Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Does no one see the similarity to Carmen? Even Marlena's last line, " I used to work in a cigarette factory."

As has been pointed out, "The Devil is a Woman" from 1935 is a feast for the eyes with its settings, costumes, and Marlene Dietrich.The film is told in partial flashback and takes place at the beginning of the 20th Century.During carnival in Spain, Antonio (Cesar Romero), a republican revolutionary, who has been exiled, arrives from Paris to participate in the festivities. He also visits with his friend Captain Don Costelar (Lionel Atwill), known to his friends as Pasqualito.Antonio meets Concha, a nightclub singer, and arranges to meet her later. Pasqualito, however, tells him that he had a relationship with Concha, and she ruined his life. Thus begins the flashback, where he tells Antonio what happened and makes his friend promise that he will never approach the greedy, heartless, cold Concha.This was the last von Sternberg-Dietrich collaboration. von Sternberg fills the screen with confetti, balloons, crowds, and people wearing outrageous masks. It's all very frenzied and filled with excitement.This little story is from a novel called "The Puppet Woman." Which she is. Dietrich is stunning as Concha, who flirts, cajoles, and indulges in dramatics in order to get who -- and what -- she wants. It's usually an older man with money, whom she corrals, takes up with a younger man, and leaves the older one. She is costumed in the most outlandish way tilted hats with brims that go out three feet, lace gowns. She's amazing.Both Cesar Romero and Lionel Atwill as her suitors are wonderful - Romero, as Antonio, is wanted by the police so he walks around a lot of the time resembling Zorro.Edward Everett Horton is the Mayor, also madly in love with Concha. He's hilarious as he yells at the police and is disgusted by the carnival. This film is only 80 minutes and well worth seeing. If you have read Maria Riva's book about her mother, there was an incredible amount of time taken with closeups and lighting, and she could hold a position for an unheard of amount of time. You'll see how immaculately she is photographed in this film.

I'm not too crazy about the storyline. She played Concha Perez, a Spanish woman, who is torn among men. Men fall easily in love with her beauty. Marlene Dietrich does a fantastic job with a weak script. I never bought the film set in Seville, Spain. It's too far fetched with the cast and out of the actors league. Only Cesar Romero fits into his role as one of the possible suitors. Alison Skipworth plays Marlene's character, Concha's mother. Personally, I would have loved to have seen more of Señora Perez. Alison Skipworth was one of the best female character actresses in comedy and drama. This 1935 film is really a great collaboration between Josef Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in her vehicle. Marlene Dietrich was a star, an original. This film does boast her talents but sadly the film is overshadowed by the weakness of trying to being something and somewhere it doesn't fit right like Spain. If the director and writer had rewritten and revised the setting because the cast like Dietrich, Skipworth, and others don't seem to fit into the scenery, it brings the film down. But still, it's a short film in comparison to today's films and it's just worth watching great actors at play.

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.