WOMEN BEFORE THE CODE: The Scarlet Empress (1934)

“The film tells the story of Catherine the Great as a bizarre visual extravaganza, combining twisted sexuality and bold bawdy humor as if Mel Brooks had collaborated with the Marquis de Sade.” — Roger Ebert

“Josef von Sternberg makes the cruelty the point in his lurid and macabre spectacle about the rise to absolute power of Catherine the Great, of Russia, who’s played with an arachnid subtlety by Marlene Dietrich.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker

SYNOPSIS

In 1934, amid mounting public pressure over the perceived moral influence of motion pictures, Hollywood began rigorously enforcing the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code. A sweeping system of censorship, the Code sought to ensure that films adhered to what it termed the “correct standards of life.” Among its many prohibitions were profanity, explicit sexuality, drug use, so-called “sexual perversion,” interracial relationships, criticism of religious institutions, and depictions of “white slavery.” For more than three decades, the Code profoundly shaped the subjects, themes, and images that could appear on American screens.

Before strict enforcement of the Code, however, Hollywood briefly embraced a remarkable degree of freedom. Between 1930 and 1934, films openly engaged with sexuality, vice, social mobility, and female independence in ways that would soon become impossible under censorship. This program highlights three of the era’s defining stars (Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, and Marlene Dietrich) whose screen personas embodied the wit, sophistication, and transgressive energy that made pre-Code Hollywood one of the most fascinating periods in American film history.

THE SCARLET EMPRESS (dir. Josef Von Sternberg, 1934)

Described by critic Andrew Sarris as his “most sumptuous exercise in style,” The Scarlet Empress is the penultimate collaboration between director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich, who jointly reimagine the rise of Catherine the Great through a dizzying blend of historical pageantry, erotic fantasy, and expressionist excess. Critic Dave Kehr astutely observed that Sternberg’s “study of sexuality sadistically repressed and reborn as politics” anticipates the florid agitprop of Bernardo Bertolucci by several decades, yet it is the forcefulness of Sternberg’s dazzling play of light and shadow, exuding the decadence of a political order in the throes of its own demise, that remains most striking nearly a century later. Featuring a magnificent performance by Dietrich and an outrageous turn by Sam Jaffe as the infantile Grand Duke Peter, The Scarlet Empress charts Catherine’s ascent as the transformation of sexual desire into political power, culminating in one of the great spectacles of the pre-Code era. Print courtesy of Dan Santelli.