Blonde Venus (1932)
Apr. 8th, 2006 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersOne of the great things about the Sternberg-Dietrich movies is that each is very different from the others. They are all about love, sex, and power, and all involve the humiliation of men in some way or another, but each comes at it with a unique approach, with the key difference being Dietrich's role. The generalization is that she is the femme fatale, the destroyer or humiliater of men, but in four of the seven films she's actually brought down herself, even if men are collateral damage as well. Blonde Venus is one of those, as is Morocco, but the resolutions, while equally absurd (in the aesthetic sense), couldn't be more different.
As with Philip K. Dick novels, different people have very different favorites and least-favorites amongst these seven movies. Blonde Venus has been criticized for casting Dietrich ridiculously against type as a warm-hearted mother. That's pretty strange when you consider the complete absurdity of the whole set-up. She's a former cabaret singer who married a chemist and has a child with him. The husband contracts "radium poisoning" from his work and can't afford the treatment. Against his wishes, Dietrich goes back to the cabaret, where she attracts the attention of a rich politician who gives her enough money for the husband's treatment in exchange for sexual favors. Which part of this story seems realistic? Except for the fact that it's the Depression and it's hard to make a living! Michael Filipidis argues in a fascinating article that the movie actually makes the subsersive move of linking Dietrich's sexuality to the young son -- that it's the son, not the husband or lover, who is key to her sexual happiness.
It's true that this is the least exotic of these movies, set as it is in Depression-era America. It can even be looked at as a commentary on the difference between the suffering reality of the audience and the typical glamour fantasy of Paramount movies, as Dietrich's character moves from a humble apartment to a glitzy nightclub to a nightmare journey through greasy spoons and flophouses and then across the glittering sea to another glitzy nightclub. One of the most amazing sequences, however, is the completely artificial and glowing evocation of a downhome honkytonk somewhere in the South, replete with wandering chickens and and exotic hayseeds, in which both poles of representation are suddenly collapsed.
As Peter Baxter argues in his book-length study, Just Watch! - Sternberg, Paramount, and America, nothing in the film is what it seems, everything is in the process of transformation. Probably the most famous scene is the performance of "Hot Voodoo," in which a conga-dancing line of leggy women in stylized "African" costumes lead a gorilla onto the stage, and then the gorilla sheds its suit to reveal a deadpan, knowing Dietrich in a blonde afro and a black sequin dress that dances with fairy light.
Did you ever happen to hear of Voodoo?
Hear it and you won't give a darn what you do
Tom toms put me under a sort of hoodoo
And the whole night long, I don't know right from wrong
Hot voodoo black as mud
Hot voodoo in my blood
That African tempo has made me a slave
Hot Voodoo, dance of sin
Hot Voodoo, worse than gin
I'd follow a caveman right into his cave
That beat gives me a wicked sensation
My conscience wants to take a vacation
King Kong came out the next year, and yet here's the parody -- or perhaps simply the sophisticated version -- already. Here we discover that King Kong is Fay Wray, and she's screaming for some hot action.
In the end, I'm ravished by the dazzling silvery beauty of the movie -- the play of light off of sequins, the shimmer of moonlight on the ocean, even the glowing white chickens that make me crow with delight. In my post on Morocco, I quoted Dave Kehr on Sternberg's labyrinths of light and shadow. Blonde Venus goes even further in constructing complex webs of shadow in which the characters get stuck facing each other but unable to see their true selves. When the husband confronts Dietrich about her adultery, his face is masked in shadow, dark and threatening, while hers is bathed in gentle light, naked and vulnerable but still enigmatic. They are stuck in a web of desire and jealousy, power and helplessness. Love has become betrayal; love has become hatred. There's a happy ending, but it's a fairytale to salve a wound. Identities are stories, and stories are masks. Underneath the mask is hot voodoo, and it changes you. The struggle continues.
As with Philip K. Dick novels, different people have very different favorites and least-favorites amongst these seven movies. Blonde Venus has been criticized for casting Dietrich ridiculously against type as a warm-hearted mother. That's pretty strange when you consider the complete absurdity of the whole set-up. She's a former cabaret singer who married a chemist and has a child with him. The husband contracts "radium poisoning" from his work and can't afford the treatment. Against his wishes, Dietrich goes back to the cabaret, where she attracts the attention of a rich politician who gives her enough money for the husband's treatment in exchange for sexual favors. Which part of this story seems realistic? Except for the fact that it's the Depression and it's hard to make a living! Michael Filipidis argues in a fascinating article that the movie actually makes the subsersive move of linking Dietrich's sexuality to the young son -- that it's the son, not the husband or lover, who is key to her sexual happiness.
It's true that this is the least exotic of these movies, set as it is in Depression-era America. It can even be looked at as a commentary on the difference between the suffering reality of the audience and the typical glamour fantasy of Paramount movies, as Dietrich's character moves from a humble apartment to a glitzy nightclub to a nightmare journey through greasy spoons and flophouses and then across the glittering sea to another glitzy nightclub. One of the most amazing sequences, however, is the completely artificial and glowing evocation of a downhome honkytonk somewhere in the South, replete with wandering chickens and and exotic hayseeds, in which both poles of representation are suddenly collapsed.
As Peter Baxter argues in his book-length study, Just Watch! - Sternberg, Paramount, and America, nothing in the film is what it seems, everything is in the process of transformation. Probably the most famous scene is the performance of "Hot Voodoo," in which a conga-dancing line of leggy women in stylized "African" costumes lead a gorilla onto the stage, and then the gorilla sheds its suit to reveal a deadpan, knowing Dietrich in a blonde afro and a black sequin dress that dances with fairy light.
Did you ever happen to hear of Voodoo?
Hear it and you won't give a darn what you do
Tom toms put me under a sort of hoodoo
And the whole night long, I don't know right from wrong
Hot voodoo black as mud
Hot voodoo in my blood
That African tempo has made me a slave
Hot Voodoo, dance of sin
Hot Voodoo, worse than gin
I'd follow a caveman right into his cave
That beat gives me a wicked sensation
My conscience wants to take a vacation
King Kong came out the next year, and yet here's the parody -- or perhaps simply the sophisticated version -- already. Here we discover that King Kong is Fay Wray, and she's screaming for some hot action.
In the end, I'm ravished by the dazzling silvery beauty of the movie -- the play of light off of sequins, the shimmer of moonlight on the ocean, even the glowing white chickens that make me crow with delight. In my post on Morocco, I quoted Dave Kehr on Sternberg's labyrinths of light and shadow. Blonde Venus goes even further in constructing complex webs of shadow in which the characters get stuck facing each other but unable to see their true selves. When the husband confronts Dietrich about her adultery, his face is masked in shadow, dark and threatening, while hers is bathed in gentle light, naked and vulnerable but still enigmatic. They are stuck in a web of desire and jealousy, power and helplessness. Love has become betrayal; love has become hatred. There's a happy ending, but it's a fairytale to salve a wound. Identities are stories, and stories are masks. Underneath the mask is hot voodoo, and it changes you. The struggle continues.
