Sunday, July 12, 2009

1940, SEVEN SINNERS stars real life couple John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich?



John Wayne was personally chosen by bisexual actress Marlene Dietrich to be in her latest piece of fluff Seven Sinners, I doubt at the time  Duke was even remotely aware he was about to begin a 3 year love affair with Dietrich.

 

This movie is the type of goofy entertainment that Hollywood has completely forgotten how to make anymore. Mix lots of comedy, a love story, some songs and a big saloon fight at the end and you have 90 minutes of painless entertainment. The director was Tay Garnett, nobody has written lengthy film books about Garnett, but he was an extremely competent filmmaker in his day.


Probably one of the most interesting things about this movie is the involvement of Rudolph Mate, the Director of Photography on this picture. This was a guy who had come over from Europe and had worked with people like Fritz Lang on Metropolis and Carl Theodor Dreyer on The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr. He had also shot Hitchcock's film Foreign Correspondent. How Mate got mixed up in this is anyone's guess but a guy's got to eat. The movie looks great with lots of atmospheric black and white photography.

 

But really the movie is about Dietrich the legendary actress and screen personality. An interesting piece of 1940's fluff.

 87 minutes.

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