Word: lola
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Cold Wind in August (Troy; Aidart), a rutty melodrama about a thirtyish stripteaser (Lola Albright) who falls in love with a 17-year-old janitor's son (Scott Marlowe), does not merely invite cynicism, it drags cynicism in off the street and loosens its tie. Obviously, the film will be a financial success, because it is loaded with skin-on-skin sex. No cynicism here, nor in the observation that part of the film's distinct, if flawed, artistic success is due to a tight budget...
...suspicion that the film also profits by its lack of clever camerawork, imaginative direction (Alexander Singer, a former producer of television commercials, is responsible) or well-plotted story. In this almost total vacuum, there is nothing at all to get in the way of a superb job by Lola Albright, a 37-year-old blonde known chiefly for having played Peter Gunn's girl friend on TV, and a performance almost as good by Marlowe, a 23-year-old TV actor. They play their parts-she has had three bad marriages and knows the wild luck...
Based on Heinrich Mann's novel, Professor Unrath, this film traces the romance of a Gymnasium instructors, Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) and a nightclub singer, Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Rath gives up his teaching career to marry Lola Lola; he travels with her troupe and lives off her earnings. Within a few years, Rath loses his dignity, and, finally, when he is forced to play stooge for a magic act, he loses his mind...
Throughout these early moments, Sternberg prepares for the eventual fall. Rath gets up the first morning and discovers his canary dead. As his cook throws the corpse in the fire, his shoulders slump dejectedly. It is no coincidence that an artificial bird circles Lola Lola's head when Rath first hears her sing, nor that later on, after their first night together, her canary awakens them...
Sternberg expresses these complex attitudes with practically no dialogue. He still had the silent film director's knack for telling a story with pictures. When Rath glances from Lola Lola to a nude caryatid, or gets entangled in a fishnet which trying to reach her dressing room, pages of conversation could never recreate the moment as effectively...