Dishonored

Sternberg and Dietrich, 1931: a Viennese widow (Dietrich) is recruited as a spy, sent after a Russian colonel (Victor McLaglen), and plays the piano while the war ends around her. Paramount. The mask, the cat, the execution that is also a seduction. Sternberg called it a film about a woman who used men as the army used her. Dietrich's X-27 is the coolest patriot in the barracks. Pre-Code enough that the ending is a choice, not a pardon.