Dietrich, A Devious & Dangerous Delight
Author: Ron Oliver (revilorest@juno.com) from Forest Ranch, CA
17 April 2002
A young Spanish radical in old Sevilla learns that THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, when he falls hopelessly in love with a mysterious female.
Mesmerizing & hypnotic, this is a film which arouses all the senses. Dreamlike in its visuals & nightmarish of plot, it presents imagery so persuasive as to be practically palpable. Director Josef von Sternberg & writer John Dos Passos constructed a miniature madhouse for the mind, in which the viewer gladly finds himself consigned.
Fascinating, coy, deceptive, utterly alluring, Marlene Dietrich dominates the film as an icy-hearted harlot who strews her pathway with the broken bodies & wasted lives of the men she's betrayed. With heavily lidded eyes peering out of her disturbingly beautiful face, she is the very picture of sardonic seduction. Wisely, the film allows her a moment of amusement (for the viewer), letting her perfectly sum up her philosophy in the comic song ‘Three Sweethearts Have I.'
Dietrich's two leading men are both excellent. Lionel Atwill, sadly ignored today, once again exhibits the depth of his acting talent; Hollywood's propensity to place him in horror films often obscured his abilities. Here, he shows us a man fully aware of his complete degradation. Cesar Romero, in one of the finest roles of his early career, more than adequately carries on the tradition of the Latin Lover, but with a twist - here is a romantic hero who is not strong enough to escape from the web of the female spider.
Peevish & pompous, Edward Everett Horton is thoroughly amusing as a flustered Spanish bureaucrat.
Two wonderful English character actresses enliven the proceedings in small roles: Alison Skipworth as Dietrich's disreputable matriarch and Tempe Pigott as an old one-eyed harridan.
Movie mavens will spot Edwin Maxwell as the manager of the cigarette factory and Charles Sellon as a professional letter writer, both uncredited.
Von Sternberg created a masterwork of cinematic symbolism, with innuendo so rife it is incredible it passed the Production Code. In every way, the film is a worthy follow-up to his previous collaboration with Dietrich, the orgiastic SCARLETT EMPRESS (1934).
15 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
very classy film
Author: RanchoTuVu from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
23 March 2006
In terms of artistry, this probably ranks up there with the best of them. It has to be one of the most attention-grabbing films ever made with every scene crammed full of enticing details. From the opening carnaval parade that's buried under three feet of confetti, with everyone hiding behind unbelievably bizarre masks, the film revels in outstanding direction, sets, and costumes. Marlene Dietrich is simply on another level with her smart, beautiful, and sexy character, and the way they dressed her and the sets they put her in all combine for a totally and undeniably spellbinding experience. I guess if one digs a little deeper one would find a simple enough story and could claim the characters are mere caricatures for an American audience, but that would miss out on the sheer sophistication that can be appreciated up to today and beyond.
13 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Did she ever appear more beautiful?
Author: tategarbo from Cheltenham England
24 November 2001
It may have been one of the flops of Dietrichs career upon its initial release in 1935 but that was mainly due to bad publicity, the Spanish government demanded that the film be banned and destroyed, thus making it such a rare treat to see for Dietrich fans. The film was also the only film that Marlene kept a personal copy of, Joseph Von-Sternbergs lighting and Dietrichs new eyebrows and make-up techniques make Marlene appear more beautiful than she ever did before or again. It is true that the films script is poor but one can forgive that, one can even forgive Dietrichs wooden acting and the poor songs she was forced to sing in the picture, we can forget about everything that is bad about the film because there is something so very impressive about it visually that when i watched it i couldnt take my eyes off the screen, today off course it is truly a masterpiece and the costumes that Dietrich wears are some of her most impressive, almost exceeding those marvellous costumes that she wore in Shanghai Express. It is sad to think that after this film Dietrichs career began to skid and never fully recovered.
