76/100
Second viewing, last seen 1994. A deeply reactionary film, but it gets there the hard way, arriving at a "happy ending" that could scarcely be more funereal; if you're gonna argue that parents should willingly sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of a child, this is how to do it: painstakingly, methodically, unsentimentally. None of the three adults merits much sympathy, and it's significant that Von Sternberg chooses to twice skip past the courtship phase, both at the…
88/100
Second viewing, last seen 1995 (when I was similarly blown away, having gone in with low expectations due to its relative obscurity). A textbook example of how genre can liberate star power—this is arguably the flimsiest of Von Sternberg's collaborations with Dietrich, but for precisely that reason it showcases her steel-forged sultriness in its most unadulterated, electrifying form. Some folks complain about McLaglen here, but he's (a) totally fine and (b) effectively irrelevant; Dietrich remains in total command from…
