Marlene (1984)

The Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, directed by Maximilian Schell. After years of public silence, the legendary Marlene Dietrich personality selected Schell to make an interview film about her. "Marlene" is no standard movie star documentary. It is a mystery story, a discourse on truth and fiction, a battle with a sacred monster, a caustic comedy of errors, and the story of the making of a film, all rolled into one.

A Great Documentary

Marlene Dietrich was a recluse in her later years. According to her daughter's memoirs, she spent most of her time withering her famous legs away in bed, not leaving for days and weeks at a time. It is amazing that she let Maximillian Schell into her home to interview her for a documentary, even if she did not allow him to film her. She knew she was being difficult, but she also felt she was doing him a favor.

Faced with a difficult predicament, Schell artistically filmed a recreated home filled with Dietrich memorabilia, look-alikes, and footage from Dietrich movies. It does not go in sequence; when Schell tells Dietrich this in the movie, she seems pleased. The ending is insane and well edited. Everything blurs together and sort of serves as an outlet for Schell's frustrations during creating the documentary, I'm sure.

Half of the interviews were conducted in German and half were done in English, so one must read subtitles unless one speaks both languages. It is nice to hear Marlene speak in her native tongue; she often says "quatsch," or "nonsense" in German. She is stubborn and opinionated, sometimes contradicts herself, but is always interesting. She speaks against feminism, being critical of her, and anything kitschy.

Dietrich did not want the film released when she saw it. She thought it made her look bad and tarnished her legend. In fact, it made me love her more. Dietrich is not a sugary sweet figure and never has been. This documentary emphasizes that point. She was insanely stubborn and opinionated, often comically and always respectably. However, the finale of the film shows Dietrich in her last film singing "Just a Gigolo" quite emotionally. Then she recites a sad poem along with Schell and breaks down in the middle of it. It is obvious that Marlene Dietrich was not the hard-as-nails figure she always wanted herself to appear to be; she had a heart. It is revealed in this film. September 9, 2005

If you like Marlene - you must have this documentary

A very special documentary made by actor/director Maximilian Schell. Marlene herself didn't agree to let her be filmed so you only hear her voice taped in her apartment in Paris. Doesn't matter. Hear when she sings and tells, hear her anger when Maximilian insist on filming her or want her to look at her films, hear her gently, sentimentally crying over her "Heimat" Berlin. And see for your self how Schell have succeded to make a great motion picture without beeing able to photograph the leading lady. Nominated for Academy Award. August 9, 2003

Scheen!!!

It's a really nice film and if you like it, you have to see the german film called "Marlene". ... Marlene is played by Katja Flint. Of course it's all in german, but you can understand all, even if you can't speak one word! ... April 17, 2002

Scheen!!!

It's a really nice film and if you like it, you have to see the german film called "Marlene". It`s only to get at amazon.de! Marlene is played by Katja Flint. Of course it's all in german, but you can understand all, even if you can't speak one word... April 17, 2002

The Lowdown on Maria Magdalene von Losch

It's illustrative of Marlene Dietrich's clout that nearly all English speakers pronounce her name more or less correctly. (OK, so my own father did not: he made it rhyme with "Darlene," but I suspect he was in the minority.) As a former German teacher myself, this fact has some significance to me. I used to struggle to teach my students that a final "e" in German was nearly always pronounced as a "schwa" sound (an unemphasized "uh"). Somehow though, even people who knew how to pronounce "danke," "bitte," "Rilke" and even "Goethe" would still seem to remain puzzled by an orthography that is actually more consistent than our own.

When you're a true star, though, you get to insist on people pronouncing your name right. In that Marlene had a (shapely) leg up on such other prominent German performers as Elke Sommer, Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper. You also get to pull stunts like agreeing to allow someone to do a documentary on your life and work (that "someone" being Maximilian Schell) and then utterly refusing to let him put you on camera. Or for that matter, to let his crew film ANYTHING in your apartment.

Well, if life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? And so Maximilian Schell wound up making a documentary less about Marlene Dietrich than about the near impossibility of making a documentary with a cantakerously uncooperative subject.

Schell ends up reconstructing Dietrich's Paris digs in the studio. Her taped interviews are played over scenes from her films, from performance clips and from shots from various newsreels. The effect is haunting. The viewer shares Schell's exasperation with his temperamental subject. Is it possible to ever truly fathom this woman's character? It's more than a matter of a former beauty refusing to be photographed: she refuses to let herself be truly known at all. Any penetrating question or observation is dismissed as "Quatsch" (nonsense). Her life, her films, her status as a cultural icon--none of that interests her anymore, or so she claims. Ostensibly, the reclusive screen legend is more accessible than a Garbo, say, who would never even allow herself to be interviewed. But in her steadfast refusal to reveal herself in any significant way, she remains as remote and impenetrable as Garbo ever was. Maybe more so.

I watched this film recently, right after viewing the documentary "Nico Icon"--about another enigmatic German-born singer-actress. It made for a fascinating double bill. Nico, of course, was of a different, more jaded era, but she was once labeled "another cooler Dietrich for another cooler generation." Of course, the Andy Warhol "Superstar" (always meant as an ironic appellation anyway) never actually achieved the level of fame that her countrywoman did in her time. The younger woman, in fact, totally lacked the drive and ambition that Dietrich possessed in spades. Ironic then, that both ended up (pretty much at the same time in history) as recluses in Paris. Of course the Hollywood star lived there in splendor, while the former "Superstar," now a junkie, lived in absolute squalor. Both women withdrew into the shadows, while living in the City of Lights. The difference, of course, is that Dietrich could afford to pay her electric bill. Perhaps the one image that best sums up the difference between these two iconic German women--and, to some extent, the generations that they came to represent--is the stock footage of bombed out Berlin that is used in both films. For Dietrich it represents the world she was fortunate enough to be able to leave behind: for Nico, it was the world in which she grew up. (Both "Marlene" and "Nico Icon" are available on DVD and are highly recommended.) May 17, 2001

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