7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Playing with men for fun and profit
Author: Jim Tritten from Corrales, NM
13 February 2002
A captivating and very different movie where a dazzling Marlene Dietrich willfully toys with the affection of Lionel Atwill whose life is then ruined by their relationship. How low will he sink? As low as Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel? The reasons for Atwill's obsession is left to the imagination since censors at the time would not allow us to observe what is today commonly on screens. Surrealistic scenes of a Spanish carnival and extraordinary costumes make this highly recommended and not often seen film a visual feast. Marlene has never been lovelier and more injurious. Atwill does a respectable job as the bedeviled older lover. A young Ceasar Romero is a believable other love interest. Edward Everett Horton's voice mars the play of what should have been a stately governor who appears to have been seeing Marlene on the side. An unexpected ending contributes to a movie that should be discussed and watched again. Highly recommended.
8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A 'real' story of a man's frustration
Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England
3 May 2006
It has to be said that this film is an amazing achievement. The Devil is a Woman is a lush and vibrant film, and you really do get the impression that a lot of thought has gone into every scene. The script allows the characters to grow in front of the audience's eyes both in relation to each other and in their own right. Furthermore, the acting is fantastic; with Lionel Atwill convincing as a heartbroken former lover of Marlene Dietrich's cold hearted femme fatale. It's Dietrich that commands every scene she's in and gives an all round amazing performance in the title role. Furthermore, the Spanish setting is superb, and provides a beautiful location for this complex love story to take place in. But it's not the technical elements that make this film so great; it's the plot. We first get to know the characters during a conversation between a fancy man and a former lover of the same woman. The older man tells the younger of his times with said lady, and we get a fully painted picture of all the protagonists through this. The film offers a great portrait of love and frustration; with the title itself referring more towards the lead man's experience with the title character rather than the character herself. The Devil is a Woman is certainly not a fluffy romance flick, but it is a film that works on two levels; on one hand, it tells its story straight and so is easy to get into, but on the other it provides a story with a chasm of depth if you're willing to look for it.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN (Josef von Sternberg, 1935) ***1/2
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta
2 June 2011
This was the seventh and last (indeed, it had been announced as such from the outset by Paramount) of the celebrated cycle of cinematic collaborations between Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich and is said to have been both their own favorite – incidentally, with it, the two effectively came full-circle by making another film (as was their first joint venture, THE BLUE ANGEL {1930}) that revolves around a middle-aged man ruining himself for love of an ungrateful young woman. It was also the third adaptation of Pierre Louys' novel "The Woman And The Puppet" that had been much admired by the French Surrealist movement and, appropriately enough, was remade much later by Luis Bunuel in 1977 as THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (which turned out to be his own swan-song).
Like that version, here we also have the long-suffering 'puppet' (Lionel Atwill in one of his best non-horror roles) narrating his misfortunes with the 'woman' – albeit to a best friend (a young Cesar Romero, replacing Joel McCrea who walked off the set after a single day's shooting!) in a Spanish cantina rather than to strangers on a train! Sill, like the earlier 1929 French version, the male lead (here renamed Pasquale) meets Conchita on a snow-derailed express where Dietrich (dressed as a nun!) takes on an unattractive gypsy female dancer and he intercedes to put an end to that struggle; incidentally, there had also been a nun passenger in the Baroncelli version but she was shown sleeping through the whole ordeal! Speaking of Atwill, he had previously acted opposite Dietrich in her first non-Sternberg Hollywood film, Rouben Mamoulian's THE SONG OF SONGS (1933) which I plan to catch up with presently; besides, Sternberg was summoned to give evidence at Atwill's 1942 trial (concerning an 'immoral' Christmas 1940 party) in which the actor infamously perjured himself and, consequently, was ostracized from Tinseltown's major league and forced to spend his last four years slumming it in third-rate (if not disagreeable) flicks!
This being an adaptation emanating from Hollywood's Golden Age, it is unsurprising to find the supporting roles filled by such amiable character actors as Edward Everett Horton and Alison Skipworth (in a bigger role – as Dietrich's mother – than her character gets in either of the other available versions) who are usually known for comedy and indeed supply some non-intrusive comic relief; equally par for the course is having Dietrich sing an amusingly suggestive number and don some of the kitschiest costumes – even if, ostensibly, she is playing a poor Spanish girl! The film is set during the carnival season and this grants Sternberg the opportunity to devise some remarkably atmospheric masks; indeed, the director must have known this was going to be his last film with Dietrich because he photographed the film himself (although the great Lucien Ballard gave uncredited support – or, rather, was learning the ropes – in his second of four consecutive films for Sternberg).
