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Women have played a central role in the success of film from its earliest days, right up to the present. And they were highly visible from the start.
Mary Pickford was Hollywood's first big star, she played a hand in launching the career of Lillian Gish and was a co-founder of both the Pickford–Fairbanks Studio (along with Douglas Fairbanks), and later, the United Artists film studio (with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith), as well as being one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who present the yearly "Oscar" award ceremony.
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To start the new decade, we thought we'd devote this edition to some of the women who helped make movies great. That includes the life of Alma Reville, the person many believe was the secret behind the success of so many Hitchcock films, and a look back at an actress we are yet to feature in one of our screenings... Marlene Dietrich.
We plan to feature Marlene on the big screen soon, but in the meantime you can take a look at the film that launched her career internationally... The Blue Angel... find the link at the bottom.
We hope you'll start the year (and the Decade) checking out some great classic films.
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Classic Female Writer/Editor/Producer
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Alma Reville (Hitchcock)
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Alma Lucy Reville, also known as Lady Hitchcock, was born in Nottingham, the second daughter of Matthew Edward and Lucy (née Owen) Reville. The family moved to London when Reville was young, when her father secured a job at Twickenham Film Studios. Reville often visited her father at work and before getting a job there as a tea girl. At 16, she was promoted to the position of cutter, where she assisted in the editing the motion pictures. It was a job she enjoyed greatly, considering the process an art form. She continued to work there as a script writer and director's assistant. This was a part of film-making that very few women had access to at the time.
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Twickenham Film Studio, where Reville first worked, closed in 1919, but she was given a job at Paramount's Famous Players-Lasky in Islington, where she met Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock was employed as a graphic designer before he became an art editor. She worked on British films with such directors as Berthold Viertel and Maurice Elvey. The first film Reville worked on with Hitchcock was Woman to Woman, with Reville as film editor, and Hitchcock as art director and assistant editor.
Reville became Hitchcock's closest collaborator and sounding board. Charles Champlin wrote in 1982: "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's.". When Hitchcock accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said he wanted to mention "four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville".
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Reville had a keen ear for dialogue, and an editor's sharp eye for scrutinising a film's final version for continuity flaws so minor they had escaped the notice of the director and/or the crew. It was Reville who noticed Janet Leigh inadvertently breathing after her character's fatal encounter in Psycho (1960), necessitating an alteration to the negative.
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Reville co-wrote The Ring in 1927 — the first screenwriting credit she shared with Hitchcock — but worked with other directors as well. She co-wrote The Constant Nymph in 1928, the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy, directed by Adrian Brunel. In 1929 Reville co-wrote After the Verdict, directed by Henrik Galeen and A Romance of Seville, directed by Norman Walker. In 1931 and 1932 she worked with directors such as Harry Lachman, Maurice Elvey and Basil Dean. In 1933 Hitchcock hired Joan Harrison as his assistant, and she took over many of Reville's jobs within the production. Thereafter, Reville focused primarily on preparing and adapting her husband's scripts, including those for Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941) and Saboteur (1942)., though she conitinued to work with some other directors, including Phil Rosen in 1934, Berthold Viertel in 1935 and Richard Wallace in 1945.
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Reville worked with her husband on many more scripts in Hollywood. She collaborated with Joan Harrison to create the script for Suspicion, which was completed on 28 November 1940. They worked on the script in the Hitchcocks' home in Bel Air as Hitchcock preferred writing within a comfortable and intimate environment rather than an office.
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As well as editing, writing and other production roles, Reville also appeared on screen.
Early on, Reville made two film appearances: as an extra in Hitchcock's * The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) and a lead role in The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918).
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Despite being a breast cancer survivor, Alma died at the age of 82, two years after her husband's death. She was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
On her 100th birthday in 1999, a plaque dedicated to Reville was unveiled in Nottingham, near the site of her birth, as part of the British Film Institute's "Centenary of Cinema" celebrations.
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Marlene Dietrich was a highly influential actress who made her mark in both European and American cinema, who set fashion trends, and who built a respectable career as a singer despite having a limited vocal range.
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Marlene Dietrich
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Marie Magdelene Dietrich was born in Berlin, Germany on December 27, 1901. Her father was an army officer who had served in the Franco-Prussian War. He was regularly absent from the family due to his army duties, meaning Marlene and the rest of the family often had to rely on themselves.
When her father died, when Marlene was 11, Marlene's mother married Eduard von Losch. Marlene enjoyed music and attended concerts, she was adept at playing the violin and piano and by the time she was in her mid-teens, Marlene had discovered the stage.
Acting was to be her vocation. In 1921, Marlene applied for and was accepted to an acting school run by Max Reinhardt. She appeared in several stage production, but never had more than a couple of spoken lines. It was an inauspicious start for someone who was to become a very good actress.
