In seven stunning films with Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich
incarnated sex on screen, from haughty indifference to filthy lust.
Conventional wisdom - including her own - paints her as the director's
unwitting creature. But there were others who tapped into her
endlessly fascinating, schizoid appeal - in Fritz Lang's Rancho
Notorious, she's "sometimes cold like ice, sometimes burning
like the sun." And even towards her career's end - after failures
and flops, self-parodies in fishnets and tailcoats - she was still
beguiling in Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil, full of hard-won wisdom and
regret. As Suzanne Vega knew, her mocking smile says it all.
