Stettin, Prussia, 1744. The German Princess Sophia Frederica is informed by her mother that she has arranged a marriage for her to Peter III, the Emperor of Russia. Count Alexei arrives with his carriages, picks up Sophia and her mother, and brings them on a six week journey to Russia. Once there, Empress Elizabeth, Peter's mother, changes Sophia's name to Catherine, while Peter III turns out to be an absent-minded man who doesn't love her. Catherine is disappointed, but accepts her new life. She gives birth to a male heir. When Empress Elizabeth dies, Peter III starts a reign of terror. Seducing Alexei and Captain Orlov, Catherine assures enough of influence in the Army to overthrow Peter III and proclaim herself as the new Empress.
Included in Roger Ebert's List of Great Movies, the sixth and penultimate collaboration between director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich, "The Scarlet Empress" is an impressive movie which works more as a showcase for its main actress and less as an accurate historical account of Empress Catherine the Great. Von Sternberg has no illusions about Russian imperialism and long history of bloody despots—one title card says: "Russia, a vast empire that had built its foundations on ignorance, violence, fear and oppression"; while recounting tales about Ivan the Terrible to little Sophia Frederica, a montage appears showing all the atrocities during that time, from beheading of three men, rape of women and torture to death—yet even during its darkest moments, the movie is way too romanticized compared to what really happened (among others, the German-speaking Sophia Frederica, later Catherine the Great, had to learn Russian, and her own later war campaigns, here not shown, were criminal and ruthless). Von Sternberg's main observations are feminist, depicting the heroine's transformation from a passive immigrant outsider to a cunning ruler who takes over the patriarchal society and commands them.
"Empress" is either too short—because it ends just before the most interesting events were about to happen, after Catherine the Great became the Empress—or needed a part II, yet if one just accepts that it presents only this confined, restrained episode from her life, and that it is just Dietrich's show, anyway, one can enjoy the movie much more. The opulent set-designs are bizarrely unique and creative at moments: Empress Elizabeth's throne is in the shape of a giant marble two-headed eagle, one head up, one head lowered; during a lavish feast, the camera pans over the dining table revealing a skeleton (!) standing next to a bowl of soup and a cooked deer on a plate; gargoyles can be seen intermittently across the palace. Some of the moments and dialogues are just plain clever. In one example, Catherine holds on to a horizontal rope above her, let's go and falls down in the hay. Count Alexei wants to kiss her, but she keeps putting straws into her mouth. Finally, there is this exchange: "If you come closer, I'll scream." - "You'll scream better without that straw in your mouth", he says, as he takes away the straw and kisses her. When the Archimandrite goes from person to person at the table, to collect charity in the basket, he arrives at the place of Peter III. "Your Imperial Majesty, something for the poor?" Peter just slaps him, but the Archimandrite goes: "That was for me. Now what have you got for the poor?", while Peter III replies: "There are no poor in Russia! Get out!" Von Sternberg certainly knows how to tell a story visually, even with just elegance and symbols, which compensates for the rather limited scope of the narrative, and Dietrich carries the entire film with ease.
Grade:+++
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