A Vênus Loura

Blonde Venus unfortunately turned out to be the one and only collaboration of Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. Sad to say though, Grant was not the lead here, just the other man who comes between Marlene and husband Herbert Marshall. There's no real chemistry in this one between any of the principal players and the best scenes are with Marlene and little Dickie Moore playing her son with Marshall.

The best thing about Blonde Venus are Marlene's musical numbers and they're memorable because of the inimitable way she puts over a song. All Dietrich fans should treasure her Hot Voodoo number where Marlene has a gorilla suit on and does a sexy strip out of that costume and gives us a look at voodoo can do to us.

But when its not showing Dietrich's legs off and her husky singing, the film is the story of a woman in love with two men. Husband Herbert Marshall is a research scientist who contracts 'radium poisoning' and needs money to go to Europe for a cure. Dietrich gets the money by doing some entertaining in a seedy dive where she comes to the attention of wealthy playboy Cary Grant. From there the plot progresses to the inevitable Hollywood conclusion with a script that was written by Joseph Von Sternberg who directed the film as well.

Paramount was taking a shot in the dark here with radium poisoning gambit. The plain truth is they didn't know a whole lot about radioactivity then. The discoverer of radium Marie Curie did in fact die of cancer contracted from too much exposure to it. But one didn't just go somewhere for a miracle cure for that sort of thing.

Herbert Marshall was always playing the injured party it seems in a whole lot of his films. He's well remembered for being Bette Davis's husband in The Little Foxes, a much better film than Blonde Venus. I also remember him in When Ladies Meet where he was cheating on Greer Garson with Joan Crawford and he went through the film with an air of innocence that you would think he was the party offended. Marshall had these roles down pat, but he had more to him in his acting repertoire.

Even before The Code was put in place Paramount had a lot of trouble with the Hays Office in getting this one exhibited. Some changes were made that no doubt weakened the plot and the story. Marlene is basically in love with two guys at the same time and that was a no go back in the day.

Blonde Venus didn't do that well at the box office, it was quite a let down from her previous film Shanghai Express. After this one she and Joseph Von Sternberg were separated and she did her next film, Song of Songs with Rouben Mamoulian.

Blonde Venus is great Dietrich who's asked to carry a weak story.

.. in that typical Von Sternberg way that plays with dark, light, and shadow.

Helen (Dietrich) and her friends, who are headlining a local show, are skinny dipping in a pond in Germany. Ned (Herbert Marshall) and his friends are walking in the woods when they come upon the scene. Helen asks the men to leave, Ned says they will not unless she agrees to see him after the show. Fast forward and it's domestic Helen seen next, bathing her young son (Dickie Moore) in a small cluttered apartment. Ned, now her husband, has radium poisoning from some experiments he has been working on the past year and will die unless he can get to Dresden - they now live in America - and take the experimental cure an expensive doctor has. But it will cost 1500 dollars, and during the Great Depression it might as well be 15 million. Though Ned doesn't like it, Helen decides to go back on the stage for the first time since her marriage.

So along comes a millionaire, Nick Townsend (Cary Grant) who sees her nightclub act and hears her tale of woe., He gives Helen the money she needs to get her husband cured, but the husband thinks it's an advance from the manager of the club where Helen is working. Some reviews say Townsend is trading her sex for his money, but it's not like that, although he is very much attracted to her. And that lack of reciprocal expectations has Helen loving him as a result. And then the husband gets cured early and thus comes home unexpectedly, finding an apartment that hasn't been lived in for months. He also discovers that Helen has not been working since shortly after he sails. Complications ensue.

The script, frankly, seems rather rushed and is the stuff of a hundred melodramas made in the early 30s about misunderstood "fallen" women. Where Von Sternberg excels is with his camera work. The cinematography often speaks for the characters. The situations are not exactly classic Great Depression scenes - that was mainly Warner Brothers' stock and trade - but they aren't inconsistent given the times. The only bad thing I can say about it is that the ending seems tacked on and inconsistent given all that has come before.

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").

Billed as The BLONDE VENUS, a sultry German cabaret singer will do anything to save her sick husband and care for their child.

