A waste of time. I don't get the appeal of Dietrich at all. She's sort of ugly and her singing is abysmal.

652

#631

They never did tell their backstories and I was disappointed with that, though I guess they don't really matter. I liked the ending. Earlier, she didn't understand why women would follow their men across the desert. It seems she found her answer.

Really uneven, but there are some really striking scenes.

A lot of films will start out promising and then fall apart near the end. Well, this is the opposite. I couldn't have cared less for the first two acts and the characters or anything, but by the end it didn't matter, that was set up perfectly (with what was there anyway).

A pretty nice, if simple, romance. The leads are enjoyable to watch and Sternberg's direction has some inspired moments, but on the whole the ending is the only time you really feel it's something special.

So... this film is terrible. Bad acting, bad writing, bad everything. It's like the studio system just trying to figure itself out. The main reason I watched it was because it is, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest film to feature two women kissing. However, knowing that trivia is enough, as nothing else about the film is worthy of recognition at all (and the kiss is pretty incidental and not indicative of lesbianism at all, really).

# 572

Dietrich is iconic here: her playful air of amused nonchalance and open sensuality is captivating. But not much else about the film is that noteworthy. I'm becoming more tolerant of Gary Cooper, especially in this type of scoundrel role, but he still doesn't do much for me. The plot is nothing special, although there is a breeziness that can be either enjoyable or distancing. I was most impressed with the ending... a magnificent shot, held far longer than one normally sees in films of this era.

618