Review of The Song of Songs

A romantic potboiler, in which a simple country girl, Lili (Marlene Dietrich) orphaned, goes to the city to stay with her aunt Rasmussen (Alison Skipworth), falls in love with Richard Waldow (Brian Aherne), a sculptor across the street. Her sense of what love could be is based on repeated readings of the Song of Songs, parts of which she recites ecstatically. But Lili marries Baron von Merzbach (Lionel Atwil) who has convinced Waldow he (the baron) can give Lili what he (the sculptor) can't—comfort, luxury, education, music, polish, status. She's steely and still, but a jealous housekeeper engineers a situation that will appear to disgrace her when Waldow is visiting, and Lili walks into the trap to hurt him. He finds her in some sort of a high-toned night spot, takes her back to the studio, she is bitter, insisting she is dead and crying out what right does that (pointing to the statue) have to live while I am dead? She seizes a sledge hammer and breaks the maquette and falls down on the floor among the shards. Waldow picks her up and recites a bit of the Song and she softens, and he says something about a future. Here we get all the Dietrich modes in one packet: the wide-eyed and innocent young girl with a fluting, sweet voice—the passionate woman discovering love—the frozen woman, who has made herself as cold as it is possible to be because nobody can hurt her that way---the cabaret cynic, wreathed in smoke, singing a slightly bawdy song with an arch, knowing look—the tear-filled eyes of the thawing woman surprised by hope. All clichés of the first order, but she does them well, and that's what they paid her to do. She only sings one song here, and it sounds very much like something leaning in the direction of Weill & Brecht, a sweet melody lurching into some jazzy discordant moments.