Love, Life, Death, and Marlene Dietrich in the films of Josef von Sternberg

Before you lies a choice, a selection of fates. In one possibility, you are Tsarina of all the Russias, you are caparisoned in gemstones, wrapped up in gleaming silver, visited — nightly — by steaming Hussars, each of whom is more grizzled, noble, fragrant than the last, in and over whom you command utter reverence in body and soul. At one glance, all Asia cowers; at another, Europe shrivels: the bells toll with the bodies of dead and dying men....