Rent Desire (1936)

Screwball Romance. - Desire review by Steve

Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper had starred together in Morocco (1930), her Hollywood debut. And it's a pleasure to see them reprise their partnership in Desire because they are both so suggestive of thirties A-list glamour. She is exotic in her shimmering white costumes, he is saturnine in a dinner jacket as the bewildered American adrift in European romance and adventure.

Frank Borzage was a great director but Desire is much more representative of its producer, Ernst Lubitsch. The story commences in his Paris of the imagination, among jewel thieves posing as aristocrats, before taking the screwball road to Spain. The audience is vicariously placed in Cooper's brogues as the naive tourist gets a fast education.

It's similar territory to Lubitsch's peerless Trouble in Paradise (1932), except by the mid thirties, censorship had put mitts on the famous Lubitsch touch. There is no real sexual risk taking here which makes the film much less exciting. The incidentals of the genre are still in place; the sophisticated stars, the amazing clothes, the swanky hotel suits. But there is no je ne sais quoi. And even less frou-frou.

By 1936, the screwball comedy had taken to the highways of America. Lubitsch's scenarios of elegant crooks posing as phoney toffs was old hat. Desire is fun but a little tired. There's some decent sitcom. And Marlene sings. But this kind of film was done better in the pre-code era when the Countess' gown could be a little more risky, and her innuendo too.