Written by Jules Furthman and S.K. Lauren from a story by Furthman and the director, Josef von Sternberg’s engrossing, heartrending Blonde Venus depicts a trenchant human odyssey brilliantly enacted by Marlene Dietrich in perhaps her finest performance. Among actresses, perhaps only Garbo’s Marguerite Gautier surpasses it and perhaps only Baranovskaya’s Pelageya Vlasova, Falconetti’s Joan and Moreau’s Catherine in Jules et Jim match it. We are addressing here the pinnacle indeed of film acting.
Moreover, Dietrich’s delicate, deeply affecting Helen Faraday contains some of the most potent and fabulous images of sexual ambiguity—in the “Hot Voodoo” number, even masquerading as species ambiguity!—in all of cinema.
Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall, also brilliant) meets Helen, a German entertainer, in an enchanted forest—well, it’s the Black Forest—when she is one of a half-dozen “princesses” who are skinny-dipping in a “magic pool.” (Sternberg’s film is Hollywood B.C., before the production code’s restrictions, although one doesn’t see much through a theatrical curtain of lush, leafy trees.) Cut to New York City, where the Faradays have a little son, Johnny (Dickie Moore’s finest hour), who happily goes to sleep, in their small apartment, hearing for the umpteenth time the family fairy tale based on his parents’ courtship, capped by his mother’s singing for him, in German, a poignant, nostalgic lullaby. Unhappily, chemist Ned is dying of radium-poisoning. To raise the money necessary for him to travel to Germany for life-saving treatment, Helen returns to the stage, initially against Ned’s wishes, and has an affair with millionaire playboy Nick Townsend (Cary Grant, excellent), who after all is as darned good-looking as Cary Grant. Returning home from Germany recovered and discovering how his wife financed his return from the dead, Ned balks; when Helen steals away with Johnny, Ned pursues her, intent on separating them forever. Rather than face the immensity of the loving sacrifice she has made for him, Ned has bitterly projected onto Helen his own sexual self-doubts, replacing her tender reality with a misogynistic image of her. The fairy tale has turned into a nightmare of his own making. (Men!) Now that his mother has become the Toast of Paris on her own, will Johnny be able to reconcile his parents? Can Ned learn to accept the depth of his wife’s undying love?
Only Bert Glennon’s mediocre black-and-white cinematography and a somewhat sluggish narrative pace detract from Sternberg’s most emotionally overwhelming achievement—a film that is inexhaustible in its capacity to touch the heart it exposes.
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MAN ON A TIGHTROPE (Elia Kazan, 1953)
June 17, 2011The circus of life, where death continually hovers—a rootless or uprooted existence reflecting realities ranging from the status of refugees who were generated by war’s dislocations, to political upheaval and uncertainties, such as behind the Iron Curtain: these and related themes partially account for the plethora of films set around a circus, or employing the circus as metaphor, in the 1950s: among them, The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952), Twilight of a Clown (Ingmar Bergman, 1953), La strada (Federico Fellini, 1954), Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955), Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956). His gripping Man on a Tightrope, one of Elia Kazan’s best films, is another of these notable works.
Written by Robert E. Sherwood from the novel by Neil Paterson, for which Paterson’s story “International Incident” served as a blueprint, the plot revolves around Cirkus Cernik, a small Czech circus that aims to cross the border to escape into non-Communist Germany in 1952. This fictional group is based on the actual Circus Brumbach, which succeeded in sneaking out of Communist East Germany, animals and all, in 1950 and whose members have been interwoven with the film’s cast of Hollywood actors.
Chief among these is Fredric March, who plays brilliantly Karel Cernik, the one-time owner of the circus, the property of his family for generations, who as a result of the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia has been reduced to managing the circus for the state. No longer is Cernik, a circus clown, supposed to be funny; instead, his performances must embody the Communist Party-line. He is thus driven to engineer the circus’s flight to freedom.
Cernik must also contend with an unfaithful younger wife and a daughter who is romantically involved with someone of whom he disapproves. This Arthur Millerish melodrama somewhat damages the film, reaching its most embarrassing moment when Cernik slaps wife Zama, who responds that he should have done this much sooner. Oy!. Another problem is that the lyrically explosive Kazan has little talent for the kind of sustained suspenseful adventure that the film requires. Fortunately, his superb black-and-white cinematographer, George Krause, collaborates on images of intense realism bordering on Surrealism, with startling camera angles that analyze relationships within the circus and between the circus and the Communist officials breathing down its neck. Kazan, here, is at the top of his form. He also draws from Richard Boone a splendid portrayal of Krofta, the Communist member of the circus who imperils its escape. One wonders at the extent to which the Cernik-Krofta conflict resonates with Kazan’s own competing loyalties and split political autobiography.
It had been a year since Kazan’s infamous testimony before the House Un-Anerican Activities Committee, and he is determined to show how evil Soviet-style Communism is in order to justify that testimony. Political evil, alas, has more guises than Kazan was willing to admit to. Regardless, here he made one helluva good film.
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Tags:Fredric March, Kazan
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