Marlene Dietrich, past the age of eighty, agreed to be interviewed but not photographed for a documentary on her life by Maximilian Schell; and even the interview, riddled with epithets like "kitsch" and "rubbish," turns out to be not all that agreeable to her after all. The results are nevertheless "revealing," in the sense that we get a pretty good idea of what the woman is like, and of how wide a berth it would be wise to give her. And the strictures imposed on Schell have certainly inspired some invention: a lot of coy camerawork about a facsimile of Dietrich's Paris apartment, plenty of clips and stills to help fill up the screen, and even some Syberbergian puppets. But for all the heroic air of making the best of a bad situation, there is no disguising that it was a very bad situation indeed, and ultimately something of a cheat. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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