‘Desire’ or — The Suggestive Power of a Pearl Necklace?
Tom (Gary Cooper) is an American car engineer working in Paris who decides to drive down to Madrid for a well deserved vacation, yet before he’s even out the French capital he’s reversed into Madeleine’s (Marlene Dietrich) car. Now the meet-cute has occurred we can watch these two inevitably fall in love.
Except that’s not exactly what happens… yet.
First Madeleine has to steal a pearl necklace worth 2 million francs and it’s only when she’s attempting to pass through customs into Spain that she properly encounters Tom, an encounter she takes advantage of by slipping the pearls into Tom’s pocket. However, once over the border, this now presents Madeleine with a problem — how on earth can a beautiful woman come up with a convincing reason for a gentleman to allow her to put her hand into his pocket for a rummage?
The association between jewellery and sex is made explicit from the opening titles as we see a variety of necklaces decorating various bosoms to the extent we’re not quite sure which we’re supposed to be looking at. Although director Frank Borzage craftily delays any further eroticism by setting up the plot mechanics first so, initially, Madeleine is only interested in Tom because of what he’s carrying and Tom is only after Madeleine because she’s stolen his car.
But we know passion will soon rear its head because Dietrich can’t stop looking at Cooper the way she does and he can’t help turning into a schoolboy every time she does so, so when Dietrich cottequishly gasps “I tried to blow my horn but I pushed it too hard and now its stuck” we know she isn’t talking about her car.
‘Desire’s most sensual scene is when Madeleine’s accomplice, Carlos (John Halliday), appears one morning to wake them after she and Tom have been enjoying the Spanish moon together the evening before. They’re both in separate beds, in separate rooms in separate parts of the house but we know from the way they dreamily greet Carlos with a sigh of “Morning, darling” that these are two people who can still feel the warm weight of the other on their bodies.
The only aspect of ‘Desire’ more rapturous than Dietrich and Cooper’s chemistry (would it be sacrilege to say they’re better, looser and freer here than in 1930’s ‘Morocco’?) are Travis Banton’s costumes which are simply astonishing, particularly in the use of feathers. This is only appropriate because Borzage and cinematographers Charles Lang and Victor Milner’s camera gives Dietrich so much room and space to breathe here as opposed to under Sternberg’s tractor-beam gaze that pinned her down like a captured butterfly.
This might also be Cooper’s most relaxed, fun and downright enjoyable performance. It’s a delight seeing all 6’3” of Coop reduced to an idiotic grin, although I guess anyone would be reduced to blithering idiocy if Dietrich was playing with the valuables in your trousers. Yet when Cooper confronts Carlos at the climax the good-natured gee-shucks schoolboy evaporates and replaced by a towering no-nonsense, pragmatic, virtuous, moral crusader as though Cooper has transformed, before our very eyes, into the physical manifestation of idealised America itself. Is this Borzage (and Lubitsch, who produced the film) suggesting the United States should take an active role in the looming concerns threatening Europe?
‘Desire’ is wonderful. It’s a comedy, a romance and a crime flick with all the elements balanced perfectly. It’s a film that suggests we should savour every moment of longing gazes, feathered hats and pearl necklaces under that dreamy Spanish moon because Europe and the world are about to change forever. But not just yet, so tell me again how much you love me.
