CLOSE-UP Marlene Dietrich
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CLOSE-UP Marlene Dietrich It is impossible to dissociate analyses and become a cult Marlene Dietrich from the for gay subcultures as well as Berlin of 1929. For Joseph von straight male film buffs. She Sternberg, director of The is an international icon even Blue Angel, 'the woman who for those who have never laid was to charm the world' eyes on her films. evoked the city of Beardsley, The Marlene of popular Baudelaire and Huysmans: mythology has little to do with artists and poets of deca- Maria Magdalena Dietrich dence but also of modernity. (born 1901), a modest actress Today, Marlene Dietrich, apt- in routine Weimar melodra- ly described by one contem- mas, nor with the subsequ- porary journalist as 'a myth, a ently respected 'pro' of Holly- symbol, an idea', still speaks wood studios, the anti-Nazi the fascination of that histor- performer who was awarded ical moment, poised between the medal for freedom by the the doomed world of the US war department in 1947 Weimar Republic and the the good mother and good onset of a new era, between cook (Jean Gabin particu- the Berlin and the Hollywood larly liked her stuffed cab- studios. bage). When Marlene Dietrich ar- Marlene's most precious rived in New York on April 9, baggage when she arrived in 1930, accompanied by Joseph Los Angeles was Lola-Lola, von Sternberg, the trium- the sleazy cabaret singer and phant success of The Blue 'petty-bourgeois Berlin tart' Angel had preceded her. 'Sign (in the words of Siegfried Dietrich' was the verdict of a Kracauer) who, with a few group of Paramount execu- flashes of her suspender belts, Marlene Dietrich: Anticipated modern ideas of sexual identity tives immediately after The nonchalantly reduced Emil Blue Angel's screening. Diet- Jannings to a pathetic wreck dards of glamour, but her mothers too), have also re- rich was to be the answer to at the end of The Blue Angel. characters were still 'exotic- claimed. MGM's Garbo, and the latest Despite the rapid 'cleans- ally' European - German in What also stopped Marlene addition to the various waves ing' and streamlining of her Blonde Venus, Russian in The from being just a convenient of Europeans who had cros- image and poor reception of Scarlet Empress, Spanish in space for male projections sed the Atlantic to Hollywood. that film in the USA, The Devil Is A Woman, was her distancing humour Marlene's aura remained that beyond the (real) need to jus- and delight in artifice. Anti- of nightclubs, transvestites, tify her accent and get past cipating modern ideas of sex- 'Marlene signified not just and prostitutes, a heady mix- the censors. This allowed the ual identity by several de- ture of lower depths and gla- films to celebrate, if ironical- cades, she emphasised the Berlin but Europe: the trans- mour associated with 1920s' ly, American values, but also construction of her own im- gressive "modern" sexuality Berlin. The German capital to dwell on illicit male plea- age: her sculpted face mask- powerfully combined with of mass cultural entertain- sures and on male anxieties of like, her slim body alterna- ment was also a city of intel- social and sexual destitution tively clad in the cliche ideas of decadence and lectuals: for Harold Nicholson by projecting them on to a fetishes of femininity (feath- impending political doom' it epitomised 'restless move- scandalous foreign woman. ers and furs) or the ironic ment' and the collision of the Sexual promiscuity stood for emblems of masculinity (top old with the new; playwright political aberration. hats and tuxedos), both on Between 1930 and 1935, Carl Zuckmayer compared it Dietrich was, however, no and off screen. Marlene and von Sternberg to 'a highly desirable woman'. downtrodden plaything. Her Marlene's initial success made another six films Marlene signified this mix- appeal resided precisely in was precisely located in Hol- together: Morocco, Blonde ture of old and new that char- the power of her cool narciss- lywood's notion of the 'old Venus, Dishonoured, The acterised not just Berlin but ism, enshrined in close-ups, world', her Germanity toned Scarlet Empress, Shanghai Europe from an American milky lighting and low-angle down and yet essential to her Express, and The Devil Is A point of view: the transgres- shots. Her scripts under- Hollywood image. But it is her Woman. Though these consti- sive 'modern' sexuality (in mined traditional gender de- opaqueness and refusal of a tute an extraordinarily cohe- particular androgyny) of finitions, making her turn the fixed identity which now rent and formally brilliant 1920s' Berlin and Paris, pow- tables on her male partners, makes her such a powerful body of work, they do not, and erfully combined with ideas often by the sardonic repeti- icon in our post-modern cul- neither do her subsequent of decadence and impending tion of bits of their dialogue. ture obsessed with surfaces, films, explain her lasting political doom. She was the 'phallic mother', an icon that can be 'read' in fame. Marlene has had more Von Sternberg understood both caressing and cracking very different ways and than 50 books written about the centrality of this allegor- the whip, a classic male fan- appropriated by very diffe- her, been scrutinised by semi- ical function. Marlene was tasy yet one that women spec- rent subcultural groups. 9 ological and psychological made to fit Hollywood stan- tators (who, after all, have Ginette Vincendeau 56 MARXISM TODAY APRIL 1989.