#932: STERNBERG, Josef von: Dishonored (1931)

STERNBERG, Josef von (United States)
Dishonored [1931]
Spine #932
DVD

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 code name 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 characteristic 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.

91 minutes

Black & White
Monaural
1:19:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2018

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Daniel N. Rubin.

Josef Von Sternberg was 37 when he directed Dishonored.

Other Von Sternberg films in the Collection:

#529: Underworld (1927)
#530: The Last Command (1928)
#531: The Docks Of New York (1928)
#931: Morocco (1930)
#933: Shanghai Express (1932)
#934: Blonde Venus (1934)
#109/#930: The Scarlett Empress (1934)
#935: The Devil Is A Woman (1935)

The Film

Von Sternberg was a genius — no doubt about it. He was also a megalomaniac, intent on making every aspect of filmmaking his own ballywick.

He was certainly completely competent as a cinematographer and set designer. Apparently, he always knew exactly what he wanted to do in those areas. (Lighting Dietrich, of course, was the main concern. Scenes with minor characters received much less attention.)

But his worst mistake was not paying much attention to an actual script with good dialogue. Anything out of the mouth of Marie Kollograd, a.k.a. X-27 (Marlene Dietrich) was clever and well-delivered, but any time a supporting actor speaks, it sound stilted and overly staged. Colonel Kranau (Victor McLaglen), Director of the Austrian secret service (Gustav von Seyfferlitz, particularly bad), Colonel von Hindau (Warner Oland), Colonel Kovrin (Lew Cody), and the young lieutenant (Barry Norton) — all ciphers.

One good cinematic rhyme involves the latter — the young lieutenant has earlier walked down a long hallway with Dietrich, and fancies himself in love. Later, he is unable to be an accomplice to her execution. A rare subtlety in an overbearing, underwhelming script.

For example, in one of her assignations, she has left her typed instructions from the secret service in her coat pocket. Up to that point, she was the perfect, cleverest spy. But for purposes of a flimsy plot, she must do something stupid.

Critic Andrew Sarris: “It is Dietrich who ultimately passes judgment on her judges by choosing to die as a woman without a cause in a picture without a moral.”

Film Rating (0-60):

53

The Extras

The Booklet

Eighty-four page booklet featuring essays by Imogen Sara Smith, Gary Giddins, and Farran Smith Nehme.

Smith:

"The stakes are high. An unknown entertainer newly arrived in a foreign country prepares for her first performance, under pressure to make a hit with a restless, rowdy audience. It is a hot night; the crowd exudes a collective humidity, faces glistening with sweat, fans fluttering in hands. Only the new performer look cool. Alone in her dressing room, she sings to herself, smiling with self-contained amusement at her image in a hand mirror. Her man's dress shirt and tie are as white as alpine snows. The nightclub owner comes in, an excitable, buffoonish Italian mopping his face, anxiously hectoring his new headliner. Aloof and calm, she continues her meticulous preparations: dusting off and donning a top hat, straightening her tie, slipping into a tailcoat. She strolls onstage and surveys the jeering audience inscrutably through a scrim of cigarette smoke, from under eyelids  dragged down by the weight of knowingness and thick, curling eyelashes. The close-up is killing in its beauty"

Giddins:

"Often underrated, Dishonored is filled with incident, not least Dietrich's hilarious impersonation of a plump, agile, and almost unrecognizable peasant maid. It introduced or perfected several of von Sternberg's characteristic tropes: the masquerade, the childish use of noisemakers as a substitute for dialogue, the vertical rather than horizontal staging of scenes, the use of flashback, the protracted dissolve, which instead of moving the story forward holds the viewer at an impasse between past and present and between present and future. We leave where we were with some regret until the dissolve is completed and we find ourselves in a brave new place. His growing command is especially evident in the lighting of Dietrich, each plane of her face fetishized, her cheeks so hollow she was said to have removed her molars. The visual pleasures are constant: the interiors are rigorously convincing, and the putative exteriors are brilliant hallucinations. There is also a black cat worthy of Poe."

Nehme:

"Film is a collaborative medium, or so people say, unless by 'people' we mean Josef von Sternberg. To become a director is, more often than not, to reveal yourself as a control freak, but von Sternberg was the original micromanager, and his arrogance was legendary. Even long after his career was over, he ws reluctant to discuss colleagues. Screenwriter Jules Furthman was responsible for much of the script of Shanghai Express, but von Sternberg always maintained that the entire treatment was one page written by story creator Harry Hervey. Von Sternberg biographer John Baxter cites the gifted Paramount art director Hans Dreier as a major stylistic influence, taking the director from a realistic approach to the 'veiled sensuality' he would develop over the course of his career -- and adds drily, 'It goes without saying that [Dreier] receives no mention in Fun in a Chinese Laundry,' von Sternberg's notoriously cranky memoir."

Commentary

None.

Interview

With director von Sternberg’s son, Nicholas.

Documentary

On actor Dietrich’s status as a feminist icon, featuring film scholars Mary Desjardins, Amy Lawrence, and Patricia White.

Excellent.

Video essay

By critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin about the form and style of the films.

No talking heads, just a visual examination of the films. Also excellent.

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

53 + 35 =

88

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