Pasternak also felt "the critics were most cruel to" Dietrich "chiding her for being mannered again and all the rest of it. She thought she was spoofing her old self, but apparently the gentle satire was lost." Pasternak wrote "Marlene didn't mind" because the war was going badly for the Allies "and Marlene's heart was not entirely centered on making motion pictures. She was thinking about the war and her adopted country's imminent part in it. Myself, I was trying to get out of my contract with Universal."