The Song of Songs (1933)

Directed by

Rouben Mamoulian

Genre

drama film, romance film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 30m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 27 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A naive peasant girl falls in love and is gradually turned into a cynical person by the ups and downs of romance. The story follows her transformation as she experiences the harsh realities of love.

romantictragicslow-burnbitteremotionalclassicfable-likemelodramaticsad

What happens

The Song of Songs is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Marlene Dietrich. This Paramount picture is based on the Hermann Sudermann novel Das Hohe Lied (1908) and the play The Song of Songs (1914) by Edward Sheldon. Song of Songs is a "romantic fable" with "tragic elements" in which an innocent peasant girl is transformed, step-by-step through the vicissitudes of love, into a disillusioned cynic. Most telling in this case is the use in German of the entire phrase to describe the "great song of love" or "ode to love" in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. This creates a double layer of meaning to the title of the novel in German, one that could not be duplicated in an English rendition. The 1914 play, The Song of Songs by Edward Sheldon, also contributed to this version. It is a remake of the 1918 silent film The Song of Songs starring Elsie Ferguson and the 1924 silent film Lily of the Dust with Pola Negri. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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