Dietrich (Taschen Movie Icon Series)
Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Arts & Literature
Dietrich (Taschen Movie Icon Series) Details
Marlene Dietrich once said, ""I am not a myth."" But by referencing the term, Dietrich only reinforces the fact more emphatically. For, using almost any common dictionary definition of that word, Dietrich is a myth. Her image was fashioned by director Josef von Sternberg in films like The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, and The Scarlet Empress, after which she maintained a Hollywood career that included Destry Rides Again, Rancho Notorious, and an accomplished performance in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. She has been an object of worship to millions throughout the decades, up to and including this jaded, post-modern 21st century. She is the ""intellectual's pin up girl,"" as author Herman G. Weinberg called her, of filmmakers and film critics alike. She is the ""Monstre Sacre"" as one of her recent biographers has labeled her. She is her own ""Superior Product,"" (her daughter's words) manufactured and refined in her fertile brain. In other words, Marlene Dietrich is an icon for all ages. The Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductoryessays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.
Reviews
Taschen has chosen a nice collection of photos of Marlene Dietrich from her films as well as some posters throughout her career. There's a brief commentary at the beginning of the book about her life. This book isn't a biography or even short essays highlighting certain parts in her career such as the early years in Germany, Hollywood years, etc. (Though the latter would have been interesting to read.) Instead the photo book allows you to trace Dietrich's growth and ability to re invent her image throughout her film career. One of my favorite photos in the book is actually the double page spread of a movie theatre at night surrounded by posters promoting the film "Dishonored" and the glow of all of the lights including the marquee. I think that this book is nice to have obviously if you like Marlene Dietrich's films or classic films in general. Even cinematographers and photographers may like it to study the lighting techniques.
