Marlene

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VHS Movie Reviews of Marlene

Movie Review: A Great Documentary
Summary: 5 Stars

Movie Review: If you like Marlene - you must have this documentary
Summary: 5 Stars

Movie Review: Scheen!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

Movie Review: Scheen!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

Movie Review: The Lowdown on Maria Magdalene von Losch
Summary: 4 Stars

When you're a true star, though, you get to insist on people pronouncing your name right. In that Marlene had a (shapely) leg up on such other prominent German performers as Elke Sommer, Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper. You also get to pull stunts like agreeing to allow someone to do a documentary on your life and work (that "someone" being Maximilian Schell) and then utterly refusing to let him put you on camera. Or for that matter, to let his crew film ANYTHING in your apartment.

Well, if life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? And so Maximilian Schell wound up making a documentary less about Marlene Dietrich than about the near impossibility of making a documentary with a cantakerously uncooperative subject.

Schell ends up reconstructing Dietrich's Paris digs in the studio. Her taped interviews are played over scenes from her films, from performance clips and from shots from various newsreels. The effect is haunting. The viewer shares Schell's exasperation with his temperamental subject. Is it possible to ever truly fathom this woman's character? It's more than a matter of a former beauty refusing to be photographed: she refuses to let herself be truly known at all. Any penetrating question or observation is dismissed as "Quatsch" (nonsense). Her life, her films, her status as a cultural icon--none of that interests her anymore, or so she claims. Ostensibly, the reclusive screen legend is more accessible than a Garbo, say, who would never even allow herself to be interviewed. But in her steadfast refusal to reveal herself in any significant way, she remains as remote and impenetrable as Garbo ever was. Maybe more so.

I watched this film recently, right after viewing the documentary "Nico Icon"--about another enigmatic German-born singer-actress. It made for a fascinating double bill. Nico, of course, was of a different, more jaded era, but she was once labeled "another cooler Dietrich for another cooler generation." Of course, the Andy Warhol "Superstar" (always meant as an ironic appellation anyway) never actually achieved the level of fame that her countrywoman did in her time. The younger woman, in fact, totally lacked the drive and ambition that Dietrich possessed in spades. Ironic then, that both ended up (pretty much at the same time in history) as recluses in Paris. Of course the Hollywood star lived there in splendor, while the former "Superstar," now a junkie, lived in absolute squalor. Both women withdrew into the shadows, while living in the City of Lights. The difference, of course, is that Dietrich could afford to pay her electric bill. Perhaps the one image that best sums up the difference between these two iconic German women--and, to some extent, the generations that they came to represent--is the stock footage of bombed out Berlin that is used in both films. For Dietrich it represents the world she was fortunate enough to be able to leave behind: for Nico, it was the world in which she grew up. (Both "Marlene" and "Nico Icon" are available on DVD and are highly recommended.)

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• Genres > Documentary