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Blonde Venus might not be the best of the films Marlene Dietrich and her mentor/lover/victim Josef von Sternberg made together, but it’s definitely one of the more iconic. In each film there is a man who falls into Dietrich’s web, a man that she uses, abuses and laughs as he comes crawling back for more. There is a small element to that in this film, but mostly it’s just a showcase for Dietrich to work her glacial sexuality and supernova magnetism on the screen. But mostly it fluctuates wildly between being a preposterous melodrama and super-realist story about a woman who has damaged her home life and is on the run towards uncertainty.
In a storyline that bounces back and forth between threadbare details and realist tome, Blonde Venus introduces us first to Dietrich as a hausfrau and not as a glamorous femme fatale nightclub singer. When her husband, who is a scientist, gets sick and requires an expensive medical procedure, she goes back to work as a glamorous and aloof nightclub singer. Her performance of “Hot Voodoo” is frequently brought up as an iconic moment in the Sternberg/Dietrich films and as a movie star moment for Dietrich. (Watch it here.) It’s faintly ridiculous, but so is the movie. Anyway, she meets up with Cary Grant, a suave and sophisticated rich boy, who offers to give her money in exchange for…uh…her ‘company.’ Once her husband discovers what she’s been doing while he was away, she goes on the run with her son. Normally so ice cold and placid, so remote and completely apathetic to everything around her, here Dietrich must be a warm and loving mother. She eventually turns into a stone cold ice queen after being on the run and becoming a prostitute has done things to her. Hattie McDaniel’s brief appearance as a pimp is a memorable piece in the film. She always came on with a BANG!, and the way she slyly and passively tries to size up a possible cop before turning slightly dangerous is a fantastic bit of acting.
While it might wildly fluctuate in tone and pace, Blonde Venus is definitely one of my top three favorite Sternberg/Dietrich movies (with The Scarlet Empress and The Blue Angel being at the top, although I have yet to watch Shanghai Express, of which I hear nothing but platitudes). Why do you ask? Because it’s all so beautifully shot, it’s all so meticulously acted and arranged that it just sticks out so uniquely and wonderfully as something interesting, something different.
