Tag: Herbert Marshall

Blonde Venus (1932)

Blonde Venus (1932). 93 minutes. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. Starring Marlene Dietrich (as Helen Faraday), Herbert Marshall (as Ned Faraday), Cary Grant (as Nick Townsend), Dickie Moore (as Johnny Faraday), Gene Morgan (as Ben Smith), Rita La Roy (as Taxi Belle Hooper), Robert Emmett O’Connor (as Dan O’Connor), Sidney Toler (as Detective Wilson), and Hattie McDaniel (as Cora).

Blonde Venus is a pre-Code musical drama about a woman who starts out as a kind of fairy-tale nymph, becomes a wife and devoted mother, embarks on a career as a glamorous cabaret starlet, and ends up as a vagrant on the run from the law on the American highway. The film is a hodgepodge that mixes elements of devoted mother love with glitzy nightclub routines, a road story, and a sleazy tale of financial gain. But it primarily focuses on its protagonist Helen’s search for love and acceptance as an intense dreamer and escapist, both on- and offstage—especially offstage, for … Read the rest

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Trouble in Paradise (1932). 83 minutes. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Herbert Marshall (as Gaston Monescu/Gaston Lavalle), Miriam Hopkins (as Lily Vautier), Kay Francis (as Madame Mariette Colet), Edward Everett Horton (as François Filiba), Charles Ruggles (as the Major), and C. Aubrey Smith (as Adolph J. Giron).

Roger Ebert begins his wonderful review of Trouble in Paradise by observing that this movie is a comedy about adults, not the typically juvenile characters that masquerade as adults in modern-day Hollywood films. I would go so far as to say that Trouble in Paradise’s characters are the ultimate adults of the Golden Age of Hollywood: witty, wry, sophisticated, infinitely engaging, amusing, and immaculately dressed and groomed. In particular, the movie not only creates a mature atmosphere laced with champagne, erudite talk, and subtle scheming but also offers us grown-up sexuality, which its characters allude to frequently in word and action, and practice with refinement and enthusiasm. Even more than other daring Lubitsch … Read the rest

The Razor’s Edge (1946)

The Razor’s Edge (1946). 145 minutes. Directed by Edmund Goulding. Starring Tyrone Power (as Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (as Isabel Bradley), Clifton Webb (as Elliott Templeton), Anne Baxter (as Sophie MacDonald), Herbert Marshall (as W. Somerset Maugham), and John Payne (as Gray Maturin).

The Razor’s Edge wants badly to be a profound story of one man’s quest for spiritual enlightenment. Its title comes from a passage in the Katha Upanishad: “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” Protagonist Larry Darrell’s path is challenging insofar as it takes him across several continents and lasts many years. I cannot say that the terms with which Larry articulates his personal quest are as sharply focused as the titular image, but then again most of us have probably met people who describe their project of finding themselves using similarly broad strokes. As a result, the movie is an interesting … Read the rest