Reviewed by Evelyn Hartogh
For Evelyn Hartogh's review of The Blue Angel, click here

Gemünden and Desjardins’s collection of essays Dietrich Icon developed out of the international conference Marlene at 100, held at Dartmouth College in 2001. Their choice of articles display an interest in the cinematic and cultural significance invested in Marlene Dietrich. They show the ways in which she has been used as a reference point to articulate many of the tensions and shifts in identity politics during the twentieth century. Many of the contributors refer to the highly influential essay by Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which made special reference to Dietrich, and the writers in this volume tend to develop arguments regarding ways of viewing Dietrich from different positions. As one of the most imitated women in the world, Dietrich’s canon, and the scholarship around it, enable discussions of: the Hays morality code and its influence on editing and dialogue and thus the meaning of film; the shift from silent to sound articulated in the classic The Blue Angel; and Dietrich’s relationship to concepts of nationality, sexuality, performance, ageing and fame.

In contrast to the majority of academic essays, Steven Bach opens the collection with Falling in Love Again, a short story based on recordings of Dietrich’s rehearsals with Burt Bacharach in Los Angeles. The Dietrich who is described here is a woman who is completely in charge of her presentation and acutely aware of how to control a stage, and thus an audience. Bach’s narrative pays homage to all the mythology of the star’s perfectionism and seemingly uncanny ability to understand lighting by the heat on her face (a talent developed with both Von Sternberg’s guidance and later with the use of a large mirror on set so she could see what the camera saw).

Although scholarly in content, this collection does not avoid the worship and adulation common to the celebrity cult around Dietrich. The essays are, on the whole, a celebration of Marlene and a nod to the ways she has inspired and influenced both cinema and depictions of female sexuality. In Lutz Koepnick’s Dietrich’s Face, the star’s use of lighting and photo re-touching is examined as a form of postmodern concepts of morphing, and fluid identity, where the notion of the ‘authentic’ self is challenged via the presentation of a face that is literally painted (and thus created) by conscious manipulation of light and shadow.

The censorship confronting Dietrich’s many of the roles that cast her as ‘fallen woman’, and the sexual significance of her most famous appendages concern Nora M. Atler in The Legs of Marlene Dietrich, and Gaylyn Studlar in Marlene Dietrich and the Erotics of Code-Bound Hollywood. Significantly, Dietrich only shows off her inner thighs in the German version of The Blue Angel, and the appearances of her legs in film are not as conspicuous as one may first assume, their notoriety became more observed in them being hidden, rather than displayed. A similar paradox sat with the censors toying with Dietrich’s films; they allowed subtle references to prostitution and bordellos as long as these were done in a symbolic way that censors felt sophisticated audiences would understand, yet would be unreadable by the unsophisticated (who were supposedly easily corruptible). Attempts to clean up Dietrich only served to further mystify and tantalise audiences who knew beneath the veil of wholesomeness still lay the vamp she was thoroughly associated with.

The multiplicity of the Dietrich image and, in particular, her role as the femme fatale Lola Lola concern many of the contributors. The way in which the film has two main versions, the German and the English, yet neither is the original, or the authentic, fascinates many of the writers. Even within the film itself Lola Lola is seen in multiple copies before being introduced in the flesh. First is the poster of Lola Lola and the cleaning woman imitating her pose, then the postcards of her that the schoolboys toys with, until finally we witness her singing in the cabaret. Famously this first ‘seeing’ of Lola Lola by the soon-to-be corrupted professor (ostensibly at the cabaret to stop the corruption of his students) is destabilised by Lola Lola focusing the spotlight on the professor (Emil Jannings). The viewer become viewed, and blinded by light itself, in a now assumed clear reference to the film’s signature song Falling in Love Again with its lines about “men flocking like moths to flame/ and if they get burnt I know I’m not to blame”.

Entertaining the delegates at Dartmouth College’s Marlene at 100 international conference was celebrated actor and Marlene Dietrich impersonator James Beaman. Included in this book is an interview with the actor. Judging by the content of the interviewer's questions, this show was very well-received, and evoked discussion of the stages of Dietrich’s life and image and the influence of later rereading of her performances in the context of human rights. In particular, Beaman chose to perform Hot Voodoo, with a puppet performing Dietrich’s transformation from a gorilla suit to a blonde afro.

This performance from Blonde Venus has long been the subject of study over its multiple references to racial identity and the dominance of whiteness. The interviewer comments that this number is “somewhat embarrassing to watch today because of its racism” (371) and Beaman replies that “there are some racist overtones … that posed a problem and I still wanted to do that song” (372). This distancing, via the use of external characters in the puppets, allows Beaman to stand back from participating in the production of racist signifiers. This attempt to minimise (literally here in the Barbie doll-sized puppets) is noteworthy in the way that Dietrich is idolised in this collection, in particular for her strength as a self-identified woman who created her own gender and sexuality, and who toyed with the power of clothing and expression to convey both virility and sensuality.

The contributors frequently act to rebut negative critiques of Dietrich, in particular, negative criticisms of her relationship with her daughter, and her relationship to aging. Throughout her cabaret career, Dietrich revived the songs of her cinematic career, acting as an imitator of herself as her physical appearance transformed further away from the ‘original’. She imitated her young self in golden wigs, corseted fitted dresses, opulent fur coats, exact lighting, expert make-up, and numerous face-lifts.

In her last role in Just a Gigolo, she is decrepit and veiled, and for many years her performance was almost seen as an act of defilement to the memory of her beauty. However, in this collection there is reprieve from the negative associations with this role and her veiled decaying appearance is celebrated as being just as shocking as her sexuality had been in the 1930s. In a culture that values youth and perfection, it is indeed rebellious and daring of Dietrich to appear as an aging woman whose beauty has faded, especially since she was a woman who was an international sex symbol.

This collection offers a great deal for students of film, photography, cultural history, and those with an interest in the methodology of archiving and chronically of human lives. The contributors rely on contemporary literary and film theory, yet their discussions are delivered in an approachable fashion which allows for clear explanations of terminology, and speaking positions, which give sufficient background to readers unfamiliar with the literary references. This academic volume is conversational and well-structured, and the essays in this book will find favour in among the Dietrich fans.


Dietrich Icon
(2007)

Edited by Gerd Gemünden, Mary R. Desjardins
Contributors: Nora M. Alter, Steven Bach, Elisabeth Bronfen, Erica Carter, Mary R. Desjardins, Joseph Garncarz, Gerd Gemünden, Mary Beth Haralovich, Amelie Hastie, Lutz Koepnick, Alice A. Kuzniar, Amy Lawrence, Judith Mayne, Patrice Petro, Eric Rentschler, Gaylyn Studlar, Werner Sudendorf, Mark Williams
Duke University Press
ISBN: 0-8223-3806-8 (Cloth)
ISBN13: 978-0-8223-3806-2
ISBN: 0-8223-3819-X (Paperback)
ISBN13: 978-0-8223-3819-2
432pp, 54 b&w illustrations, Cloth - US$89.95, Paperback - US$24.95