Dishonored (1931) [Criterion Collection]

Director: Josef von Sternberg (as Josef Von Sternberg)
Writers: Daniel Nathan Rubin (screenplay) (as Daniel N. Rubin), Josef von Sternberg (screenplay)
Stars: Marlene Dietrich, Victor McLaglen, Gustav von Seyffertitz

In Josef von Sternberg’s atmospheric spin on the espionage thriller, Marlene Dietrich further develops her shrewd star persona in the role of a widow turned streetwalker who is recruited to spy for Austria during World War I. Adopting the codename X-27, Dietrich’s wily heroine devotes her gifts for seduction and duplicity—as well as her musical talents—to the patriotic cause, until she finds a worthy adversary in a roguish Russian colonel (Victor McLaglen), who draws her into a fatal game of cat and mouse and tests the strength of her loyalties. Reimagining his native Vienna with customary extravagance, von Sternberg stages this story of spycraft as a captivating masquerade in which no one is who they seem and death is only a wrong note away.

Extras:
- New documentary on Dietrich’s status as a feminist icon, featuring film scholars Mary Desjardins, Amy Lawrence, and Patricia White
- Bodies and Spaces, Fabric and Light
- New interview with director Josef von Sternberg’s son, Nicholas


Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood (Spine #930):
- Morocco (1930)
- Dishonored (1931)
- Shanghai Express (1932)
- Blonde Venus (1932)
- The Scarlet Empress (1934)
- The Devil Is a Woman (1935)

Tasked by studio executives with finding the next great screen siren, visionary Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg joined forces with rising German actor Marlene Dietrich, kicking off what would become one of the most legendary partnerships in cinema history. Over the course of six films produced by Paramount in the 1930s, the pair refined their shared fantasy of pleasure, beauty, and excess. Dietrich’s coolly transgressive mystique was a perfect match for the provocative roles von Sternberg cast her in—including a sultry chanteuse, a cunning spy, and the hedonistic Catherine the Great—and the filmmaker captured her allure with chiaroscuro lighting and opulent design, conjuring fever-dream visions of exotic settings from Morocco to Shanghai. Suffused with frank sexuality and worldly irony, these deliriously entertaining masterpieces are landmarks of cinematic artifice.








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