The Scarlet Empress - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

The scarlet empress 1934 marlene dietrich

The Scarlet Empress is a 1934 American historical drama film made by Paramount Pictures about the life of Catherine the Great. It was directed and produced by Josef von Sternberg from a screenplay by Eleanor McGeary, loosely based on the diary of Catherine arranged by Manuel Komroff.

Plot

Sophia Frederica (Dietrich) is the daughter of a minor German prince and an ambitious mother. She is brought to Russia by Count Alexei (Lodge) at the behest of Empress Elizabeth (Dresser) to marry her nephew, Grand Duke Peter (played as a half-wit by Jaffe in his film debut). The overbearing Elizabeth renames her Catherine and reinforces the demand the new bride issue an heir to the throne.

Unhappy in her marriage, Catherine finds solace with the womanizing Alexei, first and foremost a paramour of the much-older Elizabeth. Rebuffed at this discovery, she takes lovers among the Russian Army to court its favor. When the old Empress dies seventeen years into their marriage, Peter ascends to the Russian throne and takes steps against his wife. Soon Catherine plots and exercises a coup, beginning a reign as Empress that will leave her known to history as Catherine the Great.

Style

Josef von Sternberg described The Scarlet Empress as "a relentless excursion into style". The historical accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of "a visual splendor verging on madness". To show Russia as backward, anachronistic and in need of reform, the imperial court was set at the Moscow Kremlin rather than in Saint Petersburg, a more Europeanized city. The royal palaces are represented as made of wood and full of religious sculptures (in fact, there is no free-standing religious sculpture in the Orthodox tradition). Pete Babusch from Switzerland created hundreds of gargoyle-like sculptures of male figures "crying, screaming, or in throes of misery" which "line the hallways, decorate the royal thrones, and even appear on serving dishes". This resulted in "the most extreme of all of the cinematic representations of Russia". In film critic Robin Wood's words:

a hyperrealist atmosphere of nightmare with its gargoyles, its grotesque figures twisted into agonized contortions, its enormous doors that require a half-dozen women to close or open, its dark spaces and ominous shadows created by the flickerings of innumerable candles, its skeleton presiding over the royal wedding banquet table.

Sexual connotations

The Scarlet Empress was one of the last mainstream Hollywood motion pictures to be released before the Hays Code was strictly enforced, and the film depicts topless women being tortured and burnt at the stake. The Scarlet Empress remains one of Marlene Dietrich's most frank and suggestive films, portraying Russia's future queen Catherine the Great first as a wide eyed innocent, quickly becoming a sexually-hungry dominatrix. The film is filled with erotic images and motifs.