“Dishonored is at once the funniest and most wittily plotted of the Sternberg films. If you haven't seen Dietrich pounding out code on a grand piano, you haven't seen anything. By far the best version of the Mata Hari story, Dishonored tells of a whore who becomes a secret agent, a woman in love, and then a whore again. The ballroom scene played out to a crescendoing orchestra piece is visually and aurally stunning. Jean-Luc Godard named this as one of the ten best American sound films.” -Universal Pictures.

In his essay, “Six Films Of Josef von Sternberg,” Raymond Durgnat comments on Dishonored:

“Its absurdities... take high camp as a springboard to the dream-delirium that makes Sternberg one of the screen's Surrealist poets of l'amour fou.... (T)he plot logic of Dishonored exists in order that the visuals may drift into scenes as self-justifying as the sonnets of Mallarmé.... Marlene wears an extraordinary ‘Hermes'-kit - black ‘chainmail,' masked helmet, silver cloak.... And with what love (Sternberg) makes her into a Russian peasant, with a pale, bulbous face, like potatoes, acquiring a fascinating near-ugliness and clumsy vitality. There are... many Marlenes in this film....”