One of the last Hollywood films before the Hays Code went into effect, Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress seems to see the coming crackdown and gave it the double deuce. The story of how Catherine the Great ended up as Empress of Russia - one of apparently two films on the subject to come out in 1934 for some reason - The Scarlet Empress claims historical accuracy by being based on Catherine's own journals. This is a...tenuous claim.