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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a beautiful transfer of a surprisingly wide-ranging film. The plot-line can be summarised very briefly, but von Sternberg was not a director content with recycling tired images. He has created a visually stunning film, once again. Dietrich is fabulous as mother, performer, mistress, street walker, and mother again. Herbert Marshall's character is well handled by von Sternberg - who often symbolically shoots him in silhouette or hidden in shadows. The supporting cast (including Cary Grant) all contribute full-voltage performances, and the child actor who plays Dietrich and Marshall's son does very well indeed. My expectations for this film were far exceeded. It is a great example of the high cinema craft of the 1930s.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I've been lured by the five star ratings credited to this film. Marlene is divine as she moves between roles as top billing cabaret act Helen Jones and perfect wife and mother. When husband needs money for life saving medical treatment in Europe, Cary Grant's deep pockets provide the wherewithal. What Marlene does for the $1500 is not made absolutely clear, but whatever it is, she gets some super new frocks. Hubby comes back a week, fully recovered, finds Marlene on the gallivant with Grant. She's obliged to flee with sonny boy, but ends up in skid alley in the deep south, is eventually found by hubby who takes off with the little boy. Dietrich gets back on top of the bill again, this time in Paris, and Cary turns up to see the show and then to carry her back to NYC. From the film we learn what we all know, good women enjoy washing their kids at bedtime and singing a lullaby far more than clubbing at the Ritz.
It's a lovely film, for all its corniness: the quirky dialogue and dated uncomfortable slang make you wince, but it's early days cinema, and you enjoy its innocence - if only I could believe that the lovely girls fall for the slippers and cardigans rather than the tuxedo and wallet.
It's a lovely film, for all its corniness: the quirky dialogue and dated uncomfortable slang make you wince, but it's early days cinema, and you enjoy its innocence - if only I could believe that the lovely girls fall for the slippers and cardigans rather than the tuxedo and wallet.
Format:DVD
I would have awarded fewer stars but that would have been to ignore the fact that this film was made in the era when such escapism was the norm, even when it featured leaps in the plot that were quite illogical and incredible. Unlike other reviewers I found Marlene Dietrich quite unconvincing at the end of the film as she forsakes her millionaire fiancé and her personality as a headlining cabaret act to reunite with her husband who had forthrightly rejected her after her unfaithfulness. Sudden shifts in the plot e.g. from down and out in a flophouse to star in Paris without explanation of how this was accomplished strain one's ability to suspend disbelief. I guess the conformism of such surrender of a strong woman to renewed domesticity was just what American guardians of moral rectitude wanted to see.
And the songs that Marlene's character sings are dreadful, even for cabaret numbers.
I have a great liking for films of the Thirties from all countries but this is not one of the greats.
And the songs that Marlene's character sings are dreadful, even for cabaret numbers.
I have a great liking for films of the Thirties from all countries but this is not one of the greats.
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