Dishonored is likely to seem a fabric of "hokum," especially when it is taken so seriously by its director. Each episode is protracted with fond care, the story moves slowly and ponderously, and the result naturally seems long drawn out. Furthermore, the picture concentrates on [Marlene Dietrich] and a mood, and what faults it has can be attributed mainly to the reverence in which Mr. Josef von Sternberg holds his own story, his own actress and his own mood.

To see only these defects, though, is to overlook much of positive value, much of promise, in Dishonored. (p. 12)

[Von Sternberg's] use of dialogue and sound is almost always an integral use and … it reinforces considerably the emotional and dramatic content of the picture. The fact remains that, despite its faults, the von Sternberg technique is one of the few intelligent approaches to the problem of uniting sound and...