Von Sternberg

Spies

Spies The more you cheat, the more you lie, the more exciting you become, X-27! —Victor McLaglen in Dishonored IN PUTTING DOWN ROOTS in California, von Sternberg was an exception among emigrant filmmakers. Many who had arrived before sound were now being shed as their accents proved a liability. Others, like Jannings and Pommer, saw better prospects of success in Europe than in a Hollywood struggling with the Depression. Among those who departed was Alexander Korda. He had pursued a career in his native Hungary, as well as in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin, where he had directed Dietrich in a couple of films. Eventually he wound up in Hollywood , where he made four indifferent pictures before deciding in 1930 to extricate himself from a dead-end contract with Fox and return to Europe. Von Sternberg was the only person to see him off on the Superchief . Neither could know that they would meet again in a few years on the far side of the world, nor under what peculiar circumstances. Those who succeeded in the Hollywood system worked hard for their money. Once the von Sternberg–Dietrich duo became a hot property, cinema owners badgered Paramount for more. Even before Morocco was released, they completed Dishonored, a spy drama of the First World War. It shows signs of haste: MGM was preparing Mata 134 Spies 135 Hari with Garbo, and Paramount saw a chance to set Dietrich against her in a similar role, mano a mano, letting the box office decide. Garbo’s film, although it earned money, embarrassed her admirers. It required her to perform a preposterous “erotic” dance and exercise her allure on the effete Ramon Novarro. Dietrich showed the female spy in a better light, not solely as a seductress but as an ingenious agent who was adept at disguise and could even transpose military secrets into music, then play them back on the piano—skills with which she outsmarted a succession of colossally obtuse men. Von Sternberg’s story, originally titled X-27, was scripted by Daniel N. Rubin. It was renamed Dishonored by Paramount, a change the director resisted because the heroine is not, by her standards, dishonored. Although she betrays her country by letting an enemy escape, she does so honorably, for love. Gary Cooper, still smarting from Morocco, declined to play Kranau, head of the Russian secret service. Any number of personable romantic leads could have substituted, but the studio imposed Victor McLaglen—a baffling choice, since at six feet three inches, he towered over Dietrich. Moreover, he looked nothing like a Russian, was pushing fifty, and had played no romantic roles for years, preferring military bruisers. He was also under long-term contract to Fox. Possibly he was working off an old commitment to Paramount, but everyone was mute on the subject of his choice, including von Sternberg. Dietrich plays Maria Kolverer, a war widow turned prostitute in World War I Vienna. As a suicide victim is carried out of her tenement, she remarks, “I am not afraid of life—although not of death either.” The head of the Austrian secret service, played by Gustav von Seyffertitz , just happens to be passing and overhears. He tests her patriotism by inviting her to spy for the enemy and, when she reports him to the police, recruits her as agent X-27. Sent to tempt General von Hindau (Warner Oland), she hooks him at another of von Sternberg’s streamerclogged masked balls. Von Hindau is the equivalent of La Bèssiere in Morocco, Ned Faraday in Blonde Venus, and Don Pasquale in The Devil Is a Woman—the bearded, impeccably dressed von Sternberg look-alike who grovels to the Dietrich character. He invites her home but offers a lift to a handicapped man in a clown costume, who passes the general Von Sternberg 136 a cigarette. Naturally, the clown is her rival H-14 (McLaglen), and the cigarette contains a message. Once she discovers the deception, X-27, impressed and intrigued, dismisses the general’s wistful wish that they had met under different circumstances and permits him to avoid disgrace by putting a bullet in his brain. At times, Dishonored is less spy story than Lubitsch-style sex comedy . Disguised as a peasant maid in dirndl, boots, and braids, X-27 fools the lecherous Colonel Korvin (Lew Cody) into revealing his secrets. The headquarters of Austrian Intelligence is worthy...