The Austrian Secret Service sends its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians. In Josef von Sternberg’s atmospheric spin on the espionage thriller, Marlene Dietrich further develops her shrewd star persona in the role of a widow turned streetwalker who is recruited to spy for Austria during World War I. Adopting the codename X-27, Dietrich’s wily heroine devotes her gifts for seduction and duplicity—as well as her musical talents—to the patriotic cause, until she finds a worthy adversary in a roguish Russian colonel (Victor McLaglen), who draws her into a fatal game of cat and mouse and tests the strength of her loyalties. Reimagining his native Vienna with customary extravagance, von Sternberg stages this story of spycraft as a captivating masquerade in which no one is who they seem and death is only a wrong note away. More on Wikipedia
Dishonored (1931)
