Desire

Desire is a fruitful yield of artistic cross-pollination between producer Ernst Lubitsch’s sophisticated comedy and director Frank Borzage’s melodramatic sensibility. In her reunion with Gary Cooper since Morocco, Marlene Dietrich forged her new screen persona as a beguiling thief who is compelled to flirt outrageously with a Detroit engineer on vacation in order to retrieve a valuable pearl necklace she stole. Sparkling and twinkling under the Lubitsch touch, the smartly-piloted romantic suspense moves along a journey from deceptive glamour to true confession. And in the Borzagian brand of redemptive power of love, the two lonely hearts – who are at first drawn together by their strife and discord – are magically transcended under the spell of the Spanish Moon. 

2/7 (Sat): Film talk with Derek Lam