A Film Canon

 

 

This is primarily an elaboration of Josef von Sternberg's fascination with Marlene Dietrich, whose fur, feathers, lace and other accoutrements clarify her appeal in fetishistic terms, conflating the camera with a specifically masochistic gaze that finds expression in the two most resonant declarations of love, respectively offered after Dietrich dons a military cap and brandishes a gun. It feels as if von Sternberg's real aim is to record every expression on Dietrich's face - and, in particular, the blinding play of her eyes, constantly veiled by shadows and steam - as if these were as exotic, transitory and unrecuperable as the landscapes flashing by the train window. This means that narrative time and space tend to expand, or distort, in her presence, explaining her introduction at the moment that the train encounters its first obstacle, as well as the implausible dimensions of the dining-room and observation cart that she so relentlessly haunts. However, this spatial implausibility also derives from von Sternberg's desire to figure the train as completely continuous with Peking, as if a fragment of the metropolis had broken away and become mobile.