Less piercing a film than The Scarlet Empress or The Devil Is A Woman,
Sternberg's retelling of Maupassant’s Boule de Suif story (also
adapted by John Ford as Stagecoach) remains a seamless blend of visual
artifice, suggestive dialogue and complex undercurrents of emotion.
Dietrich, as the prostitute redeemed by and redeeming her lover, is
astonishing, and the contrast between her innate purity and the
respectable hypocrisy of those around her is sketched with a beautiful
ambiguity. A masterly triumph of l'amour fou over reason and cinematic
convention.
