Rent Blonde Venus (1932)

3.5 of 5 from 81 ratings
1h 30min
Rent Blonde Venus Online DVD & Blu-ray Rental
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  • Available formats
Synopsis:
Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen, a former nightclub entertainer married to an American scientist, Edward Faraday (Herbert Marshall), who has been diagnosed with radium poisoning. To earn money for her husband's European cure, Helen returns to the stage billed as "The Blonde Venus" and is an overnight success. She also finds herself powerfully attracted to a dashing politician named Nick Townsend (Cary Grant) who is captivated by her and offers financial support. Townsend moves Helen and her son into a beautiful apartment, and when Edward returns unexpectedly from Europe to find his child and unfaithful wife gone, he demands she relinquish the boy to him.
As a woman torn between her husband, her lover, her career and her child, Dietrich turns in a dazzling performance that makes this one of the screen goddess's most popular films.
Actors:
, , , , , , , , , , Harold Berquist, , , , , , , Louise De Friese, ,
Directors:
Producers:
Josef Von Sternberg
Writers:
Jules Furthman, S.K. Lauren, Josef Von Sternberg
Studio:
Universal Pictures
Genres:
Classics, Drama
Collections:
All the Twos: 1902-62, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Marlene Dietrich, Paramount's Laughing Thirties, The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Pedro Almodóvar
BBFC:
Release Date:
26/12/2006
Run Time:
90 minutes
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Subtitles:
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Full Screen 1.33:1 / 4:3
Colour:
B & W
BBFC:
Release Date:
26/08/2019
Run Time:
94 minutes
Languages:
English LPCM Mono
Subtitles:
English Hard of Hearing
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Full Screen 1.37:1
Colour:
B & W
BLU-RAY Regions:
B
Bonus:
  • 'Blonde Venus' audio commentary with film critic Adrian Martin
  • Introductions to film by Nicholas von Sternberg, son of Josef von Sternberg
  • Josef von Sternberg, a Retrospective (1969): feature-length documentary by Harry Kumel
  • The Twilight of an Angel (2012): documentary on Marlene Dietrich's final years
  • The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935): Paramount promotional film
  • Lux Radio Theatre: 'The Legionnaire and the Lady' (1936): radio play adaptation of Morocco
  • If It Isn't Pain (Then It Isn't Love) (1935, audio only): deleted musical number from The Devil Is a Woman
  • Josef von Sternberg: An Introduction (2009): lecture by von Sternberg biographer John Baxter at BFI Southbank
  • The Art of Josef von Sternberg (2019): Nicholas von Sternberg discusses his father's artworks Video essay by film historian Tag Gallagher (2019)
  • Writer and filmmaker Jasper Sharp on the life and career of Shanghai Express star Anna May Wong (2019)
  • So Mayer, author of Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, on the queer iconography and legacy of Dietrich and von Sternberg's films (2019)
  • Nathalie Morris, film historian, on the costume designs of Travis Banton (2019)
  • Image galleries
  • UK premieres on Blu-ray

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Reviews (1) of Blonde Venus

Exotic Realism. - Blonde Venus review by Steve

Spoiler Alert
08/10/2022

Marlene Dietrich wrote the story for Blonde Venus and it seems she made an attempt to broaden her exotic appeal. She's still a cabaret singer. And she meets her husband (Herbert Marshall) while she's swimming naked in a lake in Germany... but then the narrative diverts towards a more conventional Hollywood soap with Marlene suffering poverty and disgrace while having to provide for her son alone.

The best (and most famous) scene is a night club number when she passes through the tables in a gorilla costume, only to remove the disguise and sing the excellent 'Hot Voodoo'. But the glamour and the naturalism clash. Dietrich complained the film was damaged by censorship and it's possible to see that her descent into the gutter might have been intended to be more realistically brutal.

Josef von Sternberg wasn't the director for social realism though. When his star is compelled to live in a flophouse, he creates the most beautifully lit flophouse in cinema. The milieu is exotically sleazy. Marlene does a lot more acting than usual rather than being a model for von Sternberg's adoring lens.

There's a pre-stardom Cary Grant as an unlikely gangster. Sidney Toler is good in a cameo as a squalid, shifty detective. It's an unusual film. No one else can walk on the wild side with Marlene's insouciance, but it just doesn't compute when she washes dishes to make ends meet. That's what Lillian Gish does in a Griffith film, not Dietrich in a von Sternberg. It's an interesting digression but only intermittently successful.

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