A formidable presence both in front of and behind the camera, German auteur Erich von Stroheim is the subject of this in-depth documentary. Renowned for villainous roles as well as for his meticulous filmmaking approach, von Stroheim had a prolific decades-spanning career, which is detailed in interviews and photographs. Most notably, clips of his most celebrated works and even some of his lesser-known productions are presented.

Georges Méliès (1861-1938), cinema pioneer. A first-person narration traces Méliès' early interests in drawing and magic shows. He builds a studio and constructs his own camera-projector, recruits dancers from the opera and actors from the cinema to make a variety of films that tell whole stories: histories, dramas, documentaries, and ads. He moves from farce into sophisticated comedies, developing cinematic tricks (dissolves, split screens, and double exposure) to create artificially-arranged scenes. Then, the cinema passes him by, and he lives the last years of his life in poverty, selling toys out of a shop near the Montparnasse train station, with Jeanne d'Alcy his star.