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"The most ignoble calling on earth," espionage, for Josef von Sternberg a crystallization of the classified codes of Eros and Thanatos. The Viennese demimondaine (Marlene Dietrich) is recruited out of a rainy street corner, at her place the Secret Service chief (Gustav von Seyffertitz) plays the piano so that figurines dangling from the ceiling can waltz. The empire during the Great War needs agents, her moniker is "X-27," her first mission drops her into a masked ball's vertical kaleidoscope of streamers and confetti. ("The Blue Danube" gives way to a cacophony of party horns.) "I think of death as a beautiful woman wearing flowers," so it goes with the traitorous colonel (Warner Oland) who, before reaching for the suicidal pistol, eats one last grape and ponders just where to throw away its seed. The Russian officer (Victor McLaglen) is the ultimate target, introduced as a grinning Pierrot on crutches and then as a medal-studded uniform at the roulette table. The irony of suspense or vice versa, "all in the game." Dietrich's intoxicating insouciance is already iconic, when she tries on wide-eyed plainness as a blushing maid it's a marvelous lampoon of innocence, the lack of makeup merely heightens the camouflage. Patriotism is a woman's distinction between country and countrymen, music augments the sang-froid. (Reflecting his leading lady's visage on the piano's diagonal lid, Sternberg achieves a Picasso effect.) The theme builds to the discordant opus, practically Stravinsky: "I have an idea that each note might mean the death of a thousand soldiers." The wobbly saber in the drugged hand becomes the fumbled gun in the darkened cell, the last embrace is silhouetted by searchlights in front of a frosted window. The sublime finale blurs the cosmic and the cosmetic, to paraphrase Andrew Sarris, in the face of fate's bullets. "Hope you're on my side next war." Cinematography by Lee Garmes. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |