The Song of Songs (1933 film)
7 /10 1 Votes
Duration Country United States | 6.8/10 Genre Drama, Romance Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date July 19, 1933 (1933-07-19) Screenplay Rouben Mamoulian, Leo Birinski, Samuel Hoffenstein Cast (Lily Czepanek), (Richard Waldow), (Baron von Merzbach), (Mme Rasmussen), (Von Prell), Helen Freeman (Fräulein Von Schwertfeger)Similar movies Marlene Dietrich appears in The Song of Songs and Desire |
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.
Contents

Summary

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.
Reviews and Criticism

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 depth 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.
Box Office

The film was a box office disappointment for Paramount.






References
The Song of Songs (1933 film) WikipediaThe Song of Songs (1933 film) IMDb The Song of Songs (1933 film) themoviedb.org