Having been made after the Hays Code came into force, the film fell victim to censorship (and even a ban threat from Spain!) but its impact still comes through; a notable change concerns the famous nude dance performed by Conchita and the humiliation endured by Pasquale at her house: celebrated novelist John Dos Passos, who adapted the Louys novel, still made Dietrich a tramp, while Sternberg displayed the power of the moment through camera-work, the décor and the elements (rain is pouring down throughout the scene! The film runs for just 80 minutes but feels somewhat longer – especially since the narrative goes on after the main story had ended in the other two versions I watched and includes exclusive incidents: a duel between the two men, a visit to a hospitalized Atwill, Conchita about to leave with Romero but deciding to stick with Atwill, etc.
I had watched THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN twice previously on Italian TV in an English-language print that was accompanied by Italian subtitles that were so large that they obscured a good part of the screen!; this new viewing came via Universal's 2-Disc Set "Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection" which features two double-features on a double-sided disc (the film under review sharing disc space with Rene Clair's THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS {1941}) while, bafflingly, Mitchell Leisen's GOLDEN EARRINGS (1947) has a disc all to itself! Funnily enough, this being yet another case of those maligned DVD-18 discs, I was unable to start the feature by pressing the "Play" button and had to do so from the chapters menu! Incidentally, the later Julien Duvivier/Brigitte Bardot remake was alternatively known as A WOMAN LIKE Satan (while is, alas, currently available only in unsubtitled form!) and there are at least two more unrelated but notable films known as THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN: Stephanie Rothman's THE VELVET VAMPIRE (1971; which I have never seen) and Damiano Damiani's star-studded nunsploitation effort, IL SORRISO DEL GRANDE TENTATORE (1974)! Ironically enough, Sternberg had intended calling his film "Capriccio Espagnole" (which would actually be retained by the Italian release prints!) but was vetoed by Paramount's current Head Of Production, Ernst Lubitsch!
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Strangest of the Strange -- Von Sternberg and Dietrich's Most Exotic and Fully Realized Collaboration
Author: oldblackandwhite from North Texas sticks (see all my reviews)
21 October 2010
If you have never seen one of Josef Von Sternberg's strange and wonderful movies, it is virtually impossible to describe it for you. It is one of those experiences you have to be there to really get it. His beautiful and exotic pictures are not for all tastes. This is not to assume any position of intellectual superiority for liking them or feeling inferior if you don't. Sternberg's movies are like buttermilk. Some people, yours truly included, regard buttermilk as a golden elixir, whereas others think of it as the most repulsive beverage imaginable. Sternberg's oft-stated cinematic philosophy was that a movie didn't need much of a story as long as it looked good. Hardly anyone would disagree that his films look good indeed. In his hands the beautiful, luminous black and white cinematography that was virtually standard for Hollywood movies of the 'thirties and the 'forties became absolutely gorgeous. Like a painting of the great Itallian Renesance artist Caravaggio, every shot in every scene shows the main focus character illuminated in contrast to a rather dark background. Whereas Caravaggio preferred minimalist backgrounds, Von Sternberg's sets are baroque extravaganzas of detail -- mazes of railings, stairways, lattices, chairs, trees, winding narrow streets, with the main characters and such action as there is often obscured by smoke, fog, lattice, twisted tree limbs, flogging chickens, snowstorms of confetti. Critics have argued that this approach to filming tends to dehumanize his characters. I must agree, but with the reservation that it is still great fun to watch -- and listen to as well, for Sternberg makes masterful use of sound. Tinkling wine glasses, igniting matches, footfalls, swishing gowns, and a thousand other little sounds unite with a full-bodied score as more building blocks of Sternberg's grand, sensuous scheme. The Rimsky-Korsakov inspired score of The Devil Is A Woman so flows with the movement of characters, especially in the first half of the picture, that it begins to resemble a ballet.
