Simply Perfect

Expected more

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Von Sternberg must have been railing lines of coke when he came up with this soapy drivel. Look, you've got Marlene under your thrall. Put her in some movies where she can sing a bit, show her legs a bit. Can't be that hard. What you don't have to do is create a movie with more plot points than an entire season of Breaking Bad. I mean, one minute she's crawling through a Mississippi flop house, the next scene she's in a white tux singing French to the French. On the other hand it is beautifully photographed. Marlene, well, even when she's on the lam, staying in a rooming house with chickens, she's the hottest thing in movies. I mean, holy smokes, look at the way she brushes the pigeon off her shoulder. I had trouble deciding which male lead I wanted to punch in the face harder: the sap Faraday (Marshall) or the obnoxious Townsend (Grant). I can't see how Dietrich's character could have spent more than 10 minutes with either of them. Dietrich deserved better writers.

Of the seven Marlene Dietrich/Josef Von Sternberg film, a partnership that is justifiably famous, collaborations, 'Blonde Venus' is the fifth. To me also, it's the weakest but still not by all means a bad film. Far from it, if not for all tastes, just that they also had great films like 'Shanghai Express' and 'The Scarlet Empress' and 'Blonde Venus' in comparison comes up short.The story is silly nonsense, and does get rather too melodramatic and overwrought even for the 30s in the middle and muddled in a few of the latter scenes where it doesn't make as much sense as it ought to. The ending doesn't ring true, and the decision considering what happens in the rest of the film feels illogical. As great an actor as Cary Grant was, not many actors could do charming, urbane and suave better, this was an early role and one that despite the dashing charm he brought to it doesn't do anything for him, it's too much of a plot device sort of role that comes in and out of the story.However, Dietrich is luminous and touching, making a real effort to make a real character out of the only really developed character in the whole film. Dickie Moore is cute and very natural, and Herbert Marshall plays a somewhat thankless role that barely stretches him valiantly down pat and makes him a conflicted character. Hattie McDaniel is a hoot as ever.Staging of the songs are more memorable than the songs themselves, though they are nice enough on their own. Just that the dazzling staging of the "Hot Voodoo" numbers packs more punch than the song itself for instance, Dietrich and a gorilla suit proves to be an iconic moment.The beginning of the film is also very daring and racy, remarkably so. A sharp, double-edged and sophisticated script helps too, as does Sternberg's adroit direction. As always with a Sternberg film, 'Blonde Venus' looks great. Not just the striking use of light and shadow lighting and the sumptuous settings and costuming but especially the pure imaginative classiness that is the cinematography.In summary, quite good but not great like other Dietrich/Sternberg films are. 7/10 Bethany Cox

In his fourth film with Marlene Dietrich, Josef von Sternberg recovered part of the frenetic passion of "The Blue Angel", and although he did not reach the drama of that cruel tale of obsession, he took his muse away from the parodies of an African adventure in "Morocco", or the Chinese affair in "Shanghai Express", if Marlene still insisted on placing her hands on her hips as a bodybuilder. In "Blonde Venus", she is again a German singer who has been domesticated by her marriage to an American chemist (Herbert Marshall, in one of the victim roles he specialized in, usually with Bette Davis as his nemesis). However she is soon back on stage when her husband gets sick for being continuously exposed to radium, and has to receive an expensive treatment in Germany. After a great and funky musical number in which she first struts around the cabaret wearing a gorilla suit, and later seduces the audience with her singing, Marlene obtains in the night of her debut the moneys for the trip and treatment, from the hands of a young and handsome politician (Cary Grant), with whom she has an intense romance, while the husband is abroad. The main course this time is poor Marlene's decadence and her eventual rebirth: there is a bit of sadism in covering her with glitter from head to toe, and then make her wear torn, cheap clothes; and we are certainly a masochist audience watching such an outrage. Although there are even a few aquatic shots of naked girls in this tale of moral decay, the influence of the nefarious censor Will H. Hays was already felt, so Marlene goes back to Marshall's bland arms and to their little son (the unbearable Dickie Moore), and leaves Grant, with whom she surely had a very good time, but… she and Sternberg could not beat the "good customs" of the day. In any case there is a lot here to enjoy, so have a good time, but prepare your handkerchief or buy yourself a pack of Kleenex.

I am compelled to admit the Venus is not as bad as I expected. It is simply a quite mediocre melodrama by one of the most overrated directors—Sternberg, a nullity that has always got an undeserved praise for completely illusory merits. I am in the maybe odd situation of being a big Dietrich fan who finds almost physically disgusting almost of the movies she made with Sternberg. But "Venus" is an exception. In this film Dietrich does her best; Grant is quite unremarkable and banal. The lack of pace of Sternberg's films should be proverbial, and also his complete lack of perspicacity. For me, these films are only trite and often boring slapdash. Sternberg's extremely primitive and rudimentary cinema is as flawed and wrong as ever. I know Sternberg's enormous prestige; but I also know that none of the critics that I admire has ever written a line about Sternberg's films. For me,this says enough. I can though find a merit of S-b's cinema: the exciting titles (Morocco, Shanghai-Express, The Scarlet Empress, etc.)."Venus"' script is worse than crap—it is execrably bad. The pace is rather inexistent. The characters have no substance whatsoever and miraculously uninteresting .The same cheap slapdash. The only chance this movie has is exploiting Mrs. MD's sexuality. Unfortunately, not even her performance is very good; it is almost good, in her own camp way, but disappointingly incoherent—sometimes, it is her brand of arrogant bitchy sexuality, and then it is like caught in the director's libidinous amorality. She knew, when she was allowed by the movie, to make sharp and clear roles—a bit simple, perhaps, but they were OK like that. Her best roles were those of ambiguous women—but the roles were limpid because they were simple and compact. It was always more about her physic. Here,in "Venus",her role is totally incoherent. We see the intention—the repenting errant wife—but the story does not show this. Dietrich was never a great actress; she was a sexually adored actress. She had the chance of an epoch interested in the magic of the sexuality, and she was one of the remarkable vamps of that epoch."Cora" is the only fine character,I wish she had a bigger role.Anyway, "Venus" is a nice melodrama ;Shanghai-Express is much worse, and The Scarlet Empress is the most stupid. Sternberg's inability, in-aptitude of seizing his characters' inner life, the psychological movements and the real dynamics of the souls is total. He had a unique lack of lightness, tact, flair and perspicacity–he was stilted, boring and left-handed.