User Reviews

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.

Josef von Sternberg would, no doubt, dismiss this film as one of his lesser works. Yet, to me,"Blonde Venus" sort of defines his relationship with Marlene Dietrich. The combined attraction of the harlot-mother gives Marlene's acting both sexual radiance and that intimate, moody quality that is so unique to her.

Just watch her in the scenes with her baby boy. She is lovely, glamorous, yet totally attentive to the child's needs, protective and unselfconscious in a way that only Carole Lombard (see "Made for each other" for evidence) managed back in those days. Her presence is so strong that she makes the male stars seem awkward and rigid. Herbert Marshall looks ill at ease, (probably from lack of directorial attention) while Cary Grant sails through the movie, unblessed by inspiration.

This is Marlene's film, through and through. The plot is silly beyond words (suffering in mink, writ large!) but Marlene makes it memorable. Her close-ups in the scene at the railway-station when she realizes she has lost her family tells it all. A lost soul with nowhere to go but down. Von Sternberg (or some intrusive producer) tacked on a happy ending, but the movie really ended there, on a bench. The rest is just wish-fulfilment.

This film has some wonderful moments, particularly the nightclub scenes where Dietrich "stripteases" out of a gorilla suit, and the pastoral opening sequence where the two lovers meet. The latter is handled in a very early 20s European style reminiscent of the heady days of Maurice Tourneur. The modern "American" sequences are too static, though, and the story is just a superficial melodrama that doesn't involve me too much. Cary Grant plays his early character type from the Mae West films with far less interesting results. One thing that is cool is that the club sequences give one an idea of what Dietrich's famous cabaret style might have been like.

This is one of the greatest films that show off life in the great depression. BLONDE VENUS concerns Helen (Marlene Dietrich) a young loving mother and wife. In order to help makes ends meet, she takes a job as a showgirl. She becomes more distant from her unhappy husband (Herbert Marshall), while taking up with a young playboy (Cary Grant) The film has a wwonderful dreamlike quality thanks to it's talented, visually oriegntated director- Josef von Sternberg. Our first visions of Dietrich, is of her swimming nude in a sunlit pond. The images are almost bleached out. When she takes the showgirl job, the sets are cluttered with plants, dresses and ladies underwear on hangers, junk. It's a basic exotic/erotic jungle. Everything ahs this unbeatable dreamlike look to it. This look is a visual metaphor for the entire film, which visually captures Helen's downward spiral, and rebirth.

While hiking in the Black Forest with a group of students, the American chemist Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) meets the German artist Helen (Marlene Dietrich) and sooner they get married. Years later, living in New York and having a boy, Johnny (Dickie Moore), Ned gets sick, poisoned by twelve years of exposition to radium in his experiments. However, his doctor tells him that In Dresden he would have a chance of healing, but the treatment would cost the fortune of US$ 1,500.00. Helen decides to work in a night-club under the pseudonym of Blonde Venus to raise some money for his travel. When she meets the playboy millionaire Nick Townsend (Cary Grant), she decides to ask for money to have an affair with him. Ned goes to Germany and Helen becomes Nick's mistress. When her cured husband returns fifteen days ahead the schedule, he finds that she had been unfaithful to him. Ned decides to take Johnny from Helen, forcing her to runaway with their son with the police in their tail.

The melodramatic "Blonde Venus" is not a bad movie, with a great performance of Marlene Dietrich. The story of a mother that prostitutes with a millionaire in a post-Depression period to raise money to save the life of her husband is not explicit, based on the moral values of those years, but very clear when she gets US$ 300,00 from Nick after their first encounter. Unfortunately, the moralist and corny conclusion is ridiculous, spoiling the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Vênus Loira" ("The Blonde Venus")

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.

This was a very interesting story.....one of the best in the early era of sound. The only negative was that even though time passed, nobody - including the 6-year- old boy (Dickie Moore) - aged!

There were a few other things that didn't make sense, either, but the film is so captivating that one can ignore the gaffs and still really enjoy this. Marlene Dietrich, for instance, is mesmerizing at times. She could - except for those stupid 1930s pencil-thin eyebrows - look absolutely stunning. Make no mistake: she's alluring.

