Le Dee dell'amore

One of the great docos ever made with excellent clips from films over 70 years of cinema.....and some absolutely impossible to see in the 21 st century, this is a must for all aficionados of silent and 30s female spectacle. Part of a series of film history docos like HAROLD LLOYD's WORLD OF COMEDY or MGMs BIG PARADE OF LAUGHTER this was about the women and their Hollywood gorgeousness. Very successful in 1965 upon release and never been seen much since.....the world changed a lot the next year, and more so the year after, this last stop before psychedelia and rock took over is a valentine to Paramount and Fox's female stars. Fascinating and quite revealing, literally.

The documentary "The love Godesses" follows sexuality and more specifically female sex symbols in film through the ages. Through the ages means in this instance from the beginning of film until 1965, the year the documentary was made.

The documentary has a lot of clips and names, some of them really interesting, but lacks in my opinion in structure.

The structure I discovered in all the clips is about two subjects: The way in which films follows the cultural developments in society and alternates between a prudish and free-spirited treatment of sexuality; The way in which European and American sex symbols dominate in different periods of time.

The documentary sees more or less two waves from prudish to free spirited and back again.

The first wave begins with the birth of cinema in Victorian times and ends with the roaring twenties.

The second wave begins with the depression of the thirties and ends when the Hay code loses its strength at the end of the fifties / beginning of the sixties.

The American icon of the first wave is Jean Harlow, that of the second wave of course Marilyn Monroe. With respect to the first wave the documentary also mentions Busby Berkely, whose choreographies undeniably have a sexual undertone.

With respect to the prudish period of the second wave the documentary mentions the rise of Shirley Temple, whose young age of course strips her of all sexuality.

I would like to add the example of Audrey Hepburn with her appearance as a tomboy. The heydays of Audrey Hepburn are however not in a prudish period, proving that the different periods are not strictly separated.

Sexuality is however a subject of all ages. When the film doesn't show it, oftentimes the dialogue hints at it. See for example the movies of Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks.

The second subject was Europe versus the Unites States. In general Europe is a little more liberal with respect to sexuality. It is in my opinion no incident that in both waves various sex symbols also famous in America were born in Europe.

With respect to the first wave I can mention Pola Negri, Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert and Greta Garbo. The documentary also mentions to my surprise Brigitte Helm. I only knew her from her role in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927) in which she is a robot. In other films however she plays more seductive characters.

With respect to the second wave the European examples mentioned are Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. In my opinion these examples could be easily supplemented with for example Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale.

The emphasis of the documentary is on American movies. Otherwise it is hard to understand why it failed to mention a film like "Summer with Monica" (1953, Ingmar Bergman).

This collection of clips with leading ladies from the silent era up to the mid-1960s contains lots of memorable scenes and lines (the chess match from "L'Atlantide" with Brigitte Helm is amazing; the choice of Marilyn Monroe film footage is quite unexpected), but tries to cover too much ground and does so superficially due to insufficient length (about 1 hour 20 minutes). It should have been twice as long to do justice to its subject. **1/2 out of 4.