Sternberg was at his best in the seven pictures he made in collaboration with the beautiful Marlene Dietrich, and she was certainly at her best under his direction. The Devil Is A Woman is the last of these, and probably their best. According to IMDb trivia section, Dietrich thought so, enough that she kept a pristine print of the picture in a vault. Thank you, Marlene, that we may now enjoy the gorgeous DVD transfer. The Devil Is A Woman certainly seems to have best captured Von Sternberg's artistic vision. It has only the most minimal plot but is an absolute visual and auditory treat. With the possible exception of Dishonored, it is the one of Sternberg's numbers that most reinforces my suspicion he would have be just as happy to have had mannequins to move around within his beautiful sets as the talented actors Paramount spent big money to put at his disposal.
My 23 fellow reviewers have made valiant efforts to capture the essence of this movie. They have given us everything from a Freudian masochistic theory to a sermon by a nice little Christian guy or gal from Australia on the nature of the Devil. I don't disagree with most of the content of the latter, but somehow feel that it and most of the other reviews miss the point of the movie -- if it had one, and Sternberg would have probably told us it didn't and didn't have to. This movie hypnotically holds your attention from beginning to end, not only because of Sternberg's mesmerizing ability as a film maker, but because of the acting talent of the three principals, Marlene Dietrich, Lionel Atwill, and Cesar Romero. Complaints have been that it is dramatically weak, but I believe that is because it was not intended to be a drama, but a comedy. I know I laughed all the way through it. Certainly Dietrich's character, her mother (Alison Sipworth), and her one-eyed old hag of a manager were intended to be funny. Edward Everet Horton as the irritable alcalde was likewise a hoot. Romero (the Latin lover-boy), Atwill (the stuffy army officer-politician), and Dietrich (the incredibly shallow, callous courtesan) were all humorous parodies of their types and perhaps of the actors, themselves!
Maybe Josef Von Sternberg had the last laugh.
Queen of hurts in the deck of cards
Author: chaos-rampant from Greece
19 December 2011If you have closely followed Sternberg you could tell this moment was coming. All his films since he joined up with Dietrich were powered by a seductive electricity channeled and discharged back and forth between herself and the camera, but always struggled in some measure to hold back to a recognizable world. The Scarlet Empress just before this was only held back by a thin semblance of history, if that, a history that was utterly bent to his fervent adoration to crown Dietrich queen of Hollywood. It was an unhinged, anguished film, mirrored on every misshapen gargoyle figure, every distorted fresco on the walls of the surreal church.
But here he finally lets go and is afforded a kind of tranquility, as if he knew he would lose her after this film and would be lost himself. This would be his last film with Dietrich, and perhaps the last time he mattered. The whole film is an effervescent dream this go round, no pretense about it anymore. Oh, it's supposed to be taking place in Spain, but as much as Empress was taking place in Russia.
So a world envisioned as a moonlit walk beneath cedars, a walk a little outside the common maps, with every step masked in the smoke from some opium pipe, veiled shaped and long shadows, at the center faintly humming with the emptiness behind illusions. The premise is that it's the traditional time of the carnival, a week long promise of deceptive sex beckoning from behind masks, inside swirling crowds and confetti rains. Dietrich enters the scene on a lavish chariot like already the queen from the previous film, once again every camera on her, every male pair of eyes transfixed on her eyes promising sweet things.
But Sternberg is not just waxing here like a lovestruck bird, for once since a long time. We float in restless sleep but need to stay lucid enough to perceive where the dream is floating from. One source is revealed halfway through, this much is easy to grasp; the man, another lovestruck Sternberg, weaving stories about this reputedly scandalous woman, and how much of it true or merely a ploy to thwart the sexual antagonist? Is she the devil, or is the devil in our lusting eyes?
She does behave a lot like we were told she would when we first meet her, sultry, seductive, a sexual being, but it doesn't have to mean anything. So we dream some more, looking to apprehend the face behind the mask.
