Though von Sternberg insists he is without influences, the look of this movie suggests otherwisein the montage, the set designs, the shot angles, and the shadowed palaces, the look of Eisenstein and the expressionists is apparent. The movie is both sophisticated and naive at the same time, in the sense that the photography and lighting are complex and the product of genius, and the script is weak, and the acting is almost universally weak. Marlene Dietrich is not very compelling as an innocent young girl, bewildered by the complexities of the Russian court, but she is much better later on, as she becomes Catherine the Great, because she becomes chilly and in control, much more the Dietrich forté. But it's posing, not acting, for the most part. The movie is an odd sort of Euro-Hollywood neobaroque, in its flood of decorative detail, and its imaginative setsthe Russian detail is filtred through a 1930s sensibility, the icons painted with a new world mannerist twist, and the sets littered with ugly, life-sized (or bigger) sculptures in a supposedly eastern style. There's also a streak of sadism by proxy running through the film, associated with the madness of tyrannical czars and figured in brief sequences flogging and torturing nude women. Add to this the implied voracity of Catherine's sexual appetite as she reviews the troops, and her ambiguous allure dressed in a white version of the cossack uniform. The score is an instance of high piracy, stealing from Wagner and Tchiakowsky and other Russians.
Review of The Scarlet Empress