All the lead characters in here did their parts well and Moore, who gained fame as one of the "Little Rascals," is particularly endearing.

The adults, however, all have character flaws: a married Dietrich runs off with a wealthy young Cary Grant while her husband (Herbert Marshall) is off in Europe being treated for radium poisoning. Marshall is understandably bitter when he returns to find out what his wife was up to, but is too hard-hearted about letting his wife see the kid. Grant, of course, is an adulterer.

Despite this soap opera premise, the movie almost plays like a film noir, with sharp dialog, great cinematography and tough characters.

This is another great classic film that, for some reason, is still not available on DVD and deserves to be.

Marlene Dietrich is spellbinding as a woman who takes her son and flees her jealous husband who threatens to take him away. The husband (Herbert Marshall) goes to Europe for his health, but on the money Dietrich makes as the Blonde Venus. When he finds out she's also had an affair with Cary Grant, he goes ballistic. Thin plot has Marshall sending detectives around the world to follow Dietrich as she sinks lower and lower. She finally gives up the boy and returns to nightclub stardom. All ends well. Dietrich sings a few songs along the way and looks gorgeous, but it's her "Hot Voodoo" number, emerging from a gorilla suit via a slow strip, that is sexy and mesmerizing. The storyline is not terribly logical, but hell ... it's Marlene Dietrich doing what she did best: hypnotizing her audience with glamorous, allure, and wit.

Oh dear, only a couple of years on from the brilliance of The Blue Angel, Sternberg is back in the US and all the innocence has gone. All that beauty and charm, the wondrous and sexy costumes, the natural movement and the free actions, the whole 'I can't help it', has gone. Dietrich is all spruced up and got to act all 'mummy'. Needless to say there would have been problems with the Code but if the lovely, seeming, naked bathing at the start were allowed, surely there was no need to pile on the sentimentality so crudely. I guess it is clear she sleeps with Grant for money at the start and has to be seen to 'pay for it' but then why oh why have her go back to playing 'mummy' at the end? Very sad. The film itself as melodrama is okay, I suppose, but it could and should have been much more.

This Dietrich film throws in everything but the kitchen sink (and I'm not too sure that's not in there, too) for the sake of entertainment. If you've never seen Marlene Dietrich before and start your Dietrich 101 with this, then most others will pale in comparison.

The story revolves her and husband Herbert Marshall and how they met, which plays a pivotal part of the film throughout. Soon after their marriage and having a sweet little boy, played by actor Dickie Moore, scientist Herbert gets sick due to exposure to a chemical in his experiments. In order to be cured, they need money for his surgery. So she goes back to being a performer, which she quit to be a wife and mother, and Herbert reluctantly acquiesces.

This film manages credibility by all of the stars' sincere and heartfelt acting, including a young Cary Grant, and a fast-moving script. Scandal, deception and lies, jealousy, twists and turns, a mother's love, and a gorilla make this Dietrich film a true essential to cinema history. If you haven't seen "Blonde Venus," then you've not truly appreciated Marlene Dietrich.

Of the seven Marlene Dietrich/Josef Von Sternberg film, a partnership that is justifiably famous, collaborations, 'Blonde Venus' is the fifth. To me also, it's the weakest but still not by all means a bad film. Far from it, if not for all tastes, just that they also had great films like 'Shanghai Express' and 'The Scarlet Empress' and 'Blonde Venus' in comparison comes up short.

The story is silly nonsense, and does get rather too melodramatic and overwrought even for the 30s in the middle and muddled in a few of the latter scenes where it doesn't make as much sense as it ought to. The ending doesn't ring true, and the decision considering what happens in the rest of the film feels illogical. As great an actor as Cary Grant was, not many actors could do charming, urbane and suave better, this was an early role and one that despite the dashing charm he brought to it doesn't do anything for him, it's too much of a plot device sort of role that comes in and out of the story.

However, Dietrich is luminous and touching, making a real effort to make a real character out of the only really developed character in the whole film. Dickie Moore is cute and very natural, and Herbert Marshall plays a somewhat thankless role that barely stretches him valiantly down pat and makes him a conflicted character. Hattie McDaniel is a hoot as ever.

