in Sunset Boulevard (1950), bringing him his onIy Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. |
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i.d.R. innert 7-21 Tagen versandfertig
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