Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Forn55 "The Devil is a Woman" marks the end of the celebrated collaboration between Dietrich and von Sternberg and -- if rumor be true and the evidence of this film does tend to bear it out -- it came not a moment too soon for either one. As cold-hearted vamp Concha Perez, Dietrich spends a great deal of screen time pouting, posturing and being photogenically evil, while working her wiles on the likes of Lionel Atwill and Cesar Romero. But there's no heat in it, really; when Dietrich isn't acting mildly amused she appears to be mildly bored. Maybe she's thinking about the next costume change, which is perhaps understandable since she changes costumes about 2 million times during the course of this 75 minute movie. And what costumes they are! Like something out of a drag queen's fever dream. Being Dietrich, of course, she wears them beautifully and director von Sternberg makes sure she is photographed to a fare-thee-well while she's enswathed in them. But costumes and a star and beautiful cinematography (also credited, in part, to von Sternberg) really isn't quite enough to make this 1935 flick fly. John dos Passos is credited with writing the screenplay and it isn't much more than an excuse for Marlene to play the clotheshorse and blow smoke in a lot of mens' faces. This Woman, unfortunately, isn't the Devil; just a minor imp with a wardrobe the size of a Hollywood backlot.

peacecrusader888 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."

richard-1787 This is at best a confusing movie. The novel on which it is based, a minor classic of masochism, is the story of a Spanish nobleman who falls in love with a strange woman, Concha. She keeps leaving him, and so angers him that he finally beats her. She likes it, and the rest of the novel consists of his learning this and trying to come to terms with it.That, of course, was not going to work in post-Hayes Code Hollywood. There is a slight inkling of it after Lionel Atwil beats Concha once, but it is never developed. We therefore really have no idea why she doesn't go off with the far more handsome Cesar Romero at the end.So, what we have left are a lot of nicely shot black and white images - Sternberg knew how to shoot for the image - and the most remarkable series of outlandish costumes on Dietrich that Hollywood could provide. She plays Concha as petulant and that finally becomes obnoxious. So, as with some of the other Sternberg-Dietrich creations, this is best watched with the sound turned off. Fun to watch, but more show than substance.

Martin Bradley Marlene Dietrich is magnificent as Concha Perez, the temptress who drives all men to despair in Josef Von Sternberg's "The Devil is a Woman". Her performance has nothing to do with 'acting' in any conventional sense but she's incandescent, a true star in full command of her material. But she's the only good thing about the film, (she's so good she keeps you watching this dross; I doubt if any other actress could have done the same).The story is an appallingly lame melodrama, (surely Pierre Louys' novel was better), in which Dietrich's amoral Concha ruins the lives of two friends played by Lionel Atwill and Cesar Romero with a stiffness bordering on petrification. And for Von Sternberg it's an ugly looking movie, (maybe in keeping with its fairly ugly subject matter). Bunuel, on the other hand, thought enough of it to remake it as "That Obscure Object of Desire" with a greater emphasis on the surrealist aspects of it all, down to casting two different actresses in the same role. Neither film is either director's finest hour and while the Bunuel version may be the better film, it is Dietrich's 'performance' you remember.