The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
A Film by Josef von Sternberg
DVD5 | ISO | PAL 4:3 | DVD Scan | 01:40:42 | 4,30 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, German, French,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish
Genre: Drama, Romance
A Film by Josef von Sternberg
DVD5 | ISO | PAL 4:3 | DVD Scan | 01:40:42 | 4,30 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, German, French,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Young Princess Sophia of Germany is taken to Russia to marry the half-wit Grand Duke Peter, son of the Empress. The domineering Empress hopes to improve the royal blood line. Sophia doesn't like her husband, but she likes Russia, and is very fond of Russian soldiers. She dutifully produces a son – of questionable fatherhood, but no one seems to mind that. After the old empress dies, Sophia engineers a coup d'etat with the aid of the military, does away with Peter, and becomes Catherine the Great.
IMDB
The failed dreams of 1930s America that attended the great depression also emerged in a soothing, if specious, escape route via the movies. Audiences that saw a problematic present and a doubtful future could at least look to the big screen for exotic, transporting locales, everything from a fog-drenched, monster-plagued London in Dracula (1931) to the sensual jungles of "Indo-China" in Red Dust (1932).
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
Of course, even audiences desperate for escape had their limits, and judging from its critical and commercial failure at the time, Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934) hit those limits and kept on going. It wasn’t until the arrival of camp on the cultural scene of the 1960s that this perverse bildungsroman came into its own as one of the cinema’s most dazzling achievements. The camp rubric is fine as far as it goes, but ultimately there’s much more to this self-proclaimed "relentless excursion into style."
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
The sixth of von Sternberg’s seven collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress is a highly unorthodox biopic of Sophia Fredericka, the naif who is brought from the provinces to the Russian court to marry Peter III and produce a male heir. Hints that this is no ordinary history come early in a startling montage of Tsarist Russia. Von Sternberg’s fetishism is in full flower here as he catalogs a shadowy array of blatantly sadomasochistic tableaux: bodies spilling out of iron maidens; nude women being burnt at the stake; a man strapped to a whirling wheel; and the piece de resistance, a bound, upside-down man used as a clapper in a gigantic bell. Typical of the film’s internal resonances, this image is echoed throughout, most powerfully when Sophia, renamed Catherine by the Dowager Empress, rings the bell to show her successful ousting of Peter and appropriation of the Russian throne.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
The stylistic extremes in this montage are fleshed out in the architecture of the Russian court. Von Sternberg is not noted for his warmth and empathy in luring audiences to identify with his exotic characters, but contemporary audiences must have been as slack-jawed as Sophia at the sight of 20-foot-high carved doors that take six people to open; giant, gnarled statues that hold a single candle; and bewigged functionaries mincing around in vast, ornate gowns and carrying huge muffs. (Thank art directors Hans Dreier, Peter Ballbusch, and Richard Kollorsz for wonderfully fleshing out von Sternberg’s vision in this regard.)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
The film’s bizarrerie extends to the characters. The present empress (Louise Dresser), Peter’s aunt, is a bitchy, rapacious harridan systematically screwing her way through the royal guard. (The film was released just prior to the enforcement of the Hays Code and thus escaped censorship despite a veritable tsunami of erotic images and motifs.) Peter himself (Sam Jaffe) is a grinning imbecile — "the royal half-wit" the Empress calls him — who plays with toy soldiers and wants to kill his new wife. Count Alexei (John Lodge) is a sneering stud who courts Catherine while he’s making it with the Empress. There are endless secret passageways, multiple amours, and traitors in every corner. Stock Sternberg characters add sardonic color: a thieving chancellor, a sarcastic priest, and a queenly hairdresser who prances up and down the halls in a mysterious state of disgust.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
Von Sternberg delights in deflating the pomposities of the court, in the process arguably poking fun at his own atmospheric excesses. In one scene, the Empress reaches for her scepter and is inadvertently handed a turkey leg. When he isn’t playing with his soldiers, Peter uses a gigantic hand-drill to poke spy-holes in various walls. This occasions one of the film’s numerous startling images: Catherine looking up dazed as a drill bit twists its way through the eye of the subject of a huge painting. The dialogue adds another dimension of sarcasm. When Catherine objects to Count Alexei’s adulterous moves, he lectures her on the stupidity of morality: "Those ideas are old-fashioned. This is the 18th century!" Von Sternberg also gets mileage out of the legend of Catherine’s strange death in scenes with a sardonically smiling Catherine and her horse.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
In spite of its gorgeous insularity, The Scarlet Empress also shows political savvy. Catherine succeeds in deposing Peter by winning over the two forces that have traditionally ruled empires: the church and the army. She secures the church’s loyalty by stripping off her jewels and handing them to the priest for the poor; she captivates the army by flirting with and bedding them, in the tradition of her predecessor.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
![The Scarlet Empress (1934)]()
The Scarlet Empress is a masterpiece of romantic moments, played against grand swelling musical motifs and brilliantly visualized — Catherine holding a gauze net over her face as Count Alexei bends down to kiss her; a breathless encounter with the Count in a haystack, with Catherine repeatedly putting bits of straw in her mouth as mock-protection against his lust; an impromptu rendezvous in a glittering dark forest with a soldier who doesn’t know who she is. Some of the mise-en-scene has a suffocating beauty, as in the bravura marriage sequence where the screen is clogged to the breaking point with images — a strategy that shows to perfection Catherine’s entrapment in a realm where she’s been stripped of her name, her religion, and any romantic ideals she had. There are also quietly evocative moments, such as when Catherine seduces a soldier through a shimmering veil, a combination of the abstract and the sensual that confirms critical views of von Sternberg as the most painterly of directors.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Special Features: None
Note. This is Disc 2 from Volume 2 of 'Marlene Dietrich Collection'.
Disc 1 is here -> Pittsburgh (1942)
Disc 3 is here -> Seven Sinners (1940)
Volume 1 of 'Marlene Dietrich Collection':
Disc 1 is here -> Blonde Venus (1932)
Disc 2 is here -> Dishonored (1931)
Disc 3 is here -> The Flame of New Orleans (1941)
Disc 4 is here -> Follow the Boys (1944)
Disc 5 is here -> Golden Earrings (1947)
Disc 6 is here -> Morocco (1930)
Many Thanks to Original uploader.
If you want to download it, but found out that links are dead,
just leave a comment or PM me!
just leave a comment or PM me!
No More Mirrors.