The Scarlet Empress
"Von Sternberg (1894-1969) was one of the true Hollywood characters, sometimes a great director, always a great show. He dressed in costumes appropriate to the films he was directing, made his assistants remove their wristwatches because he could hear the ticking, and calmly claimed he did it all himself: direction, photography, lighting, sets, costumes, props, the works. "It takes me a lot of time," he sighed. Of course he had the usual craft professionals assigned to all of those jobs, but he certainly controlled the look of his films, and in "The Scarlet Empress" he compensates for the lack of a vast canvas by filling a small one to bursting. His interiors suggest the Russian imperial household without showing us much more than a throne, some corridors, a dining room, a grand staircase and some bedrooms. We're reminded of how Orson Welles created Kane's Xanadu out of shadows, props, tricks and mirrors. The fixtures in Sternberg's rooms are boldly overscale; rough stone sculptures of monstrous gargoyles tower over the characters, surround them, leer at them. The doors are so heavy it takes two men or six women to swing them open. And the fur costumes of the wicked Count Alexei (John Lodge) look so heavy, it's a good thing he's over 6 feet tall and strong enough to wear them. As drama, "The Scarlet Empress" makes no sense, nor does it attempt to. This is not a resource for history class. Its primary subject is von Sternberg's erotic obsession with Dietrich, whom he objectified in a series of movies ("The Blue Angel," "Morocco," "Dishonored," "Shanghai Express," "Blonde Venus," "The Scarlet Empress" and "The Devil is a Woman") that made her face one of the immortal icons of the cinema. Whether she could act was beside the point for him; it would have been a distraction." ----Roger Ebert DVD - The Criterion Collection
Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director: Josef von Sternberg Country: U.S.A.
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