The films of Marlene Dietrich

DVD reviews from The Movie Snob

To deepen my appreciation for cinema’s roots, I decided to check out the newly released 5-movie pack “The Glamour Collection,” starring film siren Marlene Dietrich. I was surprised that Dietrich was not nearly as icy and remote as Greta Garbo was in most of her movies. And although I think Garbo was prettier, Dietrich certainly had her charms—and was a better actress. Still, the movies themselves are duds, from beginning to end.

Morocco (D). Dietrich is Amy Jolly, a cabaret singer who comes to Morocco fleeing some tragic past. Gary Cooper is an American who has joined the French Foreign Legion, also apparently hiding from something in his past. Unfortunately, we never find out any more about either character. They meet, they fall in love, they are separated when Cooper’s unit goes on march into the Sahara. The story doesn’t make much sense, and there is little chemistry between the two protagonists. Cooper in particular has too much twinkle in his eye and too ready of a grin to come off as a world-weary expatriate. Skip this cut-rate Casablanca and watch the real thing instead.

Blonde Venus (D). Dietrich is a cabaret singer who has married an American (or is he British?) and come to the States where they are raising their little boy. Her husband is gravely ill, and to raise the money to send him to Europe for treatment she goes back to her cabaret act. She catches the eye of a local politician/millionaire (played by a very young Cary Grant), and he quickly agrees to fund her husband’s trip to Europe. While he is gone, Dietrich’s and Grant’s characters fall in love, and when the husband comes back all heck breaks loose. Dietrich kidnaps the boy and goes on the lam. Bad movie, ridiculous ending.

The Devil Is a Woman (D-). The worst of the bunch. Dietrich is Concha Perez, a Spanish woman who has clawed her way up from a cigarette factory to wealth and quasi-respectability. For reasons that are never explained, she has it in for men, who cannot resist loving her no matter how badly she abuses them. When she catches the eye of handsome young revolutionary Antonio (Cesar Romero), his older friend Don Pasqual tries to warn him by telling him Pasqual’s own sad story of love and repeated betrayal by Concha. Of course, the warning falls on deaf ears. Dumb.

The Flame of New Orleans (D+). Dietrich is an aristocratic lady living in the Big Easy back in the 1800s. She is lamentably short of funds and decides to marry a banker, whom she easily ensnares. At the same time, however, she is drawn to a rough, handsome sea captain. When her checkered past in Old Europe threatens to catch up with her and ruin her wedding plans, she has to invent a fictitious cousin to pin the rumors on. Silly, but not quite as painful as the previous movies.

Golden Earrings (D+). Dietrich dons a ton of make-up to play Lydia, a Gypsy living in pre-WWII Germany. Ray Milland plays a British spy who has escaped his Nazi captors and takes refuge among the Gypsies. Will he stay with the happy Gypsies and the beautiful Lydia? Or will he insist an carrying out his mission to reach a humanitarian German scientist and obtain the secret formula for a new poison gas that Hitler is bent on creating? And will you, the viewer, care either way? Probably not.