Word: sternbergs
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...frenzied, egomaniac character of Impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore), and by detailing the way he discovers a lingerie model named Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard), turns her into Lily Garland the Great Actress, bullies her and loses her to Hollywood. Thereafter Jaffe, who resembles Morris Gest, Richard Bennett, Josef von Sternberg and the late David Belasco, produces a succession of failures, ends up in Chicago with money troubles...
...most successful effort yet imported from England, is a more than passable program picture. Conrad Veidt is one of the dankest villains ever to infest a wagonlit; Director Walter Forde gives you the feeling of a train, not with two reels of atmosphere shots like the ones Josef von Sternberg used in Shanghai Express but with a sharp eye for dramatic touches. Good shot: the hand of a corpse hanging out of a berth, swinging as the train rocks...
...movie is saved from being a complete waste of celluloid it is by the star and her director. No one who remembers the "Merry Widow" can quite forgive Von sternberg his recent perpetrations, but "use doth breed a habit in a man" and the director has not been able to discard his former habits of originality and his finesse, even though sloppy work is now the mode for Hollywood. He knows very well how to make a good shot, how to make five extra and Marlene Dietrich Paddling about in a property pound look like six syivan nymphs...
Director Josef von Sternberg wrote the story, quit Paramount and took Miss Dietrich with him when the story was rewritten, later returned to direct her in it. Von Sternberg, who has repeatedly denied being born Joe Stern in Brooklyn, opens with a sylvan swimming scene in Germany's Black Forest (300 miles from Berlin) where U. S. hikers surprise Berlin actresses off for the afternoon. One hiker (Herbert Marshall) marries Marlene Dietrich, takes her to the U. S. They have a child. Marshall contracts radium poisoning in his scientific research. To send him to a Dresden doctor, Marlene returns...
Insatiable admirers of Marlene Dietrich will swarm to this, her latest starring vehicle, will stay to be bored, and will understand at last why Paramount sought to wrest some manner of control over her acting and stories from the stubborn von Sternberg. For whatever fault, and there is much, which can be found in this cinema may be placed on the doorstep of the director alone. A capable group of actors struggles manfully through an unconvincing, poorly motivated, carelessly photographed production. But the effort is vain: Dietrich remains the beautiful woman who has yet to prove her histrionic talent; Herbert...