The Devil Is a Woman (1935) - film review

In the midst of a busy carnival in Spain, a young revolutionary named Antonio is attracted to Concha, a beautiful and elusive woman.  His friend Don Pasqual knows about Concha and warns him to leave her alone.  Years ago, when he was a respected military man, Don Pasqual also fell in love with Conca.  He gave her money, but she taunted him, and finally ran out on him forever.  Antonio is so moved by this story that he decides to return to France alone, but he can’t resist seeing Conca one more time...

The Devil is a Woman is the last of five films that director Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich who, by this stage, had become the ultimate glamour icon.  The film is both a résumé and parody of their previous collaborations, with Dietrich once again playing the seductive femme fatale that no man can resist.  But here the approach is far more subversive and playful.  Dietrich’s character is a truly heartless queen, picking up and discarding lovers with the casual nonchalance of a butterfly happily flitting from one flower to another, whilst powerful, self-respecting men fall helplessly at her feet, like moths drawn to the flame.

When it was first released, the film was misunderstood and was not a great success.   Even today, opinion is divided as to whether it matches up to the level of von Sternberg’s other great films.  It is certainly very different to the director’s previous Hollywood offerings, having much more in common with the work of the avant-garde filmmakers of the silent era.   The highly stylised art design and expressionistic photography create a world of dreamlike artificiality, within which the grotesquely caricatured opéra comique characters fit perfectly.  The whimsical style is at first off-putting but quickly becomes strangely alluring as we become conscious of the tragedy that lies beneath the light-hearted surface pastiche – the tragedy that we humans are governed by forces over which we have absolutely no control.   

The Devil is a Woman was based on the celebrated novel by Pierre Louys entitled "The Woman and the Puppet", which the great Spanish director Luis Buñuel later adapted as Cet obscur objet du désir (1977), with Carole Bouquet in the role of the temptress Conchita.

© James Travers 2008

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