The film is the sixth of seven collaborations between von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, and the strangest. It provides Peter's domineering mother, the Empress Elizabeth, with the manners of a fishwife, and paints Catherine as a sexual adventuress who is assigned to provide Peter with a male heir and produces a child who is a male heir, right enough, but not Peter's.
The movie was released in 1934, just as the Hays Office began to police Hollywood films for morals violations. I thoroughly enjoyed the film and the visual images it had to offer full of jewels and sparkles. He dressed the costumes appropriate to the film he was directing. His interiors suggest the Russian imperial household without showing us much more than a throne, some corridors, a dining room, a grand staircase and some bedrooms.
Similarly, The fixtures in Sternberg's rooms are boldly overscale; rough stone sculptures of monstrous gargoyles tower over the characters, surround them, leer at them. I love the vast sets and how they look on screen- captivating to the audience it is clear a lot of work went into them. I am going to take his visual interpretations and use ideas of his in my own work when working in a similar style to 1930s Hollywood.
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