Marlene (2000)

Marlene Dietrich lives with her husband, Rudolf Sieber, and their daughter, Maria, in 1920s Berlin. As an actress, she has had little success. When the famous director Josef von Sternberg comes to Potsdam to make the film The Blue Angel, Marlene also takes a screen test and is hired by von Sternberg against the wishes of the leading actor, Emil Jannings. Sternberg is delighted with Dietrich and signs her up for work in the United States even before the film’s premiere. After the premiere, where she is hailed as a discovery, she travels by train to Bremerhaven to board a ship for the United States. During the filming of The Blue Angel, she had fallen in love with the aristocratic Carl Seidlitz, a future Nazi careerist, and had met him secretly time and again. Now, as she sits on the train to Bremerhaven, the compartment door suddenly opens: Carl Seidlitz accompanies her for a night of love all the way to Bremerhaven, where she boards the ship for America. In the United States, Sternberg introduces her to Hollywood society. She is to make her next film with Gary Cooper. Cooper, too, succumbs to the Berlin woman’s charms, and with Morocco she becomes a world star once and for all. While Marlene enjoys her fame in Hollywood, the National Socialists seize power in Germany. Marlene throws herself into supporting the Americans against Nazi Germany, performing series of shows for the troops with her chansons (especially well known: “Boys in the Backroom” and “Lili Marleen”). When Marlene returns to her homeland with the US Army after the war, Carl’s sister tells her that her secret lover had recognized the criminal nature of the Third Reich, joined the resistance, and was executed by firing squad shortly before the end of the war. The final scene shows Marlene in a skin-tight dress and white fur stole, singing “Tell Me Where the Flowers Are.”