Grotesquerie and Royal Rot: On The Scarlet Empress
This is the hundred-and-seventy-ninth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Letterboxd, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my fourth favorite 1934 film, THE SCARLET EMPRESS, directed by Josef von Sternberg.
Imagine living in a mostly wooden structure with carved statues of gremlins lining nearly every surface, each of them holding at least one open flame. This is how Josef von Sternberg envisioned the palace of the Russian royals in the middle of the 18th century, not in Saint Petersburg as in reality, but in Moscow. And this blatant avoidance, not ignorance, of historical accuracy is at the core of von Sternberg’s penultimate collaboration with the inimitable Marlene Dietrich, THE SCARLET EMPRESS. After all, it is a product of Hollywood the Dream Factory, not a history lesson.
THE SCARLET EMPRESS is nominally based on the diary of Catherine the Great, the Prussian princess turned Russian empress. Von Sternberg had always been fascinated with German Expressionism but this is perhaps his most faithful ode to that movement of stark light and shadow. He uses dramatic styling to obscure any basis in real fact. Indeed, his German star also gives a performance that hearkens back to the acting styles of that filmic era, which admittedly first put me off slightly. But after another viewing in preparation for this piece, I realized Dietrich’s doe-then-steely eyed mien reflects two versions of royal rot, taking her from a place of privileged and sheltered naivete to a still insular version of cynicism. And the cinematography and production design of THE SCARLET EMPRESS, led by Bert Glennon and Hans Dreier, respectively, constantly reinforce this transformation of Dietrich’s Catherine (formerly Sophia) and the stagnation of the Russian court; perhaps not too subtly.
The inhuman way people in such privileged positions think is immediately show in THE SCARLET EMPRESS. Although its opening takes place in the light and airy spaces of Sophia’s home when she is a child (played by Dietrich’s real daughter Maria Riva), her mother’s (Olive Tell) all-business attention to making her daughter into a graceful image is brusque. She orders Sophia’s toys taken away; she is seven after all, her mother says. The only glimpse of true kindness Sophia/Catherine sees the whole movie is from her passive father (C. Aubrey Smith). This relatively brief intro sees Sophia grow into a young woman, with Dietrich taking over the role with an almost overdone youthfulness, operative word being almost.
The darkness in her future is visually represented by the appearance of John Lodge as Count Alexei, dark-haired and decked out in all black, to take her to Russian court to marry Grand Duke Peter (Sam Jaffe). Alexei will be Catherine’s most consistent admirer, but Lodge’s performance always has an aspect of lustful machinations rather than true sensitive love, despite his claims to the latter. Lodge’s performance also raised in my esteem with a rewatch. You almost never see Alexei’s calm and restrained facade slip, except when his jealousy for another of Catherine’s lovers comes into the picture. Lodge as Alexei is a strangely stable and knowing presence in the midst of the chaos of the Kremlin, even if he isn’t squarely a wholesome ally of Catherine’s.
Once Catherine arrives to her new home, the imposing artifice of both the diegetic Russian royalty and the incredibly detailed Hollywood set is morbidly intoxicating. THE SCARLET EMPRESS had a gargantuan budget, and once the film kicks into gear at the palace, it’s not hard to see why. In spite of the grim beauty of the obviously exaggerated sets, the Kremlin is utterly believable as a hellish residence, especially considering the way rooms and hallways are linked by editing to create a semi-real space. Dreier collaborated with Swiss artist Pete Babusch to fill the film’s spaces with the aforementioned gremlins and gargoyles, which increasingly figure into the background of emotional moments. They are awesome designs but their contorted expressions don’t exactly underscore the action they reside behind, but exaggerate it to the point of fable, not to serve an ambiguous exploration of psychological interiority.
Von Sternberg and Glennon do find ways to create subjective moments, however. The mind is somewhat boggled by the way Dreier’s set design interacts with the complex shadows of the cinematography. Dramatic shapes are cast every which way in THE SCARLET EMPRESS and there must have been many marks to show where actors must stand to most beautifully accentuate them. These interactions between the light and human bodies don’t only create metaphorical implications, as when Catherine approaches the secret door, which is framed with devil horns of a sort, that allows Alexei to “visit” the Empress (Louise Dresser). They also serve literal story concerns, as when Catherine learns of this relationship in her budding love for Alexei and flees outside the palace, where she “makes love” with a new guard who can’t make out her identity in the darkness. It is implied he is the true father of her child, as the next sequence shows the son being born.
THE SCARLET EMPRESS is also littered with medium and extreme close-up shots that were and still kind of aren’t extremely common in mainstream Hollywood fare. It is in these shots that you can see a glimpse of Dietrich’s earlier naivete in her now-knowing glances or the resoluteness sinking into the bewildered maiden’s eyes. It is in these kinds of shots, too, that Lodge’s aforementioned placidness is slightly disturbed by some inner turmoil. To create further vagaries and interpretations, the director often has Dietrich playing with some kind of cloth or acting from behind an opaque curtain or silk. These materials filter light gorgeously, sure, but this effect also drives home the moments when it is most important Catherine protects herself emotionally and physically, from her first encounter with Alexei since giving birth to her son to Peter’s soldiers pointing their guns at her heart…ultimately, a jest from her madman husband.
The most obvious displays of von Sternberg’s contempt not only for tyrannical rule generally but also Russia specifically come in two forms. First is Peter, played by Jaffe with an almost too-goofy smile and wild eyes. But the performance is strengthened by the moments when his “imbecility” (as the intertitles describe his mindset) hardens into deranged physicality and implied violence. Those intertitles are the second example here and the most didactic communication of THE SCARLET EMPRESS’ themes.
Strangely for a “talkie” made this far into the sound era, von Sternberg employs interstitial narration in the written word quite often. These intertitles provide some narrative context for time jumps, but more often, they editorialize on the backwardness, cruelty, and pure evilness of Russia. This commentary is often broadly fired at the country, which also received harsh treatment in von Sternberg’s great silent THE LAST COMMAND (1928), and only sometimes is it specifically traced to the royals.
Nevertheless, that THE SCARLET EMPRESS deals entirely with the privileged class makes its resonant effects essentially confined to their bad behavior. The common people are only shown in montage sequences being attacked, shot, or hauled out of their homes by Peter’s soldiers upon his taking power or when they are facelessly praying for the empress’ health and celebrating Catherine’s son’s birth.
Over the decades, THE SCARLET EMPRESS has drawn criticism for its exquisitely morbid style being valued over historical substance. While I essentially disagree with any attempts to rationalize the events of the movie as a reflection of historical reality, von Sternberg’s approach does run the risk of alienating viewers from the very real emotional truths he is trying to draw out of the story. For me, it took multiple viewings to parse through the nuances of Dietrich and Lodge’s performances and let the procession of strange, asymmetrical statues and paintings filter into an overall heaviness of symbolism rather than serve as distractions.
THE SCARLETT EMPRESS is bold in many of its artistic decisions and also its depictions of violence and sexuality, especially as the recipient of Certificate No. 16 of the newly enforced so-called “Hays Code.” It all coheres into something truly disturbing, even as its moments of dark beauty are breathtaking. THE SCARLET EMPRESS, like many of von Sternberg’s movies, is of a different bent than even comparably artful films of his contemporary peers. It operates in a totally different version of reality. The ways that reality draws you in with a deranged yet seductive quality is THE SCARLET EMPRESS’ greatness.
