The Woman One Longs For [Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt] *** (1929, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Kortner, Frida Richard, Oskar Sima, Uno Henning) – Classic Movie Review 12,097

Marlene Dietrich as Stascha.

Director Curtis Bernhardt’s visually dynamic and emotionally dark 1929 German silent melodrama film The Woman One Longs For [Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt] stars Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Kortner, Frida Richard, Oskar Sima, and Uno Henning.

Marlene Dietrich for years claimed The Blue Angel (1930) as her screen debut, but she had been making films since 1923 and was made famous by this silent drama of 1929, which nevertheless flopped at the box office. Dietrich and Bernhardt would call it The Woman Nobody Wants.

Uno Henning plays Henry Leblanc, a young businessman whose plans of marriage are interrupted when he becomes entranced by the haunting young Stascha (Dietrich) who seems to be the victim of the monocled sadist Dr Karoff (Fritz Kortner).

It is written by Ladislaus Vajda, based on the novel by Max Brod, published in Vienna by Paul Zsolnay Verlag in 1927.

It is partly made at the Babelsberg Film Studio outside Berlin. It premiered on 29 April 1929 at the Mozartsaal in Berlin. It runs 76 minutes. It is made and released by Terra Film.

It is shot by Curt Courant and Hans Scheib and the art direction is by Robert Neppach.

It is also known as The Three Lovers.

The film was originally silent with a scored orchestra accompaniment by Giuseppe Becce. In 1931 a synchronised soundtrack was added with music by Edward Kilenyi.

The Woman One Longs For was restored in 2012 by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung and comes to Blu-ray on 8 June 2022 from Kino Classics and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung. It has a new orchestral score by Pascal Schumacher.

The cast are Marlene Dietrich as Stascha, Fritz Kortner as Dr Karoff, Frida Richard as Mme. Leblanc, Oskar Sima as Charles Leblanc, Uno Henning as Henry Leblanc, Karl Etlinger as Poitrier, Bruno Ziener as Diener, and Edith Edwards as Angela Poitrier.

Dietrich and Bernhardt both emigrated from Germany to the US. Bernhardt then had a long career directing films with strong female characters, including Possessed (with Joan Crawford), A Stolen Life (with Bette Davis), and Miss Sadie Thompson (with Rita Hayworth).

Kurt Bernhardt also notably directed 1951 American film noir Sirocco starring Humphrey Bogart.

Bernhardt was forced to flee the Third Reich who arrested him briefly because he was Jewish. He directed films in France and England before moving on to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros in 1940.