Copyright © 2003, 2000 by Michael Segers, All rights reserved
Brought to you by Peanut.org
This week Hollywood offered a terminal illness melodrama that the studio did not
make available for critical review (suggesting the film itself may be terminal),
another in the weird-child thriller
genre (which has been in decline since Rosemary’s Baby started the
whole thing), and a comedy (?) about strike-breakers. At least, that gave me the
idea of going on strike. While the honchos in the executive suites in the upper
floors of the Peanut.org corporate towers allow me a few liberal ideas (I’m
just a writer), I was afraid they wouldn’t be amused if I organized the whole
writing division to walk out.
Instead, I decided to stay home and do something I’ve wanted to do for a long
time, write about the films of Marlene Dietrich. So, with monsoon rains washing
the yard, I settled in with my Marlene Dietrich video tapes, the official Rovin’
& Ravin’ cats and
parrot and an unofficial jug of California’s not quite
finest.
Four films later, the parrot was mourning the death of Prof. Rath’s canary (The
Blue Angel), the cats were wondering what happened to X-27’s feline
companion (Dishonored), and I started to write. (You don’t need to know
the status of the jug.) Dietrich is to me so important as a figure in the
development of the twentieth century and in my development as a viewer of and
writer about film that I wrote a whole article before I ever even mentioned the
films. So, the Peanut.org Marlene Dietrich Film Festival is postponed until
Hollywood fails to come through some other weekend.
Here we sit in
cyberspace’s answer to the Blue Angel, chatting (only between songs), but the
emphasis will be on words and ideas, not images. Pictures of Marlene Dietrich
reinforce the perception of her as a camp icon, just another pretty face, and
she is much more than that. Visible goddesses may be sweet, but those unseen
truly inspire us.
Dietrich is the
consummate film artist, the mastering mistress of the crafts and arts of
movie-making, and film is the defining art form of the twentieth century. She
insisted that she owed such artistry to the tutelage of Josef von Sternberg,
director of seven of her films. Although together they produced a string of
masterpieces that (despite the material, as in Blonde Venus), can stand
with the greatest films of all time, von Sternberg without Dietrich never
reached the levels of achievement that Dietrich attained without him. She made
many more films, several of them great, without him, and she developed in new,
unexpected directions, from the well-rounded characterization in Song of
Songs (my favorite of her films) to humor ranging from the banter of a
sophisticated jewel thief (Desire) to the brawling of a down and dirty
saloon hostess (Destry Rides Again).
Dietrich was the
consummate celebrity, and celebrity is the defining concept of a century in
which the distance between illusion and reality has shrunk. From Oscar Wilde’s
declaration of his own genius to Andy Warhol’s prediction that we would all be
famous for fifteen minutes, fame has been the name of the game, a game played
out in ever more invasive media. And so, the unique Marlene Dietrich becomes, at
least as an icon, the most typical person of our century. Once we move into the
fields of image and archetype, we must go slowly, because it is pointless to
confuse the actress and her roles. Dietrich in her trousers (and out of them),
Dietrich in her marriage-as-friendship, Dietrich in the arms of all the lovers
that her own daughter recounts, Dietrich perhaps more than anyone else stormed
the Bastille of sexual inhibition to initiate the sexual revolution.
Last year, Kevin
Costner complained that his full frontal nudity was cut from his film For
Love of the Game. I was tempted to write an article titled "Marlene
Dietrich and Kevin Costner: Stark Naked," in which I would hold up
Dietrich’s great nude scene in Song of Songs as a model for Costner and
others. The sculptor who loves Lily, Dietrich’s character, wants her to model
nude for him, and Lily agrees. The robe slips slowly off her shoulders. We see
it fall at her feet. Shy at first, then increasingly confident, even proud, she
stands before us nude. We see nothing between shoulders and feet, and we do not
need to see any more, which would only be so much less. Dietrich acts nude, to
convey the whole complex of emotions that Lily feels, and we understand.
