Desire

In Paris, Madeleine swindles a jeweller out of a very valuable pearl necklace and runs for Spain. At the border, to hide it, she drops it into the pocket of an American tourist she does not know. He is Tom Bradley, an automobile engineer from Detroit on holiday, oblivious and entirely honest. To get the necklace back she has to travel with him. Frank Borzage directs. Marlene Dietrich plays Madeleine and Gary Cooper plays Tom. Ernst Lubitsch produced. The tone carries Lubitsch's mark: light, fast and free of moral judgement. The swindle is presented as a game rather than a crime and the audience is kept on Madeleine's side throughout. Dietrich steps here out of the heavy, distant image of her years with Josef von Sternberg; the character is cheerful, fast talking and playing comedy. The two had appeared together in Morocco, and their pairing here is among the most cited matches of either career. The Spanish scenes were built in the studio, and the narrative, moving along a road, works as a kind of road film. Who it is for: viewers who like thirties Hollywood comedy and Dietrich and Cooper. Who it is not for: the plot is thin, the resolution comes too easily, and the last section feels the need for a moral correction.