Crammed
The Devil Is a Woman (1935, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich) looks typical of the director's previous Hollywood films, like The Scarlet Empress and Shanghai Express. Its theme, of a man obsessed with a woman who just uses him, can be seen with greater effect in von Sternberg's German language The Blue Angel, also starring Dietrich. Still, The Devil Is a Woman has its moments, especially those highlighting Dietrich's beauty. I've never seen her more luminous or gorgeous than in this film. Von Sternberg did the cinematography, and also put his own relationship with Dietrich into the story.
They'd had an intimate connection but that was over with by the time of this film. The first half shows a series of flashbacks, as a Spanish officer (played by Lionel Atwill) relates the story of his painful and chaotic relationship with Concha (Dietrich), a singer. Over a period of about five years, she brought him to the heights of lusty enjoyment in life, but always made him jealous with other men, extracting money from him, giving and taking from him emotionally. He tells his woeful tale to a former junior officer (Cesar Romero) who's received an invitation from Concha.
"Avoid Concha at all costs!" Atwill warns.
Romero says, Of course. He proceeds to get involved with her. Magnetic and flashy, she's too much to resist. Atwill gets back into the turmoil, making another attempt with her, causing a dispute between Romero and himself. There's a near-fatal duel in a heavy rain, a police investigation, an escape from Spain into France, with Concha leaving Romero at the border as his train chugs away.
The plot is pure potboiler and doesn't really matter when compared with the rich images. In the films of von Sternberg's heyday, culminating with The Shanghai Gesture (1941), his style was unique, the images a complex world of artifice. Almost every frame in The Devil Is a Woman, and this is true of most of his 1930s films, is jam-packed with objects, with flurries of motion. Confetti, long streamers of paper flying through the air during Carnival, grotesque masks, architecture filling the frame with weird and elaborate curlicues; it's as if the director wanted to completely fill cinematic space. Consequently, this film, like The Scarlet Empress, owes much of its liveliness to the stylized angles and vivid movements of objects and people that von Sternberg for reasons known to him wanted his viewers to contemplate.
The Devil Is a Woman stands out, apart from the visuals, for its use of sound. In several instances, sound from the next scene starts up before the present scene is finished, or the sound hangs on from the previous scene. This kind of thing is done sometimes in films from the 1960s on, but to hear it done in 1935 is surprising.
The film was largely made before the Hays Code became official in July 1934, thus, seventeen minutes were cut, including a reportedly racy song and dance number. This longer version of the film doesn't exist, unfortunately. Parts of the surviving eighty minute version seem hurried, the plot weak in spots. Concha's relationship with Romero may have been one of the elements that suffered cuts to satisfy the Hays Code.
Whatever the case, Lionel Atwill's performance as the doomed Captain (and stand-in for the real Josef von Sternberg making a very personal film about his up and down relationship with Marlene Dietrich) is excellent. I've seen Atwill in Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax Museum, found him a bit stiff in those films, but in The Devil Is a Woman, he's a commanding screen presence, great at portraying a proud, pussywhipped, foolish, but in the end, noble man wasting his time with a beautiful pain in the ass.
Vic Neptune
The Devil Is a Woman (1935, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich) looks typical of the director's previous Hollywood films, like The Scarlet Empress and Shanghai Express. Its theme, of a man obsessed with a woman who just uses him, can be seen with greater effect in von Sternberg's German language The Blue Angel, also starring Dietrich. Still, The Devil Is a Woman has its moments, especially those highlighting Dietrich's beauty. I've never seen her more luminous or gorgeous than in this film. Von Sternberg did the cinematography, and also put his own relationship with Dietrich into the story.
They'd had an intimate connection but that was over with by the time of this film. The first half shows a series of flashbacks, as a Spanish officer (played by Lionel Atwill) relates the story of his painful and chaotic relationship with Concha (Dietrich), a singer. Over a period of about five years, she brought him to the heights of lusty enjoyment in life, but always made him jealous with other men, extracting money from him, giving and taking from him emotionally. He tells his woeful tale to a former junior officer (Cesar Romero) who's received an invitation from Concha.
"Avoid Concha at all costs!" Atwill warns.
Romero says, Of course. He proceeds to get involved with her. Magnetic and flashy, she's too much to resist. Atwill gets back into the turmoil, making another attempt with her, causing a dispute between Romero and himself. There's a near-fatal duel in a heavy rain, a police investigation, an escape from Spain into France, with Concha leaving Romero at the border as his train chugs away.
The plot is pure potboiler and doesn't really matter when compared with the rich images. In the films of von Sternberg's heyday, culminating with The Shanghai Gesture (1941), his style was unique, the images a complex world of artifice. Almost every frame in The Devil Is a Woman, and this is true of most of his 1930s films, is jam-packed with objects, with flurries of motion. Confetti, long streamers of paper flying through the air during Carnival, grotesque masks, architecture filling the frame with weird and elaborate curlicues; it's as if the director wanted to completely fill cinematic space. Consequently, this film, like The Scarlet Empress, owes much of its liveliness to the stylized angles and vivid movements of objects and people that von Sternberg for reasons known to him wanted his viewers to contemplate.
The Devil Is a Woman stands out, apart from the visuals, for its use of sound. In several instances, sound from the next scene starts up before the present scene is finished, or the sound hangs on from the previous scene. This kind of thing is done sometimes in films from the 1960s on, but to hear it done in 1935 is surprising.
The film was largely made before the Hays Code became official in July 1934, thus, seventeen minutes were cut, including a reportedly racy song and dance number. This longer version of the film doesn't exist, unfortunately. Parts of the surviving eighty minute version seem hurried, the plot weak in spots. Concha's relationship with Romero may have been one of the elements that suffered cuts to satisfy the Hays Code.
Whatever the case, Lionel Atwill's performance as the doomed Captain (and stand-in for the real Josef von Sternberg making a very personal film about his up and down relationship with Marlene Dietrich) is excellent. I've seen Atwill in Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax Museum, found him a bit stiff in those films, but in The Devil Is a Woman, he's a commanding screen presence, great at portraying a proud, pussywhipped, foolish, but in the end, noble man wasting his time with a beautiful pain in the ass.
Vic Neptune
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