Director: Josef von Sternberg
Year:  1934
Rating: 8.0

---

This is less a bio-pic of Catherine the Great than a Gothic horror tale, a Grand Guignol of extreme excess and madness that starts off with scenes of torture. It is a visual masterpiece of filmmaking that is overwhelming in its barrage of images and music overload. Director Joseph von Sternberg makes nearly everything in the story – the plot, the characters, the actors – all secondary to the astonishingly intricate claustrophobic morbid set designs that every nightmare is made of. Except of course for Dietrich. She looms over all of this like a mad dream as Sternberg and the camera fetishize her with grand gestures, stunning close-ups of rapture and costumes that dazzle in their brashness.


I have to admit that I have never quite gotten the allure of Dietrich – too angular, too hard – more the stuff of a submissive’s wet dream – but her teaming up with Sternberg for seven classic films made her into a legend. Before this one there was Blue Angel (1930), Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932) and after this film The Devil is a Woman (1935). She went on to a fine career after these but when you think about Dietrich the images from these films are what comes to mind.


The narrative covers almost the exact same time period as did the other 1934 film about Catherine the Great – The Rise of Catherine the Great – from her being chosen to be the wife of the heir of Russia to her ascending the throne when she overthrows her husband. But while that film was generally quite conventional – even creating a false though temporary romance between Catherine and Peter – this film smashes everything into a pile of illicit desire, depravity and theatrics like a wild frantic opera.


When the young (and yes, Dietrich at 33 playing a 16-year old is quite a stretch at first but you get used to it) wide eyed girl gets to the palace expecting to find a loving, handsome husband it is instead like going through the doors of an insane asylum with all the patients loose. Her fiancé (Sam Jaffe – Gunga Din in Gunga Din) is an idiot with a perpetual leering childlike maniacal grin on his face who drills holes through the walls in order to peep, the Empress is an illiterate crow who demands a boy from Catherine and she is surrounded by the theater of the grotesque – huge religious murals, furniture and décor that came right out of the mouth of Hell.


Not wanting anything to do with Peter but needful of a son before she gets tossed out, she seduces a guard in the dark who doesn’t even realize he was with the Princess. It is implied that he may not have been the only one among the troops – and in fact the real Catherine the Great was reputed to have taken on many young lovers even until old age – and though almost certainly false, rumors were planted that she liked more than just riding horses. It was one way to gain the loyalty of the troops. And the horses.


The loudly played score primarily derived from Tchaikovsky but also integrating themes from Wagner and Mendelssohn adds a dramatic and passionate overlay to the film. This is by no means an intimate film or a personal film – there is no emotional core to pull you in and make you care about the end result – but it is just so beautifully shot and so grand that you have to stand back in awe of what Sternberg was attempting to accomplish here.