Marlene
Marlene Dietrich – Porträt eines Mythos

Swiss actor, producer, writer, and director Maximilian Schell's attempt to make a biographical portrait of the iconic German-American actress Marlene Dietrich is thwarted by his stubbornly recalcitrant subject's refusal to be filmed or to answer most of his questions. Schell, who co-starred with Dietrich in the classic 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, which won him the Best Actor Oscar, was not Dietrich's first choice when the 83-year-old recluse reluctantly agreed to make a TV documentary because she was in need of funds. She hoped her pal Orson Welles would direct it, but he was unavailable, so she settled for Schell. The two taped their conversations in the privacy of her Paris apartment, but she refused to allow any video footage of her looking as she did at the time, so Schell resorts to a more abstract, experimental approach to the film, using the audio from their interviews laid under archival footage and clips of her movies as well as shots of her apartment, the people who work for her, and his team as they attempt to make something of the footage.

The doc is a frustrating sit, as Schell has little choice but to keep in many of Dietrich's dismissive refusals to discuss any subject in any detail. Of course, plenty of film critics praised this as a revolutionary documentary that bares Dietrich's heart and cuts to the core of her vulnerability, egotism, duplicitous nature, warrior spirit, and tortured soul. It was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar and won Best Documentary from the German Film Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Boston Society of Film Critics.