We surface back into the real world, itself resonating with dreamlike ambiance, with no clear demarcation between fiction and truth, for a marvellous scene in a theater where she lets fate deal the cards. The scorned lover takes out a pistol and shoots at the queen of hearts.
But beyond the ensuing battle of lovers, beyond even the final twist that sends us away and keeps the camera with her for one last knowing smirk, there is the actual source of the dream that we haven't spotted yet. So a film about a woman who is the subject of stories, a dream about us dreaming her, the woman who is yet present outside the frame but pure and intangible to the last. See if you can spot it out, and if the film is just gaudy, dreamy, or transforms into the makings of that dream. I mean if she is that queen of hearts, then who is shuffling the deck?
There is no Eyes Wide Shut without this film, to go this far.
There is finally a look of world-weariness that mellows Dietrich's face, a kind of stoic resignation to the cards being dealt as they are, or have been a long time ago. No doubt Welles saw this, many times over, and cast her in Touch of Evil twenty years down the road. Her parting line in that film wonders what does it matter what you say about people. It pertains here.
1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Spanish Fantasy by Dietrich / Sternberg
Author: psagray from Spain
9 June 2012
Captivating fantasy Hispanish tandem Dietrich / Stenberg that this time reached great heights in a baroque and delirium through a story based on the novel by Pierre Louis, which runs along the edge of ridiculousness without falling in and getting one of the most fruitful collaborations with the legendary couple.
The story takes place in crowded streets by the beginning of the carnival that will accentuate the character of sham and unreality of what will happen throughout the filming, Sternberg shows energetic, original, magical narrative solutions. The use of the soundtrack is very intelligent (tragic tone for the initial onset of the Civil Guard Spanish themes that accentuate the festive fatalism of history), photography dream gives relief to the stage and the actors do their work with rare perfection.
The artistic work of Sternberg reaches here one of its highlights, including shades, disconcerting elements, going in the interaction between stage-action, modulating the tone of his work from the comic to the tragic-farcical, giving us a perfect end inexplicable. .. A true masterpiece that inherits the virtues of silent film in their expression (gestures of the actors, scenery, weather, smoke ...) and shows Dietrich in all its artistic grandeur.
Forbidden by the government of the Second Spanish Republic who protested strongly to Paramount because of the bad image of the police was Spain, which has succeeded without projecting the film until 1959.
"The Devil is a Woman" is an excellent work, full of that impossible cross between recreation fanciful, dreamlike and the triumph of kitsch sophistication and immoral. Adorned by a beautiful and unreal scenery, this work is the best of all took together actress and director, and represents the final step to consolidate as the femme fatal Marlene, sardonic traitor par excellence of film history. The mirror that will look after that time any man-eating that will populate the screen in the future without reaching that mysterious air of fatalism that Marlene was able to give a fascinating film prototype.
1 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
The gender of the Devil is really a woman
Author: peacecrusader888 from Australia
9 October 2009
This is not a review of the movie itself but a revelation of the fact behind the title of the movie. The Devil or the Great Dragon or the old serpent or Satan (Revelation 12:7-9), according to the Holy Spirit who we (plural) talk to, is a woman, a female. She is the twin sister of Michael, and the only woman of eight archangels. In Heaven, she was called Lucibel or "Light of Heaven" but when she was cast out of Heaven, she became Lucifer on earth.
In the spiritual world, there are no more sex organs, no more "twin peaks" but the beings are either male or female.
The movie is an eye-opener for the truth of what the Devil offers. She is a cold-hearted harlot who is alluring and seductive in offering worldly possessions – beauty, fame, power, material wealth – in which people of this world fall into. Even if we have been warned of these, like what the elder Don Pasqualito told the young Antonio, still people fall into her traps and leave people betrayed and helpless. Later, they realize that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4, King James Version). These worldly possessions are fleeting things only. What we should acquire are those that we can take with us in the afterlife.
Concha says, "Mother says no flies enter a closed mouth." The Holy Spirit told us, "Mouth that is not opened is far from sinning."
