Blonde Venus (1932)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Josef von Sternberg

Writers:

Jules Furthman (written by) and
S.K. Lauren (written by)

Release Date:

16 September 1932 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

From the lips of one MAN to the arms of another!

Plot:

American chemist Ned Faraday marries a German entertainer and starts a family. However, he becomes poisoned...

Plot Keywords:

Germany | Chemist | Millionaire | Singer | Fame

Cast

Marlene Dietrich	...	Helen Faraday, aka Helen Jones
Herbert Marshall	...	Edward 'Ned' Faraday
Cary Grant	...	Nick Townsend
Dickie Moore	...	Johnny Faraday
Gene Morgan	...	Ben Smith
Rita La Roy	...	Taxi Belle Hooper
Robert Emmett O'Connor	...	Dan O'Connor
Sidney Toler	...	Det. Wilson
Morgan Wallace	...	Dr. Pierce
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Clarence Muse	...	Charlie, the Bartender (unconfirmed)

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

Spain:18 | USA:Passed | UK:PG (re-rating) (1987) | UK:A (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Paramount Ranch - 2813 Cornell Road, Agoura, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Quotes:

Ben Smith: What'd you say your name was?
Helen Faraday, aka Helen Jones: Helen Faraday.
Ben Smith: Nah, we gotta get something different. Something unusual, something that's easy to say and hard to forget.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Day of the Locust (1975)

Soundtrack:

Gruss (Leise zeiht durch mein Gemüth)

fun part of the series

This is the 5th of the 7 legendary collaborations between Dietrich and von Sternberg, and the only one set in the U.S. (the other 6 are set in Germany, Morocco, Europe, China, Russia, and Spain). All of the principals, including the director, were born in Europe. For some reason it is my personal favorite, and the only one I enjoy watching repeatedly. Probably this is for the outrageous musical numbers, which display Dietrich's incredibly self-assured command of her environment (what can top "Hot Voodoo", but I really really love the glittering white top-hat and tails number particularly). This would have been the only time during filming that von Sternberg could not totally exercise his robotic direction of her; she gets to be more "herself" as a real performer, and her energy-level comes way up. Also I'd venture that since the story is set in the U.S. it makes it more challenging to present her as "exotic" (as opposed to, say, China). I love how von Sternberg plays her character's flight South, into increasingly lurid, run-down, and crude environments. The technical side of movie-making had made huge strides; film-stock was becoming much more uniform and high-contrast, and sound-recording had improved greatly in just a few years; von Sternberg was able to make full use of this. The film feels snappy and tightly-paced, and has mostly abandoned silent-film mannerisms.

In comparison to their next 2 films, this one feels quite grounded. The subsequent "Scarlett Empress" and "Devil is a Woman" would be increasingly baroque and outrageous excursions into fantastic style, excess, and European decadence, which kind of left their American audiences in the dust - and helped Dietrich land on the infamous "box-office poison" list.

This is a pre-Code film, and it routinely tweaks conventional morals. The nightclub in which Dietrich goes to work is clearly a high-class "speakeasy"; Prohibition was still in effect at the time. Also, its always a bit confusing for modern audiences when dollar-amounts are mentioned in old films. The personal check which Dietrich receives from Cary Grant is for $200 as I recall; in current dollars that would be something more like $2,500 and was an amount which would have set Depression-era audiences reeling with its clear implication of what Grant had received in return!

This is the first chance Cary Grant had to do a major co-starring role, and its the earliest of his films available on video. Another IMDb "comment" mentions Dietrich and Mae West supposedly "falling in love" with him, which is a laugh! Dietrich (in her daughter's bio) referred to him as the "shirt-seller" (Grant was selling men's shirts at the studio, as a sideline to make extra money); West preferred, to put it delicately, men who were a little more red meat (I think that Grant was already living with Randolph Scott at the time of filming; they used to attend Hollywood A-list parties as a couple, which Scott could get away with partially because of his very blue-blood East Coast family connections).

Originally available on LaserDisc (as a 2-disc set with "Shanghai Express").