About the Book:

In his 1929 Hollywood production The Case of Lena Smith, director Josef von Sternberg vividly brought to life his youthful memories of Vienna at the turn of the last century. Critic Dwight Macdonald called it "the most completely satisfying American film I have seen". But only a short fragment survives — Lena Smith is one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema. Assembling 150 original stills and set designs, numerous script and production documents as well as essays by eminent film historians, the book Josef von Sternberg: The Case of Lena Smith reconstructs Josef von Sternberg's dramatic film about a young woman fighting the oppressive class system of Imperial Vienna.