302 - The Scarlet Empress, United States, 1934. Dir. Joseph von Sternberg.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

302 - The Scarlet Empress, United States, 1934.  Dir. Joseph von Sternberg.

Your husband doesn't mean a thing to you.
He does!  I'll always be faithful to him.
Don't be absurd.  Those ideas are old-fashioned.  This is the eighteenth century.

This is the conversation between Count Alexei and Sophia Frederica, the new wife of the Grand Duke Peter.

Peter is a half-wit, ugly and ridiculous.  He plays with toys.  Sophia's marriage to him was arranged by their mothers, both with world-historical ambitions--hers for her daughter to become an Empress, his for a daughter-in-law to provide Russia with a male heir.

The Empress Elizabeth has sent Alexei to retrieve Sophia from Germany for her son.  While at Sophia's home, he has described Peter as being the tallest, most handsome, most skillful, and most sought-after man in all of Russia.  He gets her hopes up.  She will be grossly disappointed.  Later he admits he did this to get her to come.  If he had told her the truth, she would have never left Germany.

However, as she stands here, now unhappily married, we do not quite believe her.  She allowed Alexei himself to woo and kiss her as they travelled back to Russia, and one has the impression she still harbors feelings for Alexei.

Yet she is about to discover that Alexei is also in a relationship with her mother-in-law the Empress.  Apparently, he really does hold to new-fashioned eighteenth-century ideas.

Her maid explains to her that everyone in the Russian court has secret affairs, and that she herself should consider it.  And despite her protests, the viewer may anticipate what is to come.

The Empress is putting pressure on Sophia to have a child, and she demands that it be a boy.  The Empress brought Sophia here to have an heir and she expects her to give her one.

It seems incongruous to Sophia that it will be with Peter her husband--not only are they mutually odious to one another, but he has his own mistress also--the Countess Elizabeth, "Lizzie," who intends to eliminate Sophia as soon as the Empress Elizabeth dies.  Apparently, the maid was right.  Everyone in the court is having affairs, even the half-wits.

And now that Sophia knows Alexei is having late-night conjugal visits with the Empress, it will certainly not be with him.  She has no intentions of sharing a lover with her mother-in-law.

So how will she possibly provide the Empire with an heir?

Well, maybe she will run into a soldier at night.  When she sneaks out of the palace.  To retrieve a locket she has just thrown out.  In anger.  A locket Alexei gave her.

And maybe in her anger she will give herself to this unknown soldier.

And give Russia its heir.


When Sophia was a child (played by Marlene Dietrich's real daughter, Maria Riva), she told her mother, "I don't want to be a queen, mother.  I want to be a toe dancer."

Her mother raised her on stories of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, with details of torture involving nude women turning on water-wheel racks and being burned at the stake, and with men swinging upside down inside of giant bells, their heads functioning as the clappers.  Her own doctor moonlights as a hangman, and the child Sophia asks if she might become a hangman one day.

Well, she never will become a ballerina.  And now that she has had a son, she embraces her destiny.

As the Empress Elizabeth is dying, the Countess Elizabeth makes it clear to Sophia that Peter will get rid of her and make the Countess his new Queen.  But Sophia is too savvy for that.  After having had her first soldier, she has gone on to earn the favor the entire Russian army, and the army conspires with her to eliminate Peter, now Peter III.

When the Empress dies, Sophia rides a white stallion with the army to take her place, as her special friend Captain Orloff eliminates Peter for her.

And the young Sophia launches her career.

As Catherine the Great.


Josef von Sternberg was an expressive director.  He was born in Austria, got an early start in Hollywood, returned to Germany to direct its first talking feature, and returned to Hollywood to cement his reputation for his visually and moodily striking style.  And for being a Svengali.

It some ways it seems his life's work was to make Marlene Dietrich look beautiful on film.  He directed Dietrich in seven pictures, and he poured his cinematic artistry into her close-ups.  Her eyes.  Her face.  Her hair.  Her clothing.  And the lighting and shadows that embraced her.  Everything else in the film seemed to exist to support her.

And yet he does not allow her very much room to be still or seductive.  Or thoughtful or calculating.  He has her prancing about in ridiculous over-the-top frenzy.

Then there are those hundreds of gargoyles he had fabricated.

The sets are some of the most cluttered one has ever seen.  The viewer is not sure whether he is watching a film about eighteenth-century Russia or an episode of Hoarders.  When the film did not break even at the box office, they could have recouped their costs by having an estate sale.  It is a wonder the actors were even able to walk on the floor rather than crawling across the tops of the furniture.

Many people have found this movie strange.

Historical accuracy is of no concern.

Neither are love, romance, intrigue, or power.

But Gothic production design is.  And expressionistic lighting.

And there remains something mesmerizing about it.

Like ordering cheap food from a world-class chef.

Or kitsch from a Renaissance painter.

You feel as if you are in one of the world's great museums.

Looking at the half-baked doodles of a genius.