Of course it's a vehicle for Dietrich, but what makes this early Hollywood Dietrich-Sternberg outing fascinating is its sensuality. It simply reeks of sex: as when a sexually provocative, confident Dietrich in a tux kisses a girl, in its depiction of Dietrich's obsession with the Gary Cooper character and perhaps above all in the way the film treats Cooper - the most beautiful man in Hollywood at the time - almost as an inanimate sex object. So many movies over the years have given their female leads little to do but look gorgeous, but here it's Cooper who plays second fiddle, and reminds modern viewers that good looks were not invented by Brad Pitt. To quote the song, he's simply 'super duper' here. And Dietrich, of course, is simply incomparable: she has that mixture of upfront toughness and unspoken vulnerability that made her utterly watchable throughout her long screen career.