Staging of the songs are more memorable than the songs themselves, though they are nice enough on their own. Just that the dazzling staging of the "Hot Voodoo" numbers packs more punch than the song itself for instance, Dietrich and a gorilla suit proves to be an iconic moment.

The beginning of the film is also very daring and racy, remarkably so. A sharp, double-edged and sophisticated script helps too, as does Sternberg's adroit direction. As always with a Sternberg film, 'Blonde Venus' looks great. Not just the striking use of light and shadow lighting and the sumptuous settings and costuming but especially the pure imaginative classiness that is the cinematography.

In summary, quite good but not great like other Dietrich/Sternberg films are. 7/10 Bethany Cox

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").

German cabaret girl marries a commercial chemist and moves with him to New York City; five years later, with a child to care for, the couple finds themselves in dire straits once the husband is forced to leave his job due to radium poisoning. She earns the money for his trip to Europe to seek medical treatments in only one night, by hitting the stage and getting hit-on by a millionaire politician (he's turned on by her emergence from a gorilla costume--don't ask). Despite a broad and at times uneven direction by Josef von Sternberg, this outrageous story provides the perfect role for Marlene Dietrich, whose character is introduced swimming naked with a group of showgirls. The camera catches the actress posing too often, and her song numbers date the picture more than anything else, but she's wonderful caring for husband Herbert Marshall and son Dickie Moore (both excellent). Cary Grant's role as the wealthy playboy is hardly convincing, and we're never told where his steady stream of cash is coming from, but when Marshall finds out about him and threatens to take the kid away, Dietrich and Moore take it on the lam. This part of the movie could have easily slipped into self-parody (and nearly does), yet the star works her way through it with the utmost seriousness. She's marvelous, even when the script struggles to meet her halfway. *** from ****

This is Marlene Dietrich at her best. From reading the reviews here all I can say is there's a whole lot of people in this world who are way too cynical. Marlene Dietrich and Herbert Marshall loved each other in this film, for crying out loud. There is no other way this movie could have or should have ended, without seeming contrived and false. And maybe Marlene Dietrich couldn't sing. So what ? The only actress in cinema movie history who ever rivaled her in sex appeal was Greta Garbo. This is a great movie.

Uneven melodrama. It's often very sloppy and very weak, but occasionally it rises to the occasion and is exceptional. There are definitely moments where von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich are at their peak. There's too much plot to make it worth describing in detail. Suffice it to say, I thought the first hour was mediocre. There's an infamous musical number where Dietrich enters dressed as a gorilla – something so campy it must be the silliest musical number in motion picture history. The plot only starts to get going after fifty or so minutes. Then the film gets really good, often great. There's a child actor, though, who is so terrible he really saps the power out of a lot of it (Dickie Moore, who was also one of the Little Rascals). They so rarely found decent child actors during this period. It's fun to imagine how the audience of the time would have seen these characters (the plot involves an unfaithful wife). I imagine feelings would have been a lot more mixed for Dietrich's character. Some would side with the husband who persecutes her, I'm sure. Nowadays, I imagine most of us side completely with Dietrich. We want her to end up with Cary Grant (who was not a big star at the time; he only started working the same year). I have the sneaking suspicion Josef von Sternberg didn't really want Dietrich back with her husband, either. The end is just a little ambiguous. I had to put subtitles on the DVD to understand the final dialogue exchange.

Perhaps not the greatest of the Dietrich/von Sternberg collaborations but with so many masterpieces and near-masterpieces it's hard to choose. Here she's the cabaret singer who will do anything to save the life of her dying husband yet the plot is neither turgid nor sentimental though to see Marlene as a dull little housewife sitting at home sewing is a bit hard to swallow. The hubbie is Herbert Marshall at his stiffest and the man Dietrich turns to is Cary Grant, also not at his best. Of course, she looks fantastic, (Bert Glennon was the cinematographer), and once she glams up the film picks up considerably, (this is the one in which she puts on the gorilla costume and sings 'Hot Voodoo' and there are certainly oodles of plot to get through). It might have been better still if that most obnoxious of child stars, Dickie Moore, hadn't played the son. Luckily we don't see too much of him. It's also a pre-code movie so it's pretty risqué for the time.

