Josef Von Sternberg's erotically charged espionage romance is being screened (35mm) in the BFI Southbank Big Screen Classics season, which this month consist of films which were influential on the work of Reiner Werner Fassbinder. You can find the full list here. Dishonored will aslo be shown on Sunday May 28th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
It's possible to look at this 1931 Josef von Sternberg film and see nothing but camp (it stars Marlene Dietrich as secret agent X-27, working behind the lines in World War I), but give it an ounce of respect and you'll discover a remarkable aesthetic object—an exercise in mise-en-scene of an awesome, glacial beauty. Audiences always howl during the final scene, in which Dietrich carefully retouches her makeup before facing a firing squad, but it is perhaps the purest expression of Sternberg's belief in the triumph of aesthetics over mortality. With Victor McLaglen, Lew Cody, and Warner Oland. Cited by Jean-Luc Godard as one of the greatest American movies since the coming of sound.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is an extract.
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