selenak

I take it there are plans for a non-native English speaker celebration fest. Which, fond as I am of the English language, I'm all for. On that note, I can't think of a better way to celebrate multilinguality than with two clips of one of our most famous exports to Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich.

Here she is in 1930 giving her breakout performance in the film Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel, which, as was the custom of the day with German-American co productions, was shot simultanously in three languages. (This was before we got seriously into dubbing in Germany.) On a non-linguistic note, observe Marlene here isn't yet modelled into the icon Josef von Sternberg made her into. She has, gasp, normal weight, and she's not yet lighted in the classic Sternberg way, even though he directs the film. Which fits with her character, who is a small town cabaret singer, not anywhere near the big city of glamour of same. The song she's singing, Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt/Falling in Love Again, became her trademark.

(If you want an English version of the same song and because I'm me, here are the Beatles performing it with Marlene in 1963 at the Royal Variety Performance.)

Now fast forward to 1948. Here she is again as a cabaret singer (same composer of song, too, btw, Friedrich Holländer), singing literally in and about the ruins of Berlin in 1948 for Billy Wilder in A Foreign Affair. This is iconic Dietrich (in a similar situation; methinks Billy W. staged that scene deliberately close to the one from Der Blaue Engel) with weary elegance and compelling as ever singing in three languages:

In conclusion: lang lebe sprachliche Vielfalt!