The Song of Songs (1933)
Genres: Romance, Drama
Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Brian Aherne
The Song of Songs is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Marlene Dietrich as a naive German peasant named Lily who moves to Berlin and suffers a considerable amount of heartache. This particular version of the film was based on the 1908 novel The Song of Songs by Hermann Sudermann. The novel's original title, which translates to English as "The High Song", does indeed refer to the Song of Solomon, which is often described in German as "Das Hohe Lied der Liebe". However, that is not the only possible inference. "HoheLied" has been translated as "ode" "hosannas" "praises" and used in purely secular as well as religious contexts. Most telling in this case is the use in German of the entire phrase to describe the "great song of love" or "ode to love" in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. This creates a double layer of meaning to the title of the novel in German, one that could not be duplicated in an English rendition.