POLL Marlene Dietrich/Josef von Sternberg collaborations

Voted

It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily

Let me ask you a hypothermical question.

Sorry, wrong thread.

Bah! I was hoping that was a line from one of the films.

Shanghai Lily

I always read this name to the tune of the Band singing "Ragtime Willie".

Anyway, of the four I've seen, I found Morocco least draggy. I'm neither camp nor masochistic enough to get into these.

The Scarlet Empress.

The Devil Is a Woman is where they finally take the aesthetic too far over the top, no coming back after that.

Cary Grant looks wary and miserable in Blonde Venus.

Absolutely impossible choice

The Blue Angel is the only one I don’t worship, and even that I feel the need to watch again. Dishonored severely underrated.

I thought Shanghai Express was pretty great the one time I saw it. I've seen at least one of the others, possibly two.

They seem to get technically better made from one to the next, if memory serves

The Devil is a Woman is the definition of early cinema decadence.

Shanghai Express is certainly the one that straddles the “give me more”/“that’s much too much” dynamic the best, and ultimately it probably is my favorite

Dishonored severely underrated.

― active spectator of ecocide and dispossession (Eric H.), Saturday, November 25, 2023 9:45 AM

That's the one I finished off the project with by watching last night, and it's the only one I didn't connect with AT ALL.

(The Scarlet Empress is the other one I didn't love, but I could see myself trying it again one day.)

The art direction/set design of Hans Dreier is the unheralded third spoke in most of these magnificent wheels.

This was a tough poll! I ultimately went with The Scarlet Empress but depending on your player's region-encoding, it's absolutely worth buying either the Criterion or Indicator box set collecting all but one of those films and picking up The Blue Angel from Masters of Cinema (or Kino if you're region A only).

I meant Shanghai Express, not The Scarlet Empress - it was that close

Pauline Kael reviewed all seven of these (and probably would have voted Morocco or Shanghai Express. Here are some of her bon mots about the others:

McLaglen is the really hopeless mistake. He's meant to be dashing, but he lacks style and physical grace-he's a grinning buffoon, with zero sex appeal. Dietrich goes through her repertory of teases, lowering her eyelids demurely and raising them amusingly; she's charming, but she's playing all alone. (At times she might as well be doing eye exercises.)

Marlene Dietrich was used as a camera subject instead of as a person. She’s photographed behind veils and fishnets, while dwarfs slither about and bells ring and everybody tries to look degenerate.

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Scarlet Empress, huh? I'll try to dial in a little harder next time I watch.

Shanghai Express was my vote, but I genuinely probably love Empress more

I just watched Shanghai Express for the first time last night. The script was rudimentary and aside from Dietrich the cast was second rate -- with Clive James being especially wooden and unconvincing as a love interest, but Dietrich, oh my! The close-ups were all amazingly lit and von Sternberg had her rolling her eyes constantly when the camera was magnifying her face -- and not in a natural way, either -- but the effect was to rivet your attention there and those eyes made her face incredibly fascinating and lovely.

Prior to this I had only seen Dietrich in such stuff as Destry Rides Again and never quite grasped what the fuss was about. Now I know.

Wait till you catch her in Morocco and The Scarlet Empress.

Truth be told, when I first got into Sternberg's work, quite a few of his Hollywood films felt like great interpretations of so-so material. In a way, it made the case for his greatness as a director - it would've been easy for another director to do a paint-by-numbers job on Underworld, and it would've made money before disappearing into history, but Sternberg turned it into something truly remarkable on style alone.