She attempted films for the first time in 1922, firstly in The Little Napoleon (1923) which was soon followed by The Tragedy of Love (1923). On the second film she met Rudolf Sieber and married him in 1924. The union lasted until his death in 1976 although they didn't live together that whole time. The remainder of her early film career was generally filled with bit roles that never amounted to a whole lot.
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After being seen in the German production of The Blue Angel (1930), Marlene was given a crack at Hollywood. In fact she had fallen into an affair with Josef von Sternberg (the director of The Blue Angel) and they both fled their respective spouses for opportunities in the US.
Her first US film was Morocco (1930) with Gary Cooper followed, by Dishonored (1931). Both films were directed by von Sternberg, the latter film succeeding largely because of Marlene's presence. Movie goers loved seeing her on screen.
Marlene then filmed Shanghai Express (1932), again with von Sternberg. It proved immensely popular raking in $3 million. Once again, she was cast as an attractive and dangerous woman who lived by her wits.
This was followed by Blonde Venus (1932) which was not as successful as her previous outings. Her co-star was Cary Grant and once again Marlene was cast as a cabaret singer. Marlene wanted to expand into different roles but her casting in Desire (1936) where she played a sultry jewel thief felt like more of the same.
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The opportunity for a different kind of role came in 1939 with the comedic western Destry Rides Again (1939) where she was cast as "Frenchy", a Western saloon hostess. This began a new direction for Marlene as all through the 1940s, she appeared in well-produced, well-directed films such as Manpower (1942), The Spoilers (1942), The Lady Is Willing (1942) and Pittsburgh (1942).
Roles became fewer and further between during the war and post war period, This was despite the fact that Dietrich was known to have strong political convictions and the mind to speak them. In the late 1930s, Dietrich created a fund with Billy Wilder and several other exiles to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor ($450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees. In 1939, she became an American citizen and renounced her German citizenship.
Dietrich completed two extended tours for the USO in 1944 and 1945,she performed for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the UK, France, and Heerlen in the Netherlands, then entered Germany with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton. When asked why she had done this, in spite of the obvious danger of being within a few kilometers of German lines, she replied, "aus Anstand"—"out of decency".
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While Dietrich never fully regained her former screen profile, she continued performing in motion pictures, including appearances for directors such as Mitchell Leisen in Golden Earrings (1947), Billy Wilder in A Foreign Affair (1948) and Alfred Hitchcock in Stage Fright (1950). Her appearances in the 1950s, included films such as Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious, (1952) and Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957). She appeared in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958). Dietrich had a kind of platonic love for Welles, whom she considered a genius. Her last substantial film role was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) directed by Stanley Kramer; she also presented the narrative for the documentary Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1962
Post film work Dietrich did a lot of stage work however, by 1979, she was a shell of her former self. After breaking her leg in one performance, she departed the stage and show business. Spending the last 12 years of her life bed-ridden, Marlene died on May 6, 1992 in Paris, France of natural causes at the age of 90.
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The Blue Angel (1930)
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In the late 1920's and into the 1930's the German cinema was producing some of the most talented writers, directors and performers in the world. Names like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Peter Lorre, and of course Marlene Dietrich made their way to Hollywood for a range of reasons after first making a splash in German cinema.
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The film that launched Dietrich's international career was The Blue Angel (1930), a morality tale about the dangers of a respected school teacher falling for a beautiful dance hall performer.
Director Josef von Sternberg said that Dietrich came to the audition for the film with a bored, world-weary attitude because she was convinced she wasn't going to get the role and was merely going through the motions. Ironically, Sternberg hired her because that world-weary attitude was precisely what he wanted for the character. In different circumstances Dietrich may never have appeared in the film.
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The film stars Dietrich and Emil Jannings. Jannings had been a major silent film star and had made his way to Hollywood hoping to further his career. His timing was bad as with the advent of talkies most Americans found his accent too difficult to understand.
The director Josef von Sternberg had a clear vision for this film and Dietrich was the perfect actress for the role. The film made Dietrich as much as Marlene was the reason for the film's international success. And von Sternberg had an international audience in mind, shooting the film in both German and English.
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Why watch this film?
It is amongst the most influential of early sound pictures. And it is artful in a way that was way ahead of its time. The transition to sound and the difficulties associated with sound recording meant that many films of this era were very static. Actors were not allowed to move too far from a microphone, while placing the large microphones out of shot was also a challenge. The Blue Angel overcame these challenges with grace and apparent ease
Early sound films were dubbed 'talkies' in part because of the focus on the human voice rather than the entire soundscape. Passages of this film deal with screen silence very cleverly, while in other parts background noise is used very effectively while leaving enough room for the most important dialogue.
The films sets are beautifully dressed and well photographed. The story is a classic tale of caution, well told with believable characters.
And of course there is Dietrich who takes the entire film to another level through her screen presence as well as her performance of a number of iconic musical numbers
This is a wonderful film, in which you see Marlene Dietrich at her best. Even if you've seen it before, it's worth watching again for the richness of all the minor details
You can watch the English language version of The Blue Angel in full here.
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