The Scarlet Empress

For lovers of cinema, this film is practically a religious experience. Like Griffith's INTOLERANCE, Von Stroheim's GREED or Ophuls's LOLA MONTES, this is one of those masterpieces which contemporaries just couldn't grip. Josef von Sternberg's name was scarlet in Hollywood after he made this costly, indulgent box-office failure, but his work has been entirely vindicated by the passing of time. A highly romanticized rendering of the life of Catherine the Great, from her childhood through her arranged married to the half-witted Peter (Jaffe) and her later usurping of the throne of Russia, THE SCARLET EMPRESS represents Sternberg's ultimate recreation of a world from h...