Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song [2001]

A profile of German-born American Marlene Dietrich is presented, her life a continual dichotomy either of her bourgeois Prussian background against the unrepressed characteristic of Berliners in the post-WWI era early in her life, or of the glamorous Hollywood movie star against being the proverbial Everywoman from WWII onward. This profile is generally separated into five different time periods. The first up until the end of the 1920s centers on her German acting career where she was largely a minor player. The second, in the 1930s, is her Hollywood stardom, director Josef von Sternberg who could see her potential that German directors of the time did not. This period also sees her turning her back on her homeland due to the rise in Nazism, and in turn the Nazi party's push and pull with her, publicly lashing out against her by portraying her proverbially being in bed with Jewish Hollywood filmmakers while still wanting her to return to Germany to be able to capitalize on her popularity for political purposes. The third is the WWII era and her remarkable war efforts as a civilian for the Allieds in general, that time colored by her open affair with French film star Jean Gabin. The affair took place while she was still married to Rudolf Sieber, that marriage, largely in name and friendship only from the mid-1930s onward, lasting until his death in 1976. The fourth is her post-WWII career where many in Hollywood had placed her in their rear-view mirror in favor of rising young stars. That phase of her career was affected by her time in the war and she in turn often considering it akin to prostitution in working solely for the money and usually only as favor in requests of friends in the business. And the fifth is her seclusion in Paris in the last decade and a half of her life.