A Royal Scandal

A comedy set in the court of Catherine the Great. A young officer arrives at the palace. He wants to report a conspiracy, but the empress takes an interest in him and he lands not in the course of history but in the court's daily intrigue. Everyone around Catherine, the chancellor included, tries to turn that interest to their own account. The production history is more interesting than the plot. Ernst Lubitsch was the producer and was also directing. During shooting he suffered a severe heart attack and could not continue. Otto Preminger finished the film. So the work of two directors is on screen: the construction carries Lubitsch's known texture and the form is Preminger's. The source is a play by Lajos Bíró and Melchior Lengyel. Lubitsch had filmed the same text once before, in the silent era, twenty years earlier. Tallulah Bankhead plays Catherine, Charles Coburn the chancellor and Anne Baxter a young lady-in-waiting. Pleasant viewing for anyone who likes 1940s Hollywood comedy and the court-intrigue template. For a viewer looking for historical accuracy, the film has no interest in the real Catherine; the subject is entirely a drawing-room comedy.