Lola (1961 film) Lola (1961 film) Lola is a 1961 romantic drama film, the debut film directed by Jacques Demy as a tribute to director Max Ophüls, described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimée starred in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda. The names of the film and title character were inspired by Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film "Der blaue Engel", in which Marlene Dietrich played a burlesque performer named "Lola Lola". "Lola" takes place in the Atlantic coastal city of Nantes, France. A young man, Roland Cassard (Marc Michel,
Marlene Dietrich time, she was a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller. Her autobiography "" ("Take Just My Life"), was published in 1979. In 1982, Dietrich agreed to participate in a documentary film about her life, "Marlene" (1984), but refused to be filmed. The film's director, Maximilian Schell, was allowed only to record her voice. He used his interviews with her as the basis for the film, set to a collage of film clips from her career. The final film won several European film prizes and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 1984. "Newsweek" named it "a unique film, perhaps the