On Friday, May 27, CinemaLit celebrated the grand finale for its Winter/Spring season with a well attended double event. The final movie in a month devoted to screen icons was Josef von Sterberg’s 1931 film, Dishonored. In this Pre-Code classic, Marlene Dietrich plays a woman recruited from prostitution to spy for Austria during the First World War. Who better to introduce it than C.W. Gortner, author of Marlene: A Novel of Marlene Dietrich?
CinemaLit is, after all, not just a place to watch movies. It is a salon for the discussion of film, and Mr. Gortner, a writer passionate about his subjects, offered insights both before and after the film that enhanced the experience as he described the creation of the icon we know as “Marlene Dietrich.” She constructed her coolly sexual onscreen persona with von Sternberg, the man who made her a star in The Blue Angel. Though raised in an upper-class family and trained as a classical musician, Dietrich drew much inspiration for her screen presence from less respectable sources. Gortner maintains she learned her confident swagger, her fondness for elaborate costumes, from the drag-queen shows in the clubs of the Weimar Republic. In this gorgeously filmed movie, her precision and ease with various disguises from a New Year’s masquerade, to peasant chambermaid, to calculating informer showcased her talents and ultimate charm.
It was, in short, everything a CinemaLit event is supposed to be -- a night spent watching a fine movie, followed by an intelligent and insightful discussion.
