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The seven collaborations between director Joseph "von" Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich were so distinct in look and tone, and so different from anything else going on at the time, they almost seem to constitute a sub-genre of their own. Like any genre, they have their outright masterpieces, as well as their absolute turkeys. Time to send Blonde Venus back to the farm.
After the seedily seductive hits The Blue Angel, Morocco and Shanghai Express, in which Miss Dietrich established her screen image as cabaret-singer-cum-prostitute, someone at Paramount decided it was time for Marlene to play a mother. There is nothing wrong with that in itself; as an actress she was up to the part. It's just that nothing else about the format has changed. It's like The Blue Angel plus a kid. Fair enough, the story of a woman who drags her child along on her sleazy escapades is a sound premise for a tragic drama, but that's not the way this is played. Dietrich's journey is played as some kind of adventure, using her wits and accomplices to stay ahead of the law. This is not some cheeky example of pre-code libertarianism  it is just bizarrely distasteful.
Although we may be able to accept Marlene is a doting mommy, there is absolutely no way we can buy Sternberg as a director of warmth and poignancy. In spite of this being one of the handful of pictures for which he also took a writing credit, Sternberg simply fails to get the story-arc. The film's emotional payoff is supposed to be the eventual reunion of the family, but even at the beginning this is not established as something worth getting back to. As usual Sternberg's interiors are dressed and shot to look like either brothels or insane asylums. The Faradays' home is actually quite a creepy, dingy environment, and it's a wonder little Johnny wasn't wetting the bed and asking to sleep with the light on.
But as anyone familiar with them will know, the point of a Dietrich/Sternberg picture is to make Dietrich look fabulous, and in this respect at least Blonde Venus is a success. Marlene is introduced emerging from a forest pool in a bright, shimmering close-up, and even when she is reduced to rags the camera still loves her. The same cannot be said for the rest of the cast, whom Sternberg tended to view as mobile pieces of scenery. The normally likable Herbert Marshall is here reduced to a moody grouch lurking in the shadows. Even the suave and lively Cary Grant becomes just a boring, background blob, and does not seem nearly interesting enough for Dietrich to run off with.
The only standout moments in Blonde Venus are Marlene's song and dance routines, especially the renowned Hot Voodoo number where she parodies her own surreal stage persona by emerging from a gorilla outfit. But even these feel like they have been cut-and-pasted from a different film. Sternberg's fans may hail it as another masterpiece, as they are wont to do, but for the average punter it is a massive disappointment. Audiences of the time did not lap it up as they had her earlier hits, and this heralded the beginning of the end for Marlene's heyday. A year later there would be a new queen at Paramount  Mae West.


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