Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
Hadrina
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Mathilde the Guild
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Prismark10
Josef von Sternberg as director provides gothicness, garishness, German Expressionism, Russian madness, style and Marlene Dietrich looking goregous.The film is archaic nowadays, Sam Jaffe is a looney tune as Grand Duke Peter who reminded me of Harpo Marx. Louise Dresser steals the show as the stern and wacky Empress of Russia. It is a film that shows you the early development of cinema as art.The film is flawed in its narrative, it is almost maniacal at times.Yet Dietrich carries it through as Catherine who plots to take over as Queen of Russia by getting the army onside once the old Empress croaks it. At least she and her dashing lover Count Alexei appear to be subdued.
secondtake
The Scarlet Empress (1934)Pageantry is not everyone's idea of excitement, but at least director Josef von Sternberg knows how to make a great movie. The pacing and filming, as conservative as it is (compared to its contemporaries, from Scarface to Dinner at Eight, take your pick, or more inventive European films), is superbly intelligent, and superbly visual. Man, the lush sets are framed to excess in a rich, beautiful way, and when I mean excess, it's impossible to imagine a more stylized, packed, overripe set of scenes, one after another in very fast succession. Of course, part of these sets and scenes is the incomparable Marlene Dietrich, by now a von Sternberg mainstay. (He practically worshipped her, and this was their seventh film together.) For my money she is not her best in this one, but she is the main spark of life in all the pomp and layered decorations and astonishing lighting. She is also sculpturally vivid, if that's the right word. Take the close-ups through a veil about 32 minutes in. Simple, moving stuff, with a flickering candle and her eyes catching the light. But that's one of hundreds (literally) great short clips and moments.The story is of course limited by history--it's based (loosely, for sure) on the life of Catherine the Great. Too bad the real horror of a ghastly arranged marriage is dampened by all the cinematic fineness--it's to be understood and spoken of more than emotionally felt. Too bad it's generally more interested in its effect than in accuracy. Or I should say, good thing. Who needs an accurate story of Catherine the Great, anyway? What we have is a glorious bit of European-influences Hollywood in the vigorous early 1930s, a high point for sure in our movie history. Watch for the scenes of Catherine as a child--they are played by Dietrich's daughter. I think if you aren not into Dietrich (she doesn't really have to act here, just pose), or into period movies in general, or visual effects over plot, you'll find this wearying, or even unbearable. The pastiche of endless bits of Russian classical music alone might be overbearing. But still, it might all surprise you. It's a kind of masterpiece, like all of their collaborations one way or another. It's mind-blowing and unique, a victory of style of substance, but such style!
james higgins
85/100. A rather unusual film, director Josef von Sternberg's stylish and offbeat direction certainly makes this an interesting movie. What a production, the art direction is amazing, as are the costumes. You can see von Sternberg's eye for the visual throughout the film, particularly in the dramatic cinematography and use of shadows and light. The cast is great. Marlene Deitrich is hauntingly beautiful, Louise Dresser is impressive as Empress Petrovna and Sam Jaffe does well as the half-wit, Grand Duke Peter. The score is powerful, and also occasionally intrusive. Although released in 1934, it has silent film elements in it, perhaps von Sternberg was not quite comfortable with talking pictures. Overall, it's quite a remarkable film.
Anthony Dolphin (santasprees)
All the mutually-mated and mutated blue blood of the courts of Europe must have curdled into a brain-stunting stew long before 1760, so its fitting that Von Sternberg's vision of the Russian dynasty is so damaged and deranged, importing fresh Prussian genes (Dietrich as Catherine) to arrest the degenerative slide. Sam Jaffe's Grand Duke Peter (later, briefly, the Emperor Peter III) is Harpo Marx cross bred with Tiny Tim on the Island of Dr Moreau. Marlene Dietrich's Catherine, after an initial doe-eyed turn as an innocent, is an automaton of desire, arousing with one hand, castrating with the other, at once a vixen and a shrew shot through gauze and candles by a permanently stimulated lens. At its (wordless) best, a feast of ragingly intemperate psycho-sexual and psycho-historical motifs in a wobbly frame.
