LeonLouisRicci Eccentric Director Josef Von Sternberg was a Visualist. His Style and Strength Came from Eye-Catching Camera-work and Lighting Combined with Stunning Sets and Costumes. His Best Work was with Marlene Dietrich, an Androgynous Actress with Unbridled Style and Presentation that was Always at Home in Bizarre Outfits and Seemed Born to Play Playful and Strong Women.In this Film She is Asked to Ping Pong Between Glamorous Stage Star and Loving Wife and Mother in a Heartbeat. She Pulls it Off but the Film does Labor Through the Complexity of that Situation. Her Scenes in the Confinement of Living Rooms and Her Child's Bedroom are Absolutely Stagnant and Droll, Especially Compared to the Others where Her Son is Not at Her Feet or Riding Piggy-Back.Cary Grant and Herbert Marshall do Their Best to Compete with Dietrich but can Barely Keep Up and are Mostly Reduced to just Playing Off the Allure. Dicky Moore as the Child Never Seems Phased at All the Hopping Around.The Movie Shines When Dietrich is On Stage, or Apart from Husband (Herbert Marshall), Grant (Her Lover), and Her Child. The Scenes with the Aforementioned are Necessary but Stiff, and Rarely Amount to Much More that Plotting. Worth a Watch for the Musical Numbers with Sizzling Titles Like "Hot Voodoo" and "You So and So" and to Ogle an Always Beautifully Different Marlene Dietrich in Her Prime. She Can Make a Gorilla Stirp-Tease Seem Sublime and Dress in Glittering White Top and Tails Like No One Else Could or Would Ever Dare to Try.

classicsoncall The film's opening sequence is designed to keep you hanging around as a bevy of nude women are shown swimming and cavorting in a sunlit pond. The scene is actually very artfully done and even offers a glimpse of full frontal nudity, probably more surprising than shocking because it happens so quickly. One of the swimmers is Marlene Dietrich, appearing in a subsequent scene speaking to future husband Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) from behind a rock, with dry blond locks even though she was fully underwater a mere minute ago.You know, when Dietrich sang 'Those drums bring out the devil inside me' she wasn't kidding around. That line from the 'Hot Voodoo' musical number followed a striptease of sorts, as Dietrich sheds a gorilla costume!! amid a chorus line of faux-African girls doing a night club act. The showgirl job was meant to earn money for her husband's much needed radium poisoning treatment available only in Europe, but it wasn't long before Helen Faraday/Jones came to rely on businessman Nick Townsend's (Cary Grant) largess to offer more than she could earn as a performer. You know, it might not seem like much today, but that three hundred dollar check Nick wrote out to Helen would have had depression era movie-goers gasping for air.Aside from it's shock value, the story itself didn't proceed very believably for me once under way. For starters, I couldn't imagine who might be keeping tabs on Case #3012 every time we see this visible hand making an entry following Helen's progress throughout the South after leaving her husband. With now ex-husband Ned's determination to retrieve their son from a life on the run, Helen's descent into flophouse squalor was shed rather quickly in a return to former glory, but this time to the stylish cafes of Paris. The film ends on a positive note, though obviously a head scratcher as Helen reunites with her family in a feel good ending that just doesn't feel...right, given all that went before.Aside from the story, I was surprised to note old favorite Sterling Holloway in an uncredited appearance as the talkative hiker during the opening segment, and Hattie McDaniel, who's always a hoot, has an uncanny observation regarding Cary Grant's character finding favor with Helen - "That white man's up to somethin'". Indeed he was.

