The equine theme running through this bizarre, campy, creepy, cynical, disturbingly beautiful bio-pic is quite significant, given the facts of the life and death of Catherine the Great, culminating in the wildly over-the-top final shot. This movie just drips with European social and sexual decadence, and also with incredibly lavish and languid imagery throughout. Dietrich and von Sternberg seem determined to prove that they could make the transformation of a naive romantic girl into a lascivious power-mad monarch somehow heroic, and also that American audiences would lap it up while denying the depth of the depravity they were embracing. This movie succeeds on every level, especially the subversive one...

The penultimate collaboration of the iconic and justifiably famous partnership of Marlene Dietrich and director Josef Von Sternberg is to me one of their best, also perhaps the most entertaining and most visually beautiful.

Historical accuracy is not to be expected here, anybody expecting a truthful account of Catherine the Great's life are better off reading a biography. Taken on its own terms as a film, 'The Scarlet Empress' really impresses and 83 years on is still a great film, what shocked audiences back in 1934 (some of the content is ballsy and ahead of its time) fascinates many now. Where 'The Scarlet Empress' fares least is in the script, some of which going a bit over-the-top on the nonsensical weirdness.

Which may disappoint anybody who loved the archness and sophistication of the writing of other Dietrich/Sternberg films like 'Shanghai Express'.

Otherwise, any debits are far outweighed by the strengths and the size of those strengths. Visually, 'The Scarlet Empress' looks amazing, the production design is staggering in its ornate richness, the cinematography is classy and atmospheric while evoking typically and shockingly lustrous images and the use of light and shadow in the lighting is trademark Sternberg (who also directs as adroitly as ever).

Another element that amazes is the music. Not just the music itself, with pieces of Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Wagner with some of their most famous work and justly so, but also the way it was used. It's constant but music that could easily have been little more than clumsily inserted "popular classical music favourites" has real atmosphere and dramatic power and is used so cleverly. For back in 1934 this use of music was certainly unique, and even now in 2017 'The Scarlet Empress' continues to be one of the most ingenious uses of music, classical or otherwise, on film.

Regardless of any historical inaccuracy, the story is entertaining in its outrageousness while also capturing a real sense of period, a sense of wonder unique regardless of any decade or era and the lusts and intrigues of the court. What could have been completely thankless or caricature characters are interesting and beautifully played. Dietrich certainly lives up to the film's tag-line, she has had so many unforgettable moments on film and her performance in 'The Scarlet Empress' remains her at her most enviously luminous. She is also very commanding on screen, confident and moving even if at times the innocence could have had a softer touch.

She is very well supported by a thrillingly demented but also soulful Sam Jaffe and a formidable Louise Dresser. John Lodge holds up better on repeat viewing, while nowhere near in the same league as Dietrich, Jaffe and Dresser in no way does he disgrace himself either, far from it.

In summary, a great film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

By all accounts Catherine the Great was one remarkable woman. The Queen Consort of Czar Peter III of Russia, she got the throne from him in a palace coup d'etat and ruled for 33 years. She was also a woman of some lusty sexual appetites just like the woman who portrays her in The Scarlet Empress. It's what distinguishes The Scarlet Empress from the Alexander Korda production of Catherine The Great that starred Elizabeth Bergner and came out the same time.

Both tell the same story from young Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst chosen as a bride for the Russian Tsarevitch. But Bergner plays her almost as an innocent though you see traces of the lusty woman Catherine became. Marlene Dietrich loses her innocence and you see a woman who used sex to get her way whether it was political gain or sexual satisfaction that she wasn't getting from the imbecile who was her husband.

As for Czar Peter, though Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. gives a fine performance, we see a psychotic Czar in him. Sam Jaffe is far closer to the truth, the childlike imbecile who was overwhelmed he didn't measure up in the bedroom or the throne room. This film was Jaffe's screen debut, a far cry from Dr. Reifenschneider in The Asphalt Jungle or the High Lama of Shangri-La, all three very different parts.

In fact historians and scholars debate to this day whether Paul who succeeded his mother was Peter's child or was sired by one of Catherine's many lovers.

Gavin Gordon and John Davis Lodge play two of her lovers. Lodge was a man like Ronald Reagan who made it big in two different careers. A member of THE Lodge family of Massachusetts, the younger brother of Henry Cabot Lodge, Ike's UN Ambassador, this Lodge left the law for acting and then after Navy service in World War II became a Congressman, Governor of Connecticut, and Ambassador to Spain.

To me it's tossup between Flora Robson in Catherine the Great and Louise Dresser as to who the better Empress Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the daughter of Peter the Great, aunt of Sam Jaffe. Her appetites were as big as Catherine's, but her ruthlessness somewhat less. Like Elizabeth I of England, she never married and produced an heir to the throne, but also no one bothered to keep up any fiction about the Russian Elizabeth being a virgin.

With some footage from Ernst Lubitsch's silent classic The Patriot, Joseph Von Sternberg crafted one of the better efforts from his collaboration with Marlene Dietrich. He also drove the Paramount Pictures bean counters absolutely crazy by going over budget. The Scarlet Empress was expensive and looks expensive. Von Sternberg spent Paramount's money in a way they could only justify with Cecil B. DeMille.

Von Sterberg made good use of music to cover many stretches of no dialog. And after seven years of talking pictures, he also used title cards and effectively when 99% of films had dropped them for good.

Paramount did not appreciate the money they lost on The Scarlet Empress, but Marlene, Von Sternberg, and even the bean counters know now they made a classic.