Directed by:
Josef von SternbergScreenplay:
John Dos PassosCast:
Marlene Dietrich, Lionel Atwill, Edward Everett Horton, Alison Skipworth, Cesar Romero, Don Alvarado, Stanley Price, Henry Roquemore, Charles Sellon (more)Plots(1)
Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich went out with a bang in their final film together, The Devil Is a Woman, a surreal tale of erotic passion and danger set amid the tumult of carnival in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Spain. Through a series of flashbacks, Captain Costelar (Lionel Atwill) recounts to the young Antonio Galvan (Cesar Romero) the story of his harrowing affair with the notorious seductress Concha Perez (Dietrich), warning his listener to gird himself against her charms. Despite his counsel, Galvan falls under Concha’s spell, leading to a violent denouement. Ever the ornate visual stylist, von Sternberg evokes Spanish culture with a touch of the luridly fantastic, further elevated by Travis Banton’s opulent costume design and award-winning cinematography by von Sternberg himself. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (1)
Personally, I see this substance as most appropriate for the constellation Marlene and Joe found themselves in after The Scarlet Empress... and again, as with the vast majority of the films on my list, I gasp at every frame. In this case, literally, because Joe was behind the camera. Concha Perez became the fate not only of Pasqualito but also of my little things.
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