| Angels & Devils: The Films
of Josef Von Sternberg & Marlene Dietrich
These films will screen at the Egyptian February 11 - 15, 2005.
Pantheon film director Josef Von Sternberg was born in
Vienna, Austria in 1894, but divided his childhood between New York and Europe. Bilingual
from the start, his first films were silents produced in New York and Hollywood. Having
already directed Swiss thespian Emil Jannings in the American THE LAST COMMAND (1928), Von
Sternberg was drafted by Jannings and producer Erich Pommer in 1930 to helm Germany’s
first sound motion picture, DER BLAUE ENGEL (THE BLUE ANGEL). It was the initial
meeting of the imperious filmmaker and actress Marlene Dietrich. Although Dietrich in
later years revised her filmography so that THE BLUE ANGEL was her "first movie"
– a sign of the movie’s epochal importance to her and screen history – she
was in fact already one of German cinema’s rising young stars for her work in films
like I KISS YOUR HAND, MADAME. But it’s safe to say that without Von Sternberg, there
would have been no "Dietrich" as we know her – and certainly Von Sternberg
without Dietrich was a far different (and many would argue, lesser) filmmaker.
The collaboration between Von Sternberg and Dietrich remains a
one-of-a-kind marriage of Olympian movie gods (an image Von Sternberg would likely approve
of!). The seven films they made between 1930 and 1935 are an intoxicating, international
hybrid: unmistakenly European in outlook but as baroquely opulent as the most epic of
early Hollywood. Von Sternberg, especially in his films with Dietrich, achieves a kind of
mysterious splendor, a lushly decadent sensuality mingled with spiritual transcendence, an
ambivalence merged with a surprisingly warmhearted compassion -- even love -- for his
wonderfully egocentric characters. Here is a world hanging by a thread over the abyss
separating paradise and the inferno, a realm populated with incendiary nightclub singers,
disgraced soldiers, sultry spies, jilted lovers and jaded royalty. The mix is
astonishingly effective, the aura of barely-in-control sexuality shocking for the time.
Indeed, Von Sternberg’s mise en scene and potent vision enable his films to
transcend the kitschy sensibility that viewers and critics often attribute to them.
Whether it be with Gary Cooper in MOROCCO, with Cary Grant in
BLONDE VENUS, with Jannings in THE BLUE ANGEL or on her own in THE
SCARLET EMPRESS, the magnificent Marlene glimpsed on screen seems to have been born in
rarefied heights. While watching, it is often difficult to remember that she was a human
being, made up like the rest of us of flesh and blood. This marvelous illusion is a
tribute to Von Sternberg’s – and Dietrich’s -- singular contributions to
the motion picture medium: a cinema of legendary beauty, erotic mysticism and epic
romantic poetry.
Friday, February 18 – 7:30 PM
THE BLUE ANGEL (DER BLAUE ENGEL),
1930, Kino, 106 min. Dir. Josef Von Sternberg. Emil Jannings is the
repressed professor who falls head-over-heels for bawdy cabaret chanteuse, Lola-Lola (Marlene
Dietrich). It’s a liaison which will jumpstart the engine of his
self-destruction, immolating both his private and public life till only ashes are left.
The classic that scandalized international audiences and started the collaboration between
Von Sternberg and Dietrich, setting the tone for the characters and motifs found in their
subsequent efforts together. [In German with English subtitles.] Preceded by ultra-rare
footage of Marlene Dietrich’s screen test for the role (5 min.).
>> Also playing at the Egyptian on February 11.
Friday, February 18 – 10:00 PM
MOROCCO, 1930, Paramount (Universal),
91 min. Dir. Josef Von Sternberg. "You’d better go now, I’m
beginning to like you," purrs cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich to cocky
young soldier boy Gary Cooper. If you’re going to see just one Foreign Legion
movie, make it MOROCCO: Dietrich (in her first American film appearance) and Cooper are
downright gorgeous, and Von Sternberg transforms the two-bit cantinas and barracks of
Mogador into a splendid landscape of light & shadow.
>> Also playing at the Egyptian on February 11.
Saturday, February 19 – 5:00 PM
DISHONORED, 1931, Paramount
(Universal), 91 min. Director Josef Von Sternberg’s answer to MGM’s MATA
HARI with Greta Garbo stars Marlene Dietrich as X27, a seductive agent sent by the
Austrian secret service to spy on the Russians. In the process, she goes up against and
falls for her opposite number, volcanic Colonel Kranau (Victor McLaglen) and will
traverse everything from masked balls to secret headquarters to elaborate military bases
in her tireless quest. [Restored Print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archives.]
>> Also playing at the Egyptian on February 11.
Saturday, February 19 – 7:30 PM
Double Feature:
SHANGHAI EXPRESS, 1932,
Paramount (Universal), 80 min. Dir. Josef Von Sternberg. "It took more than
one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." Fallen woman Marlene Dietrich
just happens to run into former boyfriend, British army captain Clive Brook, on a
train hurtling through wartime China, in what many consider the high point of the
Dietrich/Von Sternberg cycle. Along for the ride are some of Hollywood’s greatest
supporting players of the day: lovely Anna May Wong, bullfrog-voiced Eugene
Pallette and Warner Oland (doing a sinister spin on his Far East Charlie Chan
persona.)
BLONDE VENUS, 1932, Paramount (Universal), 93 min. Dir. Josef
Von Sternberg. Marlene Dietrich is Helen, a former nightclub entertainer
married to scientist Herbert Marshall. Their idyllic family life is shattered when he
becomes disabled, and she must return to the stage to support him and their son (Dickie
Moore). Enter millionaire Cary Grant, a man who will lavish any amount of money on
what (or who) he wants. Dietrich is luminously hypnotic here, whether swimming nude or
singing "Hot Voodoo" in a gorilla suit! One of the best of the Von
Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations, milking every bit of charisma from its two gorgeous
stars and miraculously steering the high voltage melodramatics into poignant revelation by
the last frame.
>> Both films also playing at the Egyptian on February 12.
Sunday, February 20 – 5:00 PM
Double Feature:
THE SCARLET EMPRESS, 1934,
Paramount (Universal), 104 min. In this re-imagining of Catherine the Great’s life
story, filmmaker Josef Von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich supply some
of the most eye-popping images and outrageously decadent antics in early twentieth century
cinema. Dietrich is Princess Sophia from Germany, induced to marry demented Grand Duke
Peter (Sam Jaffe), son of the Russian empress. Soon circumstances will transform her from
naïve young girl to power-drunk ruler. Von Sternberg lets his sensibilities run riot
here, goading star Dietrich to Wagnerian heights and invoking all the extravagant excesses
of court life – from sumptuous revelry to depraved tortures.
THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, 1935,
Paramount (Universal), 79 min. Dir. Josef Von Sternberg. Coquettish Spanish vixen
Concha (Marlene Dietrich) toys with long-suffering lover "Pasqualito" (Lionel
Atwill, in a surprisingly sympathetic role for once) while entertaining the advances
of hot-blooded revolutionary Cesar Romero, in what would prove to be the last of
the Dietrich/Von Sternberg films. Von Sternberg also worked as cinematographer here (with
uncredited help from Lucien Ballard), and the images are among the most insanely baroque
in the entire cycle.
>> Both films also playing at the Egyptian on February 13. |