Acting under the flamboyant direction of her mentor, Josef von Sternberg, legendary Marlene Dietrich fascinates as a tender mother fiercely protecting her small child, who spends her evenings as a seductive stage siren, captivating audiences in America & France. She is equally good in both postures, her perfect face registering deep maternal love and sphinx-like allure. Dietrich is incredibly gentle crooning an old German lullaby at her son's bedside, while the contrasting image of her emerging from an ape suit to sing 'Hot Voodoo' in a nightclub is one of the Pre-Code Era's most bizarre images.

Two British actors compete for Marlene's attention. Distinguished Herbert Marshall, with a voice like liquid honey, is ideally cast as Dietrich's conflicted husband. Playing a chemist poisoned by radium, his face reveals his humiliation at having to be supported by his wife; later, he manifests pent-up rage when he discovers her 'betrayal.' Cary Grant, just on the cusp of becoming a major film star, plays a powerful political boss whose arrogance mellows as he pursues Dietrich's affections.

Little Dickie Moore, one of the OUR GANG members, is terrific as the infant son who is the bridge between Dietrich & Marshall. Here was a kid who could really act and tug at the viewer's heartstrings. Sidney Toler is amusing as a low-key detective. Gene Morgan, as a talent agent, and Robert Emmett O'Connor, as a theater owner, very realistically portray denizens from the sleazy underbelly of the entertainment world.

Movie mavens will spot some fine performers in unbilled cameos: silly Sterling Holloway as one of the student hikers in the first sequence who discovers Marlene skinny-dipping in the forest; Clarence Muse as a stuttering bartender; dear Mary Gordon as Marshall's informative landlady; big Dewey Robinson as a gruff greasy spoon owner; wonderful Hattie McDaniel as Dietrich's New Orleans maid; and prim Marcelle Corday as Marlene's maid in Paris.

Paramount gave the film lavish, and slightly decadent, production values. The live chickens flapping about in Dietrich's apartment during the French Quarter sequence are a nice touch.

"Blonde Venus" is a drama based on the original story "Mother Love", written by Marlene Dietrich.

The plot follows a married couple, Ned and Helen, as they put their son Johnny to bed, telling him the story of how they met. Ned, a chemist, has been accidentally poisoned by radium and is given only a year to live. However, a renowned doctor has developed a treatment that may help him. To finance her husband's journey and medical care, Helen takes a job as a cabaret performer at a local nightclub. Her popularity rises quickly, catching the attention of Nick-a young and wealthy politician.

Director Josef von Sternberg brings a strong sense of stylization to the film, using light and shadow to create a mysterious, captivating atmosphere. The camera often centers on the protagonist, but the compositions remain inventive and visually rich. The plot is layered-at times slightly convoluted-but thematically cohesive, portraying the struggle of a woman whose journey holds a clear feminist resonance. The film wisely avoids devolving into farce, even as the narrative edges toward melodrama. The extravagant costuming highlights the contrast between the glamour of the cabaret world and the poverty of a woman fighting to keep her child.

As a Pre-Code Hollywood film, "Blonde Venus" benefits from a greater freedom in exploring themes such as female independence, sexual agency, infidelity as a complex moral choice, motherhood as sacrifice, and the tensions within marriage and family. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, von Sternberg subtly draws lines between luxury and destitution.

Marlene Dietrich delivers a graceful and compelling performance as Helen Faraday, also known as Blonde Venus. She is a mother, a wife, a lover-the very soul of the story. Her character endures immense hardship, driven by her decision to take control of her destiny and that of her child. The emotionally charged final scene, which reunites the family, doesn't feel like a conventional punishment for a female character of the era, but rather another act of choice. Herbert Marshall plays Edward 'Ned' Faraday, the heartbroken husband and devoted father. It's a thankless role, with limited development allowed by the direction, reducing him to a symbol of domestic dignity. Cary Grant, as the wealthy Nick Townsend, is suave, stylish, and arrogantly charming. His involvement in resolving the story's conflict brings a touch of soap-opera sentimentality.

This is a cult classic, especially memorable for its opening sequence and cabaret sequence where Helen performs "Hot Voodoo" in a striking costume. While it may not be the pinnacle of von Sternberg and Dietrich's collaboration, it remains a vital and compelling part of their shared cinematic legacy.