The Song of Songs (1933 film)
| The Song of Songs | |
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| Directed by | Rouben Mamoulian |
| Written by |
Hermann Sudermann (novel) Edward Sheldon (play) Leo Birinsky Samuel Hoffenstein Rouben Mamoulian (uncredited) |
| Starring |
Marlene Dietrich Brian Aherne Lionel Atwill |
| Distributed by |
Paramount Pictures Universal Pictures (Current) |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Song of Songs (1933) is an American Pre-Code romantic drama film starring Marlene Dietrich as a naive German peasant named Lily who moves to Berlin and suffers from a considerable amount of heartache.This particular version of the film was based on the 1908 novel The Song of Songs, which is also translatable from the German title of Das Hohe Lied as "The Hymn", and which is written by Hermann Sudermann. The 1914 play, The Song of Songs by Edward Sheldon also contributed to this version. It is a remake of the 1918 silent film The Song of Songs starring Elsie Ferguson and the 1924 Lily of the Dust with Pola Negri.
Once in Berlin, Lily meets and poses for Richard, the sculptor who lives across the street. Despite the eventual romance between the two lovers, Lily marries one of Richard's wealthy clients, Baron von Merzbach. By the end of the story, Lily and Richard are reunited after Lily struggles on a personal journey.
IMDb user Marcin Kukuczka seemed to find the film inspiring and eventful, and remarked that Mamoulian seemed to possess a "great degree of love and respect towards his female stars and allows them to go beyond themselves in every respect." The same user also comments on the dept and transformation of the character, and ends their review by dedicating it to a friend. In terms of professional critics, the Encyclopædia Britannica notes that the film was "dismissed by a number of critics as 'a trite melodrama'. However, it is difficult to either verify the proportion of negative to positive reviews or to substantiate the disdain the professional critic community might have held for the film due to lack of preservation of the actual reviews.
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