Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood

After working together in Germany on Marlene Dietrich's breakout hit "The Blue Angel" (1930), Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg teamed up in Hollywood for a half-dozen films made at Paramount, where Dietrich had secured a contract. Those six films are gloriously restored and presented here in a new box set, "Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood," from the Criterion Collection.

The two hit American ground running with "Morocco" - also produced and released in 1930 - and their momentum never let up. Dietrich portrays a cabaret singer named Amy Jolly, a character evidently based on a real person, but the film is Dietrich all the way, starting with her direct-from-Weimar costuming (that tux!) and overt hints of bisexuality. Amy falls for a French Foreign Legion member played by Gary Cooper, a man who might be doomed both by his womanizing and his gallantry on Amy's behalf.

"Morocco" was followed in 1931 by "Dishonored," in which Dietrich plays Marie Kolverer, a widow whose husband was lost in World War I. The war rages on, Austria is beset by enemies, and Marie is forced to walk the streets for a living; she sees herself as a patriot who "serves her countrymen" in her earthbound way. But she also, to turns out, has the smarts and courage to "serve her country" as a spy. ("What a charming evening we might have had," sighs her first target once she has the goods on him, "if you weren't a spy, and I weren't a traitor.") When she encounters a Russian agent (Victor McLaglen), her heart - and some sort of professional respect, if not love - outweighs both duty and self-preservation as the two engage in a lethal dance of wits and sexual tension.

"Shanghai Express" (1932) roars up right behind these two striking films; described as taking place in a "strange orientalist fantasy space" by film scholar Homay King (who approaches the film's stereotypes skeptically but also praises it for its as-yet-unequaled number of speaking parts for Asian American actors), much of the film takes place on a train until rebels hijack the Shanghai Express and take a hostage. Dietrich plays "Shanghai Lily" - another prostitute - but co-star Anna May Wong provides a kind of mirror image in the role of a courtesan named Hui Fei. The cunning heavy of the piece, Henry Chang (played by Warner Oland, a Swedish-American who evidently was in demand for "yellowface" casting), pits Lily against the slightly dimwitted Doc (Clive Brook), her former flame for his own benefit. Both Chan and Doc learn a few lessons about the strength and tenacity of women who work as courtesans, while the viewer learns just how effective dramatic lighting can be in setting a mood.

Also from 1932: "Blonde Venus," which has Dietrich once again playing a cabaret performer, only this time with some pot-boiling twists. Former star Helen (Dietrich) returns to the stage to raise money for her husband Ned (Herbert Marshall); catching the eye of a millionaire named Nick Townsend (Cary Grant), Helen acquires the needed funds in a hurry but she also loses herself in an affair with the smitten Nick. Things end badly; the enraged Ned plans to divorce Helena and take sole custody of their young son, prompting Helen to take the boy and go on the run. Matters go from bad to worse, as Helen becomes a virtual martyr to motherhood, but von Sternberg has a (hugely contrived) happy ending up Dietrich's tuxedo sleeve.

1934's "The Scarlet Empress" (which purports to be based on the diaries of Russian Empress Catherine the Great) follows the titular character - played by Dietrich, of course - from her free-spirited girlhood in Germany to her marriage to the idiotic Grand Duke Peter (Sam Jaffe), the nephew of Russia's Empress Elizabeth (Louise Dresser, with a hilariously incongruous American accent and dialogue to match). Much sharper and more handsome than Peter is Alexei (John Davis Lodge), a notorious rake who can't help but maker seducing Catherine his goal, even though he's already embroiled with Elizabeth. Dietrich's acting, never naturalistic (and, evidently, guided in detail by von Sternberg) transforms here from utter naivet� to expertise in the political uses of sexual power. Even more striking is von Sternberg's production design, which looks like something Edvard Munch might have come up with after a drunken night with Rodin.

