Uneven melodrama. It's often very sloppy and very weak, but occasionally it rises to the occasion and is exceptional. There are definitely moments where von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich are at their peak. There's too much plot to make it worth describing in detail. Suffice it to say, I thought the first hour was mediocre. There's an infamous musical number where Dietrich enters dressed as a gorilla something so campy it must be the silliest musical number in motion picture history. The plot only starts to get going after fifty or so minutes. Then the film gets really good, often great. There's a child actor, though, who is so terrible he really saps the power out of a lot of it (Dickie Moore, who was also one of the Little Rascals). They so rarely found decent child actors during this period. It's fun to imagine how the audience of the time would have seen these characters (the plot involves an unfaithful wife). I imagine feelings would have been a lot more mixed for Dietrich's character. Some would side with the husband who persecutes her, I'm sure. Nowadays, I imagine most of us side completely with Dietrich. We want her to end up with Cary Grant (who was not a big star at the time; he only started working the same year). I have the sneaking suspicion Josef von Sternberg didn't really want Dietrich back with her husband, either. The end is just a little ambiguous. I had to put subtitles on the DVD to understand the final dialogue exchange.
Review of Blonde Venus
