Actor-filmmaker Maximilian Schell crafts this Oscar-nominated portrait of reclusive German screen siren Marlene Dietrich, who agreed to let Schell tell her story with the proviso that she wouldn’t appear on camera. Because the pair had previously appeared together as actors in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Dietrich allowed Schell to record her musings on her life and set them against a backdrop of film clips, stills and newsreel footage.