I watched that movie just recently (trying to improve my English). They managed to gather rather peculiar team: Buster Keaton, not very old yet; von PafosGuyInUniform I don’t remember the name of… The main personage was, actually, the only sane and decent person in the whole movie. The movie director (in-movie personage) was adequate too. All others were either crazy or completely crazy :)
It’s Erich von Stroheim aka the OG MEGALOMANIAC DIRECTOR. The Man You Love To Hate was his moniker because he was typecast as evil german or austrian officer. In one movie he literally threw a baby out of the window because it was crying to loud while he was trying to rape its mother. After the war he transitioned into directing OVERBLOWN MELODRAMAS. By mid 1920s his career started going off the rails and it was dead in the water by early 1930s. He went back to playing all sorts of duplicitous and evil characters - most notably in Grand Illusion. Sunset Boulevard is technically him playing against type actually.
Grand Illusion
I remember that movie. Yes, von Stroheim. He wasn’t evil in “Grand Illusion” though, as I remember. Just a pafos commandant with his own codex of honor. Never saw films he directed, but he is quite rememberable actor. He kept his single role throughout all movies I saw him in. Pafos guy in uniform.
here’s a bunch of his movies in one neat playlist. He’s signature genre is OVERBLOWN MELODRAMA so it’s an extremely acquired taste and you need to brace yourself. Greed is his masterpiece and even chopped to bits it is astonishingly powerful. I guess the full version would’ve been something like Bela Tarr’s Satantango - the movie that drags you across its mud and concrete to get its point across.