Question
I watched this week's Project Runway tonight, and Diane von Furstenburg was on it (Whitney's boss!), and she gave the contestants their challenge to design something for her fall line which is inspired by the movie A Foreign Affair, with Marlene Dietrich. Now, I recently went through a bit of a Marlene Dietrich phase, and I felt like I had seen A Foreign Affair, but they went on to describe it as a movie in which MD is a spy in the late 1930s who travels from Berlin to Shanghai and to New York and is all fashionable in the meantime. So, no, I hadn't seen that movie. But I just looked it up and sure enough that is the Billy Wilder movie I recorded off of TCM a while back and sent to bs0d . In it, MD is a lounge singer in post-WWII (so...not the 1930s) who becomes involved with some visiting American congressmembers who are their investigating corruption. She had previously been involved with some Nazi people, so there is a bit of intrigue there, and the question of whether she is a spy. The only traveling in the movie is done at the beginning when the congresspeople fly to Berlin, and then at the end and fly home. MD does not travel anywhere (traveling was one of the key aspects of a lot of the designs), let alone to Shanghai, because she is *totally stuck in the American sector of occupied Berlin*.
Cary, internet whiz, has just discovered that MD was in a movie called Shanghai Express, which sort of looks like the movie they were describing, except not because there's no Berlin involved and it's not the late 30s (they were told it was 30s and 40s, or at least emphasis on late 30s).
I just watched it again on youtube. She gets the lounge-singer-maybe-a-spy thing right, but after that it all falls apart. Ffwd to about 6:00. Oh Diane von Furstenburg, I had so much respect for you for hiring Whitney, and now it's totally blown. And Bravo: dude, what the fuck?
On a related note, listen to James Cagney and Ruby Keeler (*love*) sing this awesome song from Footlight Parade, Shanghai Lil.
ETA: DVF's fall line, Foreign Affair.
Cary, internet whiz, has just discovered that MD was in a movie called Shanghai Express, which sort of looks like the movie they were describing, except not because there's no Berlin involved and it's not the late 30s (they were told it was 30s and 40s, or at least emphasis on late 30s).
I just watched it again on youtube. She gets the lounge-singer-maybe-a-spy thing right, but after that it all falls apart. Ffwd to about 6:00. Oh Diane von Furstenburg, I had so much respect for you for hiring Whitney, and now it's totally blown. And Bravo: dude, what the fuck?
On a related note, listen to James Cagney and Ruby Keeler (*love*) sing this awesome song from Footlight Parade, Shanghai Lil.
ETA: DVF's fall line, Foreign Affair.