Golden Earrings (1947)

Powerful

good back-story, and good acting

As Good As It Gets

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Marlene Dietrich plays an European Gypsy woman in Pre-World War II Europe. Ray Milland played the British officer Denistoun who is on a mission. Ray Milland and Marlene Dietrich are excellent, entertaining, and enjoyable in the film. The story is fine and could have used more work but the Milland's British gentleman turned Gypsy in order to escape the Nazis does a fantastic job. It's interesting to see a character like Denistoun to transform into a Gypsy. The ending is worth watching the film. The film doesn't address the Nazi war crimes. European Gypsies were also targeted and persecuted by the Nazis during World War II. Still, this film is entertaining to watch and suspenseful. The cast is first rate in the Hollywood studio system factory where films were made faster even with mediocre scripts. Still, this film is one of my favorites with Marlene Dietrich.

Mitchell Leisen loved the long flashbacks :"hold back the dawn" was a story the hero told the director himself;" to each his own" began with a shot of a middle age lady whose misfortunes were told ;" no man of her own" ,faithful to the novel ,began with a "give up the fight" feeling .He had also tackled the fantasy genre in "death takes a holiday"."Golden earrings" is a long flashback,blending spy thriller scenes in a just-before-WW2 Germany with snatches of supernatural thrown in :the heroine knew his beloved one would come (she's a fortune teller anyway) and ,most amazing scene,the hero himself through her contact becomes a clairvoyant,seeing his mate's future in the palm of his hand.I do not put,however ,"golden earrings " in the same league as the movies I mention above;I do not think it's underrated cause its flaws are glaring:first of all,like the Jews,the gypsies were persecuted and sent to concentration camps by the Nazis before and during the war ;so it is absolutely impossible to believe they are allowed -although one of the officers says they are an inferior race-to enter the scientist's desirable mansion to tell fortunes.Besides,everybody speaks English in Germany ,only some soldiers mumble a few German sentences and that's it.I do like Ray Milland -a certainly underrated actor ,sadly remembered by too many people as the villain in "love story" ,his worst role- and Marlene Dietrich is arguably a fascinating actress ,but as Mardi Gras gypsies ,they cannot be taken seriously .

Hollywood has made a lot of strange movies over the years, but none stranger than this. WHY this movie got made I will never know, nor how Paramount could have thought it would sell any tickets in 1947. It is the strangest mix of genres I have seen in a long time, a movie that truly does not know whether it is trying to be a serious war drama or a Viennese operetta comedy.It tells the story of a British spy trying to get a poison gas formula out of Germany in the days just before WW II began. Ray Milland, a fine actor, is stuck playing the part like an escapee from Monty Python, all very exaggerated English prep-school dialogue. In Germany he meets a gypsy, Marlene Dietrich, who helps him to travel under cover as, of course, another gypsy. She plays her part like the typical Viennese operetta gypsy caricature, as do the other "gypsies" in the movie. But there are also Nazis, who are not funny at all. And then Milland finds he is starting to think like a gypsy, and that is not treated as a joke. Sometimes the music is for a light comedy, sometimes for a drama. Every time the Nazis show up, the film score plays Wagner, which is funny by itself.This movie could have been a comedy, or it could have taken the plight of the gypsies seriously and done a serious job of showing how the Nazis treated them. Both are hinted at in this movie, but neither pursued. What we are left with is a truly strange mish-mash of genres that must have embarrassed everyone (except the director) involved.Bizarre.

The story takes place in rural Germany on the eve of the second world war, a unique setting, with a couple of British agents being held by the Germans in a farm house. Since they aren't technically at war yet, it seems as if both sides must have realized what was coming. Both agents (Bruce Lester and Ray Milland) escape into the countryside and split up. Milland happens upon gypsy woman Marlene Dietrich one evening as she's alone at her camp preparing dinner. Their encounter is an amazing and captivating scene, not so much for Milland but for Dietrich, who takes sexy sultriness to a whole new plane. Milland disguises himself as a gypsy in order to hide from the Germans, but he remains committed to his mission, to do with locating the scientist who knows the formula for a new poison gas but who also isn't a committed Nazi. The Hollywood take on gypsy life and customs is predictably portrayed, but the underlying knowledge that they would be one of the targets for extermination by the Nazis adds a certain tension. The film straddles the line between being a serious story about the poison gas and the urgent search to get the formula, and a colorful though not too convincing love story between Milland and Dietrich. However, they're both very good; it's the fault of the film that didn't give them or their relationship enough dramatic realism, relying on and exploiting obvious cultural differences for questionable comedic purposes. Nonetheless, there are some tense and interesting points here and there, the surprise meetings with German soldiers and Gestapo agents, where Dietrich does a great palm reading and Milland nearly as good faking one, and a dinner party of Germans of various stripes at which the announcement comes over the radio that Germany had been attacked by Poland and everyone stands and does a stiff arm salute. Mitchell Leison may have missed some opportunities here and there, but he fully took advantage of others.