Review of The Song of Songs

What will inevitably captivate you in this film is the overwhelming playacting performance by Marlene Dietrich, here for once in the 30s doing without Josef von Sternberg and instead in the hands of Rouben Mamoulian, who makes her perform like von Sternberg never did. It's a sad story of the deflowering of an ideal country girl who has lost her father andf therefore is sent to her aunt in Berlin, who keeps a bookshop and who is not a good aunt, while a sculptor lives on the opposite side of the street. He becomes interested in her as a model, she finds him something of an ideal correponding to the romance of the "Song of Songs" of Solomon, and naturally it cannot end very well. Her way down into decay and degeneration is naturally shocking, but of course this was made in Hollywood, and Hollywood always has a remedy. Brian Aherne is excellent as the sculptor in his egoistic self-satisfaction, while his friend the baron (Lionel Atwill) is not as bad as you might suspect and also gives an excellent performnace in all his vanity. The story by Hermann Sudermann is a kind of naturalistic morality, but the direction of Mamoulian and Dietrich's acting lifts it up to a level of high artistry and unforgettable quality, as usual in Mamoulian's films remarkably so in the cinematography. The music is a mix with Tchaikovsky dominating and accompanies the story well. In brief, this is one of Marlene Dietrich's most unforgettable films and greatest performances.