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By
NICK ZEGARAC
Marlene Dietrich's enviable
place in American films seems to be predicated on
the fact that she began her career as arguably
filmdom's first openly bisexual heroine.
Certainly, during her pre-code tenure, she was
often poured into masculine attire and seen
kissing an equal portion of women and men on
screen. However, with the installation of the
production code for moral ethics in film making in
1934, much of that dangerously ambiguous allure
evaporated -- or rather was reconstituted into a
string of parts that had Dietrich playing
temperamental hookers or loose married women with
a heart of gold. Regardless of her early
trailblazing days as a pioneer or liberator for
the sexually repressed, this reviewer has
personally never fully acquired a palpable taste
for her particular brand of neutral sexuality. And
now Universal Home Video offers yet another reason
for social historians to poo-poo the actress on
film -- or rather, DVD. Marlene Dietrich: The
Glamour Collection effectively brings together 5
of Dietrich's flicks that for the most part should
have remained ambiguously absent from home video.
Joseph Von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) is
over-the-top Dietrich -- cast as Mademoiselle Amy
Jolly, an asexual seductress performing in a seedy
nightclub in Paris run by the disreputable Lo
Tinto (Paul Porcasi) Fresh from his outpost in the
Foreign Legion. Monsieur La Bessiere (Adolphe
Menjou) is a scallywag with boozin' and ballin' on
his mind. At roughly this same junction,
legionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) catches Amy's
tuxedo-clad act. He is mesmerized by her but
scarred by his own secretive past life. While Amy
struggles to decide between La Bessiere and Brown,
Tom is reassigned on a deadly mission to parts
unknown. Not much beyond a turgid melodrama,
Morocco excels primarily because of Dietich's
ability to portray garish inner torment and
inconsolable sadness as the epitome of
self-sacrifice and wounded betrayal. Cooper's
performance leaves much to be desired and Menjou
seems wrong for this sort of carousing alley cat.
But the film keeps together with all eyes affixed
on Dietrich's tour de force.
On the whole then, Dietrich's next vehicle, Blonde
Venus (1932) is infinitely more satisfying.
Dietrich is given the unglamorous name, Helen
Faraday -- wife of American chemist Ned (Herbert
Marshall -- who always seemed to be married to the
wrong kind of woman in films) whose Radium
poisoning requires expensive treatment and a long
recovery. To make ends meet, Helen returns to
night club work, transforming herself into the
freakishly asexual yet popular Blonde Venus. In
between performing gaudy musical numbers with a
platinum afro, Helen prostitutes herself to
millionaire playboy Nick Townsend (Cary Grant).
With Ned recuperating in Europe, Helen indulges
her loneliness in a sordid affair with Nick. The
wonder lust is short lived upon Ned's return.
Helen grabs their son Johnny (Dickie Moore) and
lives obscurely. Eventually, Johnny is taken away
from her. Embittered, Helen agrees to a proposal
of marriage from Nick, but can she ever forgive
Ned or forget her son? This film is a classic
amongst Dietrich fans and a genuinely adult
critique of themes usually unexplored in American
films of this vintage.
The Devil is A Woman (1935) is problematic on a
number of levels -- not the least of which is its
lengthy and cumbersome flashback devise --
illustrating an elderly gentleman, Capt. Don
Pasqual Costelar's (Lionel Atwill) obsession with
Concha Perez (Dietrich) a woman beholding to no
one, but seemingly able to foster a knack for
inexplicably getting under everyone's skin. Von
Sternberg is clearly relying more heavily on
Dietrich's prior fame as a temptress to carry this
story. Staged primarily in von Sternberg's
garishly surreal incarnation of the Carnival in
Spain, the captain attempts to warn his younger
friend Antonio Galvan (Caesar Romero) of Concha's
power over men, only to recognize that Galvan will
suffer the same fate as he did -- falling under
Concha's ravenous spell for disposable desire. The
film in totem is a valiant experiment at creating
a dreamlike fable about sexual frustration. Sadly,
it never comes off, despite impressive photography
and a thoroughly engrossing central performance by
Dietrich.
The Flame of New Orleans (1941) is an elegant
French farce. By 1941, Dietrich's inimitable brand
of smoldering sensuality had been greatly tempered
-- thanks to the production code -- and she was
reserved in films to play arrogant and haughty
flights of a cocky know-it-all rather than virile
vixens. As Countess Claire Ledoux, Dietrich's
central concern is to convince her middle-aged
banker/finance, Charles Giraud (Roland Young) that
she is actually another woman named Lili; a
deception made necessary by the arrival of Robert
LaTour (Bruce Cabot) an old flame. To defuse the
situation, Giraud plots to foreclose on a loan
made to LaTour -- leaving him penniless and unable
to court Claire. A soft as cream folly played
strictly for laughs, The Flame of New Orleans is
vintage kitsch -- not vintage Dietrich. It's light
and entertaining but perhaps a tad off putting for
those expecting the grand dame to turn her usual
sexual ambiguity into the height of passionate
play.
Golden Earrings (1947) is the last film in this
collection, and arguably the worst. A
dispassionate unintentionally comedic tale about
war time deceptions, it casts Dietrich as gypsy
house frau, Lydia who aids a British captain,
Ralph Denistoun (Ray Milland) in keeping the
Nazi's at bay. How is this achieved? Simple --
Lydia pierces Denistoun's ears and teaches him to
read palms. Denistoun's contact and friend,
Richard Byrd (Bruce Lester) is a double agent
working to uncover the German's formula for
poisoned gas when he is murdered by the Gestapo.
Eventually Denistoun contacts Professor Krosigk
(Reinhold Schunzel), the anti-Nazi inventor of the
gas and together the two set about to stop the
German war machine from killing millions. There's
really not a lot for Dietrich to do in this film
except look repugnant and awful in her gypsy make
up. But her inexcusably bad taste in choosing this
vehicle pales to Milland's idiotic take on playing
a fortune teller to escape his own fate in a
concentration camp. Truly, this is one bad film
buffeted by a war time propaganda slant that would
even have made Roosevelt blush -- if only he
hadn't already died two years before.
Universal has a rather disappointing batch of
transfers to offer in this two disc set. Of all
the films included herein, only Golden Earrings
seems up to snuff with a reasonably balanced and
sharp grayscale, solid black levels, relatively
clean whites and only a hint of age-related
artifacts. The Flame of New Orleans is almost as
good. But the rest of the transfers do not fair
well at all. Morocco -- the best film in this set
is marred by a very blurry, dirty and grainy
looking transfer that is in desperate need of some
digital clean up. Blonde Venus is almost as bad on
all levels of quality. The Devil Is a Woman is
also in fairly bad shape. The audio is mono in all
cases but exhibits a perceptible hiss and pop on
Blonde Venus and Morocco. Often dialogue seems
muffled. There are no extras. |
