The Scarlet Empress, an historical drama about the rise of Catherine the Great of Russia, had been adapted to the big screen on several occasions by both American and European directors.
Grade: B+
| The Scarlet Empress | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
In this version, von Sternberg’s penultimate film starring Dietrich, the director abandoned contemporary America as a subject matter and setting. Instead, he contrived a fantastical 18th-century Imperial Russia, one that is both “grotesque and spectacular,” hitting audiences of the Depression era with its stylistic excesses.
The narrative follows the rise of the child Sophia “Sophie” Frederica through adolescence to become Empress of Russia, with special emphasis on her sexual awakening and her inexorable erotic and political conquests.
Von Sternberg’s decision to examine the erotic decadence among 18th-century Russian nobility was partly an attempt to blindside censors, as historical dramas ipso facto were granted a measure of decorum and gravity.
The sheer sumptuousness of the sets and décor have obscured the film’s allegorical nature: the transformation of the director and star into pawns controlled by the corporate powers that exalt ambition and wealth, “a nightmare vision of the American dream.”
The film portrays 18th-century Russian nobility as developmentally arrested and sexually infantile, a disturbed and grotesque portrayal of Sternberg’s own childhood experiences, linking eroticism and sadism.
The opening sequence examines the young Sophia (later Catherine II) early sexual awareness, conflating eroticism and torture, that serves as a harbinger of the sadism that she will indulge in as an empress.
Whereas Blonde Venus portrayed Dietrich’s character as a woman defined by a motherly love, the maternal figures in Scarlet Empress make a mockery of any pretense to such idealizations. Dietrich is reduced to a fantastic and helpless clothes horse, bereft of any dramatic function.
Despite withholding the film for eight months, in order to avoid competition with the U.A. film The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934), starring Elisabeth Bergner.
The movie was dismissed by critics of the time as “bizarre extravaganca,” a demomstration of the primacy if style over contents–not to mention factual accuracy (which, it must be said, was never on von Sternberg’s agenda).
Viewers also dis not like the movie, which was declared by the studio as commercial flop. Americans facing the harsh conditions of the Depression were in no mood for self-indulgent filmmaking, and the film’s failure was a blow to von Sternberg’s reputation.
Von Sternberg embarked on the final film of his contract at Paramount, which was realigning in management (the decline of producer Schulberg, Sternberg’s main supporter), and the rise of Ernst Lubitsch.
As his personal relationship with Dietrich deteriorated, the studio determined that her professional career would proceed independently. That said, the incoming production manager, Lubitsch, granted Sternberg full control over his final film with Marlene Dietrich, The Devil is a Woman.
End Note:
It would take three decades after initial release for the movie to be reevaluated for its artistic merits by such critics as Robin Wood and Andrew Sarris, who wrote a respectabe book of the director’s career.
Credits:
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay by Manuel Komroff (diary arranger) Eleanor McGeary, based on The diary of Catherine the Great
Produced by Emanuel Cohen, Josef von Sternberg
Cinematography Bert Glennon
Edited by Von Sternberg, Sam Winston
Music by: W. Franke Harling, John Leipold
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date: Sept 15, 1934
Running time: 104 minutes
Budget $900,000
