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| Note |
MARTIN ROUMAGNAC
Marlene Dietrich:
In 1946, I returned to France to make a film, MARTIN
ROUMAGNAC, with Gabin. It wasn't a very good film,
although we had all been enchanted with the script. It dealt
with the immediate post-war period: electricity, fuel and
groceries were rationed. Nothing new to us. Since I played
the role of a provincial beauty, I had a permanent wave and
wore ridiculous, supposedly fashionable clothes.
Gabin taught me to contract my words, since l was not allowed
to speak cultivated French. He sat near the camera and corrected
me with infinite patience. Since Georges Lacombe, the director,
expressed himself only in incomprehensible sounds, Gabin took
over the job of telling me what I had to do. He took on an
enormous responsibility.
It should have been an easy task to be a much-desired woman,
'to live on air and love', and to be envied by all other women
because I had drawn the first prize - Jean Gabin. But it wasn't
so at all. Nobody believed in my sincerity, no doubt because
of my own fault or the fault of the 'Image' people had of
me.
Jacques Prevert (he had written 'Dead Leaves,' a song l was
supposed to sing in another film, and was furious when I declined
to play the role) wrote a very bad, disparaging review of
the film.
MARTIN
ROUMAGNAC was a disaster.
The names Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich were not enough
to lure moviegoers. I was crushed, as always when I felt I
had failed to come up to expectations. Gabin remained calm.
'Let's wait awhile,' he said. But I couldn't do that.
[...]
Nobody knowingly decides to make a bad film. At the beginning
everything was going along fine. Even the dressing-room attendants
who fixed my clothes, and whose fingers could hardly hold
the needle because of the cold, believed that MARTIN
ROUMAGNAC
would be a good film.
Excerpt from Marlene Dietrich:
My Life.© 1987 by Marlene Dietrich. Reprinted by permission
of M. Dietrich, Inc.
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