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I Was An Adventuress

1940, Movie, NR, 80 mins

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An entertaining film in which Lorre, von Stroheim, and ballet dancer Zorina are a con-artist team. Lorre is a compulsive pickpocket, and von Stroheim is Zorina's mentor. When Zorina marries Greene, who believes she is a countess, she breaks off from her former associates. Lorre and von Stroheim later blackmail Zorina and then steal the jewelry of her party guests. A chase ensues and, once the stolen jewels are recovered, Zorina reveals her true identity. All ends well, and Zorina finishes the film by performing the ballet, "Swan Lake." The material becomes thin at points, but there are plenty of great moments to compensate. Lorre and von Stroheim make an odd, but electrifying pair. Ratoff greatly admired von Stroheim whose directing days in the silent era had made him famous. Out of respect, Ratoff allowed von Stroheim to tighten the script and insert some arresting scenes, one of which shows the fascinating Austrian sitting at a boulevard cafe where he studies passersby and describes their personalities by virtue of their feet, a reference to his smash silent hit THE MERRY WIDOW in which von Stroheim dwelled upon one character suffering from locomotor ataxia, a slow, mind-distorting degenerative syphilitic paralysis, which, in that instance, caused the character to develop a slobbering foot fetish. leave a comment
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