Dishonored

In one of his funniest films, Sternberg cast Marlene Dietrich as an Austrian spy and reinvented World War I as a masquerade. Espionage is merely an excuse for Dietrich’s intrepid Agent X-27 to attend a brilliantly choreo- graphed ball in giant feathered helmet and metallic mini-cape, fly off to the front in a taut leather jumpsuit accompanied by her black pussycat, or pose as a pasty, thick-waisted Russian maid enveloping the enemy in her voluminous skirts. As the Marlenes multiply, X-27’s adversary and lover Victor McLaglen expresses the net effect: “the more you cheat and the more you lie, the more exciting you become.”