The set is rounded out with "The Devil is a Woman" (1935), in which the misogynistic undercurrents of the earlier films explode with geyser-like force. The film is set in Spain during political tumult; Dietrich plays Conchita Perez, a beautiful and pitiless creature who, under her mother's tutelage, makes a handsome living out of taking men for all she wring from them. One long-suffering suitor, Captain Don Pasqual Costelar of the Civil Guard (Lionel Atwill), spends the movie's first portion warning off a young Republican named Antonio (Cesar Romero) who has fallen for Conchita. (His tale of we is told in a series of flashbacks.) Despite his older friend's warning, Antonio meets with Conchita - only to discover that Don Pasqual, too, has planned to meet with her, his account of longtime misery at her hands notwithstanding. Old friends come to violence as all around them political strife and Seville's Carnival make for an already-hallucinatory setting. But is Conchita really the devil she's made out to be?

The films offer a plethora of delights individually, but they are downright invaluable as a set, giving us a deeply probing glimpse into both Dietrich's talents and von Sternberg's directorial vision, which is often garlanded with exquisite - if somewhat phantasmagorical - settings and enlivened with sight gags and humorous bits of business.

The set's special features are unevenly distributed among the six Blu-ray discs included here. Among the highlights: Dietrich is interviewed for Swedish television in 1971, following a concert performance. She's gracious and a little aloof - not at all unlike her famed stage persona. An original documentary from this year features two film scholars - Gerd Gem�nden and Noah Isenberg - tracing Dietrich's career from its beginnings in pre-Nazi Germany to her American success (and time spent with the Allies, entertaining the troops), to her post-war life (which ending in Paris). Another film scholar, Janet Bergstrom, talks about "Morocco" in detail (including revelations about the real-life Amy Jolly); a radio dramatization of "Morocco" is included, also, starring Dietrich and Clark Gable.

A trio of film scholars - Mary Desjardins, Amy Lawrence, and Patricia White - weigh in on Dietrich's career in still another newly-produced documentary; in a video essay titled "Bodies and Spaces, Fabric and Light" two more experts, Cristina �lvarez L�pez and Adrian Martin, dissect the visual construction of this slate of films; and Silke Ronneburh of the Deutsche Kinemathek museum appears a couple of times, most notably in "The Marlene Dietrich Collection," which takes a look at the treasures the museum acquired - costumes, papers, posters, furniture - after Dietrich's death (thanks to the intervention of Dietrich's daughter). Costumer Travis Banton is celebrated in two extras, one a 2018 interview with Deborah Nadoolman Landis (the head of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at UCLA) and the other a vintage publicity film titled "The Fashion Side of Hollywood." Von Sternberg's son Nicholas has his own featurette, an interview from 2014.

A trio of essays comprises the bulk of an 80-page booklet, which is lavishly illustrated with black and white photos - still from the movies, as well as promotional shots. Each film gets its own "Cast and Credits" page; Imogen Sara Smith contributes an essay titled "Mistress of Ceremonies," which celebrates Dietrich's style, a projection of cool uncaring that's underpinned by painstaking attention to detail. Gary Giddins focuses on von Sternberg in "The Devil Is in the Details," and offers up a nice crystallization of von Sternberg's rise and fall with the sentence. "Even visionaries must be team players, and von Sternberg was a team of one." Giddens also dives into each film's subtexts and fascinating backstories. Farran Smith Nehme looks beyond the two marquee names in the essay "Where Credit is Due," which brings to light the contributions of a number of artists and designers who never quite got their due (if they got it at all). Chief among Nehme's subjects is art director Hand Dreier, who helped give von Sternberg's films their striking appearance. (You didn't think von Sternberg came up with those grotesque sets and furnishings in "The Scarlet Empress" all by himself, did you?) There's also a page dedicated to information about the restoration of the films; such minutiae aren't necessarily everyone's cup of tea, but for those of us who are, it's a big deal to be given this information.

Even without this bounty of extras, the six restored films comprising "Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood" would be a dazzling cinematic feast. To buy or not to buy? Are you kidding? It's not even a question.

"Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood"
Blu-ray
$99.96
https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/1329-dietrich-von-sternberg-in-hollywood