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| Note |
RANCHO NOTORIOUS
Marlene Dietrich:
Fritz Lang was the director I detested most. I became conscious
of my feelings towards him in 1952, when we filmed RANCHO
NOTORIOUS. In order to be able to work with Lang, I had to
repress all the hatred and aversion he aroused in me. If Mel
Ferrer had not been there, I probably would have walked off
the set in the middle of shooting. But Mel was always near
and helped to see me through those troublesome days. Fritz
Lang belongs to the 'Brotherhood of Sadists'. He despised
my reverence for Josef von Sternberg, and tried to replace
this genius in my heart and in my mind. I know that because
he confessed it to me.
The teutonic arrogance he expressed deeply angered me. Only
my professional honour prevented me from breaking my contract
and walking off the job. Before the order 'Everybody on the
set' resounded, Fritz Lang would spend hours marking our positions
on the ground. At the same time, we were not allowed to look
down at the ground. In this way he was trying to prevent,
at all costs, the actors from being quicker than himself,
and he seemed to take a diabolical delight in making us endlessly
repeat our movements.
Fritz Lang simply laid out each step, each breath, with a
sadistic exactness of which Hitler would have been proud.
To be sure Fritz Lang, as a Jew, had fled to America to escape
Nazism. But here he behaved like a tyrant. He would not have
hesitated – we could testify to this - to walk over
corpses. He was tall and took long steps, so that we could
follow him only with the greatest effort. Mel Ferrer, an elegant
man but much shorter than Lang, took great pains to respect
the markings and not step beyond them. Despite my height,
I was unable to do the same. But that didn't bother Lang one
bit. 'Do it again,' he would scream, and have me repeat the
same gesture a hundred times.
Often, I could have choked him on the spot; he would give
instructions that made no sense at all. He tried everything
to make me responsible for the time lost placing the reflectors
in my new positions, but I defended myself like a lioness.
Since I had worked with great directors, I knew that this
need to control an actor's movements, even before the actor
could study his role, was a sign of pure dilletantism. But
in Fritz Lang's case it had more to do with sadism.
Fritz Lang had made some successful films in Germany and in
the United States without, however, achieving the international
fame he coveted. I wouldn't shed a single tear for him. I
feit no friendship for this man, hence no tears. RANCHO NOTORIOUS, the film I made with him, was and remains
a very mediocre work.
Excerpt from Marlene Dietrich:
My Life.© 1987 by Marlene Dietrich. Reprinted by permission
of M. Dietrich, Inc.
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