No Dietrich, but Sternberg's subversive vision still takes wing in
this fascinatingly stylised fantasy. The fabricated, studio-built
exotica allows for a crescendo of emotional realism liberated from
physical reality, with the ornate decadence of the gambling house an
effective visual metaphor for the film's sordid tangle of
relationships. The more confined settings deny it the delirious,
extravagant sweep of the Dietrich melodramas, but it still has the
hypnotic quality of an opiate, and a tremendous performance from Ona
Munson as Mother Gin Sling.
