REVIEW: The Scarlet Empress [1934]

I’m taking lessons as fast as I can. Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (Louise Dresser) wanted to make sure Russia had a strong leader and in so doing ensured it wouldn’t be her bloodline taking up the mantle. Not the way Josef von Sternberg‘s The Scarlet Empress tells it, as adapted from Catherine II’s diaries by Eleanor McGeary and Manuel Komroff. It is she who chooses Princess Sophia Frederica of Prussia (Marlene Dietrich) to marry her nephew (Sam Jaffe‘s Grand Duke Peter) and provide a male heir she could then raise in…

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