The Scarlet Empress is a 1934 American historical drama film starring Marlene Dietrich and John Lodge about the life of Catherine the Great.

It was directed and produced by Josef von Sternberg from a screenplay by Eleanor McGeary, loosely based on the diary of Catherine arranged by Manuel Komroff.

[2][3] The Scarlet Empress is particularly notable for its attentive lighting and the expressionist art design that von Sternberg created for the Russian palace.

Elizabeth renames her Catherine and demands that the new bride produce a male heir to the throne, which is impossible because Peter never comes near her after their wedding night.

The archimandrite is worried by the thought of Peter on the throne and offers Catherine his help, but she demurs, saying that she has "weapons that are far more powerful than any political machine" he can mobilize.

An intertitle reads: "And while his Imperial Majesty Peter the III terrorized Russia, Catherine coolly added the army to her list of conquests."

[5] To show Russia as backward, anachronistic and in need of reform, the imperial court was set at the Kremlin in Moscow, rather than in Saint Petersburg, which was a more European city.

Pete Babusch from Switzerland created hundreds of gargoyle-like sculptures of male figures "crying, screaming, or in throes of misery" that "line the hallways, decorate the royal thrones, and even appear on serving dishes.

"[6] In film critic Robin Wood's words: A hyperrealist atmosphere of nightmare with its gargoyles, its grotesque figures twisted into agonized contortions, its enormous doors that require a half-dozen women to close or open, its dark spaces and ominous shadows created by the flickerings of innumerable candles, its skeleton presiding over the royal wedding banquet table.

Near the beginning of the film, young Sophia's tutor reads to her about Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and other ruthless czars, introducing an explicit montage of tortures and executions that includes several brief shots of women with exposed breasts.

[9] Leonard Maltin gives the picture three out of four stars: "Von Sternberg tells the story ... in uniquely ornate fashion, with stunning lighting and camerawork and fiery Russian music.

Each film offers a somewhat different answer (but none very encouraging), steadily evolving into the extreme pessimism and bitterness of The Scarlet Empress and achieving its apotheosis in their final collaboration The Devil Is a Woman.

[11]In 2006, The New York Times' reviewer Dave Kehr described the film, with its "metaphysical treatment" of the subject, as clearly superior to the contemporaneous The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934), which was directed by Paul Czinner and produced by Alexander Korda.