Dishonored

'1915...Strange figures emerge from the rubble of the Austrian Empire': among them X-27 (Dietrich) and H-14 (McLaglen), military spies and best-loving enemies. Sternberg's absurd espionage melodrama is just one more peg on which to hang his familiar, outrageous pictorial stylistics and to extend his fetishisation of Marlene - yet the result is amazing. Beyond improbability lies another of Sternberg's systematic examinations of the feminine mystique, and the tragedy of a woman sacrificed on the altar of her sexualty. Right on the surface lies the inevitable patina of telling innuendo; in one deliciously transparent scene, Marlene is betrayed by her own pussy(cat), which eventually lands up safe in the arms of the church as Marlene is shot for her sins.