An American fella on vacation in Spain finds himself happily and frustratingly tangled up in the life of a beautiful con artist in 1936's Desire. This delightful little screwball comedy was produced by Ernst Lubitsch and bears marks of the famed "Lubitsch Touch".
Gary Cooper is the American, a car engineer on vacation in Europe, promoting the company while he's at it with a gaudy sign strapped to his car. Meanwhile, Marlene Dietrich is the beautiful con artist and I loved how the film casually constructs her traps. She tells a jeweller her husband's a famous psychiatrist and she tells the famous psychiatrist her husband's the famous jeweller and then arranges for them to meet while she's in the other room with a valuable pearl necklace. It's a long time before the psychiatrist can figure out the jeweller's not crazy and by then Dietrich is long gone.
But fate is cleverer than Dietrich and, on the road, one mishap after another brings her and Cooper together. She and Cooper had both starred in Morocco, a far more famous film these days but apparently Dietrich preferred this film. Cooper certainly has more to do it. Despite his frustrations, he can't help but grinning at his luck to be in a car with a beautiful and mysterious woman, his simple-hearted glee being one of the film's chief pleasures.
Desire is available on The Criterion Channel.
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