This iconic melodrama is the kind of film that makes Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant Hollywood icons. Dietrich's performance as a cabaret singer in a blond afro wig singing "Hot Voodoo" is over the top. A must see for every film buff.

Maybe it is because I am used to the films nowadays that I just can't see how these olden films are seen as 'masterpieces'.

Not so much Marlene Dietrich, but the acting in this film was horrible. I was literally cringing. The beginning half was worst, and even Dietrich felt a little awkward, but the worst was when Herbert Marshall was speaking. It was too flat and forced. Dickie Moore who was a kid at the time was better than most actors in this.

Dietrich did play her character better during the second half, as she carries the film on her shoulders. She portrays her character really well, and the connection between her and Moore as mother and son was prominent. Her character is the only one who is given detail in the film and nothing much is known about the others.

I watched this film for my film theory class, and the theory connected with this was the image of the woman in the cinema. If you've read some of my other reviews, you would know not to get me started on the sexism and inequality in films. Let's just say that even though this film is centred on a female star, she is basically portrayed as a whore (and an object to look at), and a bad mother because she is not supposed to work and care for her son at the same time. Plus, this didn't even pass the Bechdel test (not that it's a good indicator of gender equality in films, but it is definitely something to think about).

Read more movie reviews at: championangels.wordpress.com

The seven collaborations between director Joseph "von" Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich were so distinct in look and tone, and so different from anything else going on at the time, they almost seem to constitute a sub-genre of their own. Like any genre, they have their outright masterpieces, as well as their absolute turkeys. Time to send Blonde Venus back to the farm.

After the seedily seductive hits The Blue Angel, Morocco and Shanghai Express, in which Miss Dietrich established her screen image as cabaret-singer-cum-prostitute, someone at Paramount decided it was time for Marlene to play a mother. There is nothing wrong with that in itself; as an actress she was up to the part. It's just that nothing else about the format has changed. It's like The Blue Angel plus a kid. Fair enough, the story of a woman who drags her child along on her sleazy escapades is a sound premise for a tragic drama, but that's not the way this is played. Dietrich's journey is played as some kind of adventure, using her wits and accomplices to stay ahead of the law. This is not some cheeky example of pre-code libertarianism – it is just bizarrely distasteful.

Although we may be able to accept Marlene is a doting mommy, there is absolutely no way we can buy Sternberg as a director of warmth and poignancy. In spite of this being one of the handful of pictures for which he also took a writing credit, Sternberg simply fails to get the story-arc. The film's emotional payoff is supposed to be the eventual reunion of the family, but even at the beginning this is not established as something worth getting back to. As usual Sternberg's interiors are dressed and shot to look like either brothels or insane asylums. The Faradays' home is actually quite a creepy, dingy environment, and it's a wonder little Johnny wasn't wetting the bed and asking to sleep with the light on.

But as anyone familiar with them will know, the point of a Dietrich/Sternberg picture is to make Dietrich look fabulous, and in this respect at least Blonde Venus is a success. Marlene is introduced emerging from a forest pool in a bright, shimmering close-up, and even when she is reduced to rags the camera still loves her. The same cannot be said for the rest of the cast, whom Sternberg tended to view as mobile pieces of scenery. The normally likable Herbert Marshall is here reduced to a moody grouch lurking in the shadows. Even the suave and lively Cary Grant becomes just a boring, background blob, and does not seem nearly interesting enough for Dietrich to run off with.

The only standout moments in Blonde Venus are Marlene's song and dance routines, especially the renowned Hot Voodoo number where she parodies her own surreal stage persona by emerging from a gorilla outfit. But even these feel like they have been cut-and-pasted from a different film. Sternberg's fans may hail it as another masterpiece, as they are wont to do, but for the average punter it is a massive disappointment. Audiences of the time did not lap it up as they had her earlier hits, and this heralded the beginning of the end for Marlene's heyday. A year later there would be a new queen at Paramount – Mae West.