Main Points-

Lea Jacobs article uses The Blonde Venus (1932) to support her claim that looking at the full production of the film provides insight into social conflicts of the time.

MPPDA case files begin to build the evidence to delimit the spectrum of analysis. (She supports this claim by analyzing the editing censoring process compared to the final product)

MPPDA case files contain letters and memos that show justification for certain material used in the film. Jacobs uses this material to compare the edits to the final product (the edit points out the area of concern)

Endings

The majority of her argument lies within the major edits to the ending of the film. The three major contributors to the ending of the film provided the following endings:

Josef Von Sternberg- Helen gives up everything, the billionaire lover, the glamorous life and returns home to Ned and Johnny.

The Studio- Helen stays with Nick (the billionaire). Turns out Ned has been having an affair with the house keeper. In court for custody of Johnny, Nick threatens to divulge Ned’s affair ultimately forcing Ned to relinquish his custody. Then Nick and Helen end with wedding arrangements.

The Industry censors- vehemently opposes the studios ending. Then considering the released ending Jacobs infers that the industry approved the final product because it follows the rule of compensating moral values.

After discussing the endings she suggests through the industries imposed rules (i.e. compensating moral values) the studio produced the idea of the romantic couple.

Jacobs then discusses the transformation of the image of Helen due to the reworking of the story. The industry says the  image of Helen is justified through the disjuncture between motive and action (Jason Joy).  But Jacobs argues that the disjuncture is too extreme and her actions then border on the unbelievable.

The discrepancies stemming from “trying to make everyone happy” (everyone being: the director, studio and industry) leads to a division of Helen’s character and the actress playing her.

This division exploits material relating to female sexuality and confuses the intentions of Helen. (i.e the lyrics in “Hot Voodoo” suggest sexual desire, puts her intent into question when she starts her affair)

Overall, Jacobs argues that to fully analyze The Blonde Venus you must look at the entire revision process through the final product to be able to delimit the conflicts that are produced.

Fun fact, My parents named me after Marlene Dietrich, so I always love watching her movies.
Anyways, onto Blonde Venus and a bit on the Hays Code.

I have had to study the Hays Code in depth while taking American Film History when I was studying abroad in Japan.  I’ve seen films that came right before and right after code was put in place.  I’ve always found it interesting to see how film directors, when film was a director’s art, got around the Hays Code by making nods to potentially inappropriate themes.  One of my favorite pre-Hays Code films about women entertainers is Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).  That film, in terms of potentially scandalous on-screen acts and even on-screen costume changes, makes Blonde Venus out to be a pretty innocent film.  But what makes Blonde Venus‘s writing and cinematography so smart is that it implies all of those potentially scandalous bits while still being innocent.

In general, Blonde Venus sort of irked me.  Marlene Dietrich’s character as someone who was both faithful and unfaithful in different ways really just annoyed me.  I kind of wanted her to lose as the film progressed.  I have an issue with people (men and women) who are unfaithful lovers.  While she tried to portray herself as a faithful mother, as a faithful lover she failed as a character.  As a mother, she tried to do good.  But she was sort of destroying her son’s life at the same time and at some point it wasn’t even for the sake of being an independent woman.   It was difficult for me to sympathize with her character.

Was she supposed to be a good mother?  I couldn’t tell.  She was definitely an unfaithful wife and lover and kind of a cheat.  I couldn’t really tell what she wanted as a woman either.  She didn’t really seem like someone who was after respect and independence from men.  She didn’t seem like someone who was really capable to be a single mother, either.

What I found most interesting in the film though, was at the end, in Paris, Marlene’s character (I am really sorry, I forgot her name) was wearing a rather conservative dress-suit in her performance, as opposed to all the flashy dresses she wore in the cabarets in America.   The way I read that was that she had gotten so big on her own, that she didn’t need to sell her bodily appearance to be a successful performer.  In America, she kept using the help of men to gain more and more status.  But in Paris she was her own woman.  I would’ve liked to see the film end there because it would’ve amounted to some sort of growth in Marlene’s character.  But everything that happened afterwards just kind of ruined it for me.

Those are my thoughts on this film.  It’s a stark contrast to a film like Gold Diggers of 1933.  I felt the women in that film were much stronger and compelling than Marlene’s character.  I don’t know, maybe I just really like Gold Diggers of 1933.

The Hayes code was in censorship code imposed during the making of Blonde Venus as the assigned article outlines in further detail. However I felt the article was a bit spartan in terms of the actual realities of the Hayes code while it was in action.

In Blonde Venus there were numerous sexual innuendoes and raunchy humor which were explicitly banned by the Hayes Code. However directors under the Hayes Code were clever, they knew if they were able to fool the censor through metaphor and word play they could keep their content relatively unchanged.

A better example perhaps is the Film Bringing Up Baby. The film is relatively tame under the standards of the Hayes Code however due to a simple visual gag and clever writing the opening of the film is overtly sexual in nature and hilarious once the visual gag is revealed. (look it up on youtube, once you get the joke you’ll know)

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