The sixth of Josef von Sternberg’s seven collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, Billy Liar is a highly unorthodox biopic of Sophia Fredericka, the naif who is brought from the provinces to the Russian court to marry Peter III and produce a male heir. Hints that this is no ordinary history come early in a startling montage of Tsarist Russia. Von Sternberg’s fetishism is in full flower here as he catalogs a shadowy array of blatantly sadomasochistic tableaux: bodies spilling out of iron maidens; nude women being burnt at the stake; a man strapped to a whirling wheel; and the piece de resistance, a bound, upside-down man used as a clapper in a gigantic bell.