lugonian BLONDE VENUS (Paramount, 1932), is in no way a science fiction story nor an original screenplay remade as QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958), but a melodrama starring Marlene Dietrich under the direction with original story by Josef Von Sternberg. A pre-code "soap opera" commonly found during the Depression era, it revolves around a faithful wife sacrificing everything for the sake of her husband, even to the point of an illicit affair, prostitution and falling victim of circumstance through a series of misunderstandings. For Dietrich's fifth of her seven films under Von Sternberg's stern direction, this was reportedly their first box office flop. In spite of that, it's become one of their more interesting collaborations.Plot summary: Edward "Ned" Faraday (Herbert Marshall), is a young chemist traveling in Germany with his students (one of them the very familiar Sterling Holloway as Joe). After coming across a beautiful German girl (Marlene Dietrich) skinny dipping in the pond with her friends, he takes such an interest in her that he returns to America with Helen as his wife. Settling in a New York City apartment, their union produces a son named Johnny (Dickie Moore). All goes well until Ned, having worked years on his experiments, discovers that he's been contaminated with radium poisoning with as much as eight months to live. Although advised by his doctor (Morgan Wallace) to seek immediate treatment from a specialist in Europe, he's unable to come up with $1,500 for his needed expenses, but thanks to Helen, she acquires a job through theatrical agent Ben Smith (Gene Morgan), returning to her former profession as a cabaret singer, working at Dan O'Connor's (Robert Emmett O'Connor) night club where she's headlined as Helen Jones, "The Blonde Venus." An immediate success, Helen attracts the attention of Nick Townsend (Cary Grant), a millionaire playboy, who becomes her sole support. After bidding farewell to Ned as he leaves by boat for Europe, Helen takes Johnny and moves in with Townsend, becoming his mistress. When Ned returns home before time, he discovers the truth about Helen and no longer wants any part of her. As Ned goes through the process of divorce, demanding custody of their son, Helen runs away with Johnny, starting a long journey through various states, landing odd jobs, and being just one step ahead of of a detective (Sidney Toler) hot on her trail.Although Dietrich played cabaret singers and entertainers many times on screen to take advantage of her musical talents, BLONDE VENUS offers her a rare opportunity playing both wife and mother. On the musical program, however, Dietrich gets to sing and perform in such numbers as "Hot Voodoo" "You Little So-and-So" (both written by Sam Coslow and Ralph Rainger) and "I Couldn't Be Annoyed" (by Leo Robin and Richard Whiting). Of the three tunes, "Hot Voodoo" is most memorable with bizarre touches with Dietrich entering center stage in gorilla suit surrounded by black natives, then slipping out of her costume, wearing a fuzzy blonde wig. As for "I Couldn't Be Annoyed," set in a Paris cabaret, Dietrich wears a white tuxedo and top hot.When BLONDE VENUS was presented on commercial television from the 1960s to 1980s, all circulating prints began abruptly following the opening credits with a ship docking New York harbor, followed by Helen (Dietrich) bathing her little boy (Moore), and then husband (Marshall) entering a doctor's office notifying him of his serious condition with radium poisoning. It wasn't until the mid 1980s where the deleted fade-in of Faraday's meeting with Helen in a suggestive skinny dipping sequence was restored to its original 94 minute length, and shown intact for the first time in years on cable stations as The Movie Channel (1991), Turner Classic Movies (2001), as well as video cassette (1990s) and finally DVD.With Dietrich supported by a couple of British actors, it seemed odd for both Marshall and Grant playing Americans, though their backgrounds are not really fully established. This matter might have been resolved had the plot been set in England. Other members of the cast include Rita LaRoy as Taxi Belle Hooper; Cecil Cunningham and Louise Beavers.While portions of BLONDE VENUS may appear to be borrowing from Leo Tolstoy's literary novel, ANNA KARENINA, with the devoted wife losing both husband and custody of a son she so dearly loves for her involvement with another man, it breaks away from Tolstoy moving to a different direction according to Von Sternberg, that actually develops into a presentable story. Although the pacing is slow and repetitive, with actors speaking in low-key manner for example, who could forget little Johnny repeatedly asking to hear the bedtime story on how his parents met in Germany before going to sleep, as well as the Von Sternberg visual style of interesting camera shots, super imposing, montage effects, dark images and close-ups on the principles, frequent underscoring (complimemts of Oscar Potoker), and most of all, the Blonde Venus herself, Dietrich. (**)

Cristi_Ciopron 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.