Paul Schuster This is a poorly written script, and has a convoluted and predictable plot, with bad supporting acting, but Marlene Dietrich and the photography in this movie make it worth watching again and again. In fact the words are just extra. She tells the story with her face. Her understated voice, and her movements are way beyond sexy, and even though the story is barely believable, Dietrich carries every frame of the movie.The photography and lighting are perfect. You could take a snap shot of almost any frame and hang it on your wall. Hard to put stars on this one, but it is definitely a film that you should see at least once.

netwallah Marlene Dietrich plays Marie, the widow of a decorated Austrian WW I soldier down on her luck, recruited for the secret service by a dour secret service chief (Gustav von Seyffertitz) to become spy X-27. Her first assignment is to trap a mole for the Russians (Warner Oland, playing the first non-pseudo-oriental role I've seen him in), which she does with ease. Her next adversary is the wily Russian spy Colonel Kranau (Victor McLaglen), and the two of them keep stalemating each other. Ultimately, her gesture acknowledging love though she doesn't say it aloud, she allows him to escape the Austrians who have captured him, and she is tried and executed for treason. In this movie, von Sternberg makes the most of Dietrich's enigmatic bearing—she's not much interested in living, and not much afraid of dying, so she might as well die for her country. No reproach for her country's neglect of the widow of a hero. Von Sternberg also gives plenty of examples of his famous eponymous lighting, making Dietrich look even more alluring, jaded, insouciant, and enigmatic than ever. McLaglen is an odd choice for a romantic hero. Most of his parts emphasize bluff, even cynical good humour or vicious toughness. Here he smiles knowingly and moves with ease in uniform. Perhaps he grins too much, but the balance of his joviality with Dietrich's pallor is intriguing.

mc-86 Dishonoured is an under-appreciated masterpiece. Frequently omitted from lists of collaborations between Dietrich and Von Sternberg, the film is absolutely essential to an understanding of the director's artistic technique and the actor's evolution into her status as an icon for every subsequent femme fatale. Von Sternberg applies a rich sequence of layers of style and character that embellish Dietrich's icily stunning allure as an intelligent woman engaged in a deadly quest for more temporal power in the form of top secret military intelligence and empowerment over the men she manipulates. Along the way, his penetrating interpretation of social conventions depicts a chiaroscuro of surrealistic fantasy in contrast with the gritty reality of doom that engulfs his heroine who is ultimately transformed into a martyr to her own - and universal - femininity.

zetes Most will dislike Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored. The plot is often ridiculous, and that's what most people like to comment on. I found it hypnotic. The inconsistencies didn't annoy me so much as entertain me. In a way, this could be called a camp classic. Whatever type of classic it is, though, it is an amazing film. Confer the scene nearer the beginning when Marlene Dietrich walks right up to the camera, within inches of its lense. How about the scene where she plays a Russian peasant girl to infiltrate the Russian army (she's an Austrian spy)? She climbs up on a high ledge and starts meowing at the man whom she is seducing. The final sequence is stunning and audacious. I'm skipping a few lines in order to give sufficient room to write thisSPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who else but Marlene Dietrich would insist that her lipstick were on straight before she was executed by firing squad?