MovieChat Forums > Marlene (1984) Discussion > What movie (near end) had strips of film...

What movie (near end) had strips of film?

posted 15 years ago by tomrombouts
1 reply | jump to latest

Hi -

Near the end of the film they start to show clips of many of Marlene's films edited together. One film they show a few times seems to be some kind of surreal fantasy about filmmaking, where people are running through long strips of 35mm film hanging from the ceiling to the floor. (Some closeups of bright Klieg lights also seem to be from the same film.)

So for any hardcore Dietrich fans out there, any idea what film those shots are from, or was it possibly just some kind of fantasy sequence created especially for this documentary?

(btw, I really enjoyed this film. You can't blame Ms. Dietrich for not wanting to be on camera again after such a long career.)

Thanks!

(Hmmm...maybe I will look at movie connections for this film.)

- TWR
Redondo Beach, California

[–] MrsMulwray 11 years ago

I'm not sure if you will get this two years after you posed the question, but that was a fantasy sequence created for this documentary. Dietrich refused to be on camera after previously agreeing to it and was often very drunk during the recording sessions, which limited the amount of usable recording.

Dietrich's daughter wrote about the making of this documentary in her book, and she made it sound as if poor Maximillian Schell was very sorry he signed onto this project because Dietrich drove him crazy. You do catch quite a bit of his frustrations in the final documentary....you really get the sense that Marlene was an extremely vain woman who really only did this project for the money.