At one point in her
multi-imaged career Madonna took on the image of Marlene Dietrich, but the image
was all. Madonna has laid it all out before us in a series of outrageous images
and performances that are questionable not so much for their moral concerns as
for matters of taste. No matter how many times she re-invents herself, her image
(and in our time, what is the difference between image and self?), she must wear
her indiscretions like a tattoo.
I recently read that
an actress, nameless here, had been dropping her drawers in just
about every film as a career move. Does such exposure really help her? Dietrich
played the role of a sex goddess, and played it successfully, into her
seventies. Did anyone except Dietrich really believe she was still sexy? (Did
she herself?) If she had shown all her cards (and everything else), she could
not have so powerfully stirred imaginations for so long.
There is an American
president, and we do not need to muddy the discussion by naming him, who has
reinterpreted Henry Kissinger’s maxim, "Power is the greatest
aphrodisiac." This president, apparently, is stimulated by his own power.
He finds his sexual energy in his political power. Marlene Dietrich drew her
power from her sexual energy. In our time, we have found it difficult to tell in
which direction the energy flows, and people like Marlene Dietrich and more than
one American president have shaped our perceptions of sex and power.
Now, from a
distance, we think of Marlene Dietrich hobnobbing with the likes of Ernest
Hemingway and Noel Coward. But, she was not the stuff of high art. I recently
purchased some old cigarette cards with pictures of her on them, and a friend
cautioned me to buy some holders designed for baseball cards. That warning made
quite an impression on me. She was as likely to be Marlene, the subject of the
scandal sheet and the tobacco card, as she was to be the Dietrich of encomiums
by Hemingway and Coward.
According to her
daughter, she created her name Marlene (from Maria Magdalena). According to
Dietrich herself, von Sternberg created her film image. According to generations
of fans, Dietrich herself created something very rare indeed. Even as the unseen
crotchety presence in the documentary Marlene grows ever more
distant in time, we see that she was creating a century that very soon will no
longer be ours.
Now
that Professor Rath has finished his dissertation, hang out at the Seven Sinners
to see and even hear Bijou herself. Here are some sites to get you started:
www.bombshells.com/gallery/dietrich/
www.stanford.edu/~brooksie/Marlene/Dietrich.HTML
You
can see her playing the famous saw with which she fought Hitler, but as far as I
know, no one ever recorded her playing it:
http://pathfinder.com/photo/archive/people/marlene.htm
The
official, authorized Marlene Dietrich site is not much fun, but it does provide
great information:
My
own favorite Marlene Dietrich site offers unusual images and sound recordings.
An hour or two at this site is an hour or two with a witty companion sharing a
mutual interest, but a companion who has much
to show and to teach us. So, pour yourself a drink and enjoy two fascinating
personalities, not only Marlene Dietrich but also her admirer who maintains this
site:
http://snafu.de/~fright.night/marlene-dietrich.html
There
is a great deal of Dietrich material, books, CD’s, and videos, available. The
two essential books for me are The Films of Marlene Dietrich by Homer
Dickens and the biography (which is available under several titles) by her
daughter Maria Riva. I have bought
most of my videotapes of Dietrich’s films as well as my copies of her two
books (out of print) at eBay, the online auction, which almost always lists
about a hundred items related to Dietrich:
As
regular readers of these columns know (hello, again, Mother) Brad Lang’s
"Classic Movies" site at About.com is my favorite site for information
about grand old films. You can find
it at the first of these URLs, his very thorough four-page celebration of
Marlene Dietrich at the second:
http://classicfilm.about.com/movies/classicfilm/library/weekly/aa121700a.htm
For
an encyclopedic amount of information on films old and new, "The Internet
Movie Data Base" is essential:
To
find the films of Marlene Dietrich and other greats on television go to—
www.tv-now.com/stars/stars.html
Whether
you are standing outside the barracks in the pale moonlight or outside the
megaplex on a Friday night, keep your feet dry, your heart not only full of
noble thoughts but also open to the possibility of falling in love again.