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Dishonored

1931, Movie, NR, 91 mins

Dishonored: Review

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The plot lines for DISHONORED and MATA HARI (1932) were almost the same; both films were melodramatic and impossible. Yet Dietrich's magical cold-ice charm and Garbo's wonderful mystique saved the films. Both films are also based on the infamous and fairly inept spy Mata Hari, shot for espionage by the French in 1917. Where Mata Hari was an exotic dancer, Dietrich is a common streetwalker, encountered in WW I Vienna by Seyffertitz, head of the Austrian Secret Intelligence Service. A policeman threatens her with arrest if she will not move on. Hard as crystal, Dietrich replies: "I'm not afraid of life or death!" Seyffertitz is impressed with her words and begins a conversation. The beautiful young woman asks him to step out of the rain by going to her apartment. There he proposes she make a lot of money by spying on Austria. She immediately calls police and turns him over as a spy. Happily convinced of her loyalty, Seyffertitz enlists her as one of his agents and she is officially designated "X-27." (Mata Hari's code designation in the German spy system was "H-21".) Her first assignment is to obtain evidence against Oland, an Austrian general suspected of passing information to the Russians. Meeting him at a masked ball, Dietrich returns home with him but en route a clown from the ball, a man on crutches, is given a ride by the general. He gives Oland a cigarette which the general pockets. Oland gets a phone call (planned by Seyffertitz) when he arrives home with Dietrich. He takes the call in another room while Dietrich goes through his private papers. A butler enters with champagne and Dietrich asks him for a cigarette. She is told that there are none available since Oland doesn't smoke. Withdrawing the cigarette in Oland's coat pocket, Dietrich finds a secret message from the Russians. When Oland returns she stands triumphantly in front of him, smoking the cigarette. Oland instantly realizes he has been exposed and that Dietrich is an Austrian agent. He courteously excuses himself, goes into the next room, and shoots himself. Dietrich now tracks down the general's contact, the man in the clown suit, McLaglen, a Russian agent masquerading as an Austrian lieutenant, meeting him in a casino where he will be arrested. But McLaglen is too clever for her and escapes. Sneaking into Dietrich's bedroom, McLaglen learns that she is to fly to the Russian-Polish border and, in the disguise of a peasant maid, seduce Cody, a Russian colonel, getting plans from him concerning the next Russian attack. Dietrich does exactly that but McLaglen is waiting for her and has her arrested before she can return to Austria. But McLaglen dallies with her briefly in his quarters where she drugs his wine and then flees with a forged passport. He follows her to Austria where he is arrested, but Dietrich by then has fallen in love with McLaglen and she slips him a gun which he uses to escape. For her folly Dietrich herself is arrested, tried, and convicted. She is sentenced to be shot. When asked if she has any last requests, Dietrich says: "Let me die in the uniform in which I served, not my country, but my countrymen." Dressed as a streetwalker, Dietrich faces a firing squad. When the young officer in charge, Norton, can't bring himself to give the order to fire, there is a momentary respite while he is replaced. The camera closes in on Dietrich, a bit bored, as she impassively applies her lipstick, as if she is about to solicit another customer, this time Death. This is one of the most bizarre scenes in a Dietrich film, and only Von Sternberg, who wrote the script, could have pulled it off with his favorite leading lady, a ghoulish joke over absurd female vanity. The film is probably the least distinguished of the Dietrich-Sternberg productions, but its camp plot and extravagant performance by Dietrich (her second American film after MOROCCO, done at age 30), along with Sternberg's powerful visual approach, make it an offbeat gem. This was the first film wherein Dietrich stepped out of her glamorous image, but only for the few scenes where she played the peasant girl, her hair tight to her skull in a bun and her makeup scrubbed from a face that still appeared radiant. McLaglen was wholly miscast as her spy lover, treated more as a hulking prop than as a leading man. It is a Dietrich opus all the way, almost as unforgettable as THE SCARLET EMPRESS, THE BLUE ANGEL, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, BLONDE VENUS, or her favorite film, THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, but not quite. leave a comment
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