Blonde Venus (1932)—Josef von Sternberg’s preposterously mesmerizing tale of mother love—runs the gamut from the glamorous heights of fame and success to the dilapidated depths of despair and ruin. Yet another melodramatic narrative of what Juliet Clark calls “the woman’s way” of upholding honor through dishonor, Magdalenian inferences still apply. This would be a great double bill with Emilio Fernández’s Víctimas del pecado (1951). What a mother won’t do for her child, including another john. Again, I have to wonder how influenced “El Indio” was by Sternberg’s melodramatics?
As Judy Bloch nails it in her capsule for Pfa’s ongoing Sternberg retrospective: “It’s not surprising that the French Surrealists gave themselves over to Sternberg’s films with Marlene Dietrich, who for them embodied the disruptive force. Marlene singing ‘Hot Voodoo’ in a gorilla suit brings the exotic home in Sternberg’s only Dietrich film set in America.
As Judy Bloch nails it in her capsule for Pfa’s ongoing Sternberg retrospective: “It’s not surprising that the French Surrealists gave themselves over to Sternberg’s films with Marlene Dietrich, who for them embodied the disruptive force. Marlene singing ‘Hot Voodoo’ in a gorilla suit brings the exotic home in Sternberg’s only Dietrich film set in America.
- 2/16/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
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