last viewed blogs
-
Reasons to be cheerful in 2021: Hippfest, Slapstick and more
Reasons to be cheerful in 2021: Hippfest, Slapstick and more
You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a tough time right now. All I can say is that I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves out there, celebrating the small wins and staying connected.
Talking of connections, I have news of upcoming online delights for silent cinephiles. Viz, to wit, henceforth, etc etc.
Hippfest is back! Yes, the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival returns, online, this…
0
#Marlene Dietrich
Staring in the film Golden Earrings made in 1947, #vintage cinema stars #ephemera #vintage film stars #vintage film posters #history
0
Marlene Dietrich in costume for her “The Mans in the Navy” number from the film “Seven Sinners” (1940). 🎬⭐⭐⭐
5![I absolutely love the unique set design and insanely bizarre yet awesome visuals of Josef von Sternburg and Marlene Dietrich’s 1934 film The Scarlet Empress, based very…very…loosely on the life of Catherine the Great of Russia. A contemporary NYT review described this movie as “ponderous, strangely beautiful, lengthy and frequently wearying production, [and] strictly not a dramatic photoplay at all, but a succession of overelaborated scenes, dramatized emotional moods and gaudily plotted visual excitements…like that’s a bad thing! Although it may be extremely, extremely historically inaccurate and certainly weird, it is truly a visual spectacle and very, very dope to see.
Take the wedding scene with just…so…many…candles…just a feeling that’s both really cool and also almost suffocating, which sets one hell of a mood. (I took some liberties drawing the background-the original scene’s in a cathedral, but throughout the film, there are these grotesque and fantastically twisted sculptures all throughout the imperial palace which, well, despite not matching Elizaveta or Catherine’s tastes and probably better described as “Russian gothic” than anything accurate, are so fun to draw.) #history#my art#old movies #josef von sternberg #marlene dietrich#old hollywood](https://64.media.tumblr.com/28a6a648f425f2f1347423e74280fc94/f82fed5fb449536e-8f/s1280x1920/5e37b9abd07f42b9d68fffe1532ff491e7eb8a53.png)
I absolutely love the unique set design and insanely bizarre yet awesome visuals of Josef von Sternburg and Marlene Dietrich’s 1934 film The Scarlet Empress, based very…very…loosely on the life of Catherine the Great of Russia. A contemporary NYT review described this movie as “ponderous, strangely beautiful, lengthy and frequently wearying production, [and] strictly not a dramatic photoplay at all, but a succession of overelaborated scenes, dramatized emotional moods and gaudily plotted visual excitements"…like that’s a bad thing! Although it may be extremely, extremely historically inaccurate and certainly weird, it is truly a visual spectacle and very, very dope to see.
Take the wedding scene with just…so…many…candles…just a feeling that’s both really cool and also almost suffocating, which sets one hell of a mood. (I took some liberties drawing the background-the original scene’s in a cathedral, but throughout the film, there are these grotesque and fantastically twisted sculptures all throughout the imperial palace which, well, despite not matching Elizaveta or Catherine’s tastes and probably better described as “Russian gothic” than anything accurate, are so fun to draw.)
2
Milton H. Greene, Marlene Dietrich - 1952
17
so i was fact checking things about marlene dietrich’s life and look what i found. because her sister worked at (or at lest in the proximity of) a concentration camp and ran a fucking nazi propaganda cinema. so marlene pulled her usual I dont know her and biographers accepted it apperantly
and this guy who claims to have known them said that marlene tried to paint her sister as the victim before realizing it was hopeless so im guessing it had to be something more than her anti-nazi image being ruined
0
