The Blue Angel - Marlene Dietrich Myth "When you're young from it all for granted, the sunrise, sunset, moon, stars, the good earth. Everything you learn in school remains on the surface of your brain. You know, but for you it makes no difference. The youth will resound in the ears too strong and leaves no room for questions about the wonders of the world where you live. Including hazards! One skill that will regret for life to come ": these and many other thoughts that crowded the head and the heart of the divine Marlene in the last years of his life and his daughter Maria Riva has just picked up the book Marlene Dietrich - Night Thoughts (Publisher Frassinelli). Not only an icon of beauty made in Germany, even only an unparalleled actress, and it would be simplistic to call it with the simple label of singer Lili Marleen (his nickname, acquired from the famous song, its emblem in the '50s) is was more than just a simple generational archetype, both for the literary and human qualities to the most unknown, either because he knew how to be the center of attention, even when the curtain had fallen for her.
But first things first. Marie
Madgalene Dietrich was born in 1901 (although the same Marlene has claimed to be born in 1904) in Berlin from a wealthy family: his father, Erich Otto Dietrich, was an officer of the Prussian army, and Elisabeth Josephine Felsing, his mother came from a family jewelers. Youth is marked by the study, the first violin and piano (which should be stopped for having a broken finger) and singing, English and French: Do not underestimate the influence of an environment as culturally vibrant as that of the Republic of Weimar. Just outside the Academy of Berlin began her acting career first for the theater, then to the silent cinema.
The 1929 is the year of consecration in October signed a contract to play the film The Blue Angel directed by Josef Sternberg: dressed in tails and cylinder, to the tune of Lola Lola , becomes the symbol of sensuality Nordic, not without an element of ambiguity and wink. Certainly merit is not only the Diterich; big round of applause also goes to Sternberg knew that exploits the maximum for all the years of their collaboration, the dramatic and musical talents of the actress: to recognize, however, that if Joseph will soon be forgotten by critics and the public, Marlene will remain on the crest of the wave until '75, the year of his latest film Gigolo, with eccentric David Bowie. And in the midst of dozens of films, an Oscar nomination for her performance in Morocco (1930), a career as a singer and, above all, his private life. Never as in this case the "behind the scenes is almost more important of his career to understand the reasons for our success literally centuries. Marriage to Rudolf Sieber in '23, the birth of his daughter Maria Elizabeth the following year, then escape from Nazi Germany who wanted to turn it into an icon of the scheme and the separation from her husband still is not that the first chapters of a of private life, indeed, had very little. And just in ABOVEMENTIONED night thoughts are collected the evidence first hand, in the form of poems and thoughts of a life absolutely fascinating and complex, marked by a declared bisexuality and troubled relationship with beauty: Marlene was an assiduous smoker, and since his retirement to private life until to 1992 (his death), a big drinker. Voices more or less reliable even whisper that it is dead for the abuse of psychotropic drugs.
It is certain that the abandonment of the scene did not happen only because the Blue Angel was losing, slowly, her wings, but as Mary says, "because he was simply tired of being Marlene Dietrich, tired of the endless effort required the creatures that embody the concept of perfection without being perfect. "
