Never saw anything by either of them until last week, when I bit into "The Devil Is a Woman". Classiquay! I decided to use it for a critique I needed to make for an application.
In case you aren't interested in the critique, then just skip it and let's dig into this fab film collab.
Critique follows:
Upon first viewing Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman (1935), I was struck by two things that stood out from the film. The first is the unconventional screenplay structure, wherein the ostensible protagonist, Antonio (Cesar Romero), centers the audience’s attention for the first ten minutes or so until running into an old friend, Captain Pasqual (Lionel Atwill). At this point, the Captain begins to recount what seems to be a quick flashback – but this too is a sly trick, for the Captain’s tale dominates the entire film, taking up a full forty minutes. With a great sleight of hand, the Captain actually steals away the predominating role of the piece until Antonio becomes practically a pawn in the larger picture (which he indeed is).
The sense of haunting is only furthered by the fact that Antonio has not yet met Concha (Marlene Dietrich), who is the centerpiece of the film, the unmoved mover around which the entire universe rotates with an absolute minimum of affect by her. Concha’s first appearance, tellingly, is masked, and thus we are conscious that the Concha being recounted in the Captain’s tale is not necessarily the Concha of reality; thus the desire of Antonio to still see Concha and even believe her when she denies toying with the Captain is reflected within the audience. Finally, the third act in which Pasqual forces a duel upon Antonio inverts the tension by forcing a choice upon Concha with the permanence of death – something even she cannot undo by her wiles. Thus the slight first act (or prelude) of the present runs into the flashbacks of the past in the second act – the future, inevitably, must be tainted with the bile and blood of the past and present.
Concha’s irresistible pull, however, ultimately trumps the Pasqual’s force to control the narrative, and thus she reveals, through her guile and connections, that she is, has been, and will always be the predominant force guiding the story. Perhaps she even leaves Antonio at the end because to give herself to him would be to give up her authoritative stance in the film – and as Dietrich herself is ally and hammer of von Sternberg, Dietrich/Concha can be said to be von Sternberg himself, directing the scenes, working the actors to the performance and response she/he wants.
The other salient feature of the film is the magnificent use of cinematography to further the sense of evocation by Pasqual in the second act, filled with soft focus and cloudiness, both obscuring and sentimentalizing the past and thus, by extension, demonstrating that he still loves Concha, no matter what. A motif that seems to arise frequently is that of eyes and masks, and the sharp angles of the Captain contrast well with the seductive emphasis on Dietrich’s eyes, the most noticeable part of her while masked at the beginning. Antonio’s eyes, even masked, ultimately reveal him as a hopeless romantic, and he never betrays that, even in the duel with his friend. The masking itself helps to hold back any observation about Concha herself, character-wise, prior to the Captain’s flashbacks, and thus re-colors our perceptions of her in closer alignment with Antonio when we do finally meet her as she is and not as she is framed by Pasqual.
Ultimately, the film uses its economy and unusual pacing well to provide for a very brief jaunt that feels more like a vast personal epic and thus transcends its otherwise obvious studio set and production to actually make the audience feel that not only are we in Spain, but that this did indeed happen, and that these are totally and fully fleshed out people. Because von Sternberg allows everyone to retain their humanity without glossing over their flaws and misperceptions, his treatment of his characters can only be said to be magisterial. While I have not seen any other von Sternberg or Dietrich pictures, I am certain that I will be watching many more in the weeks to come.
― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 12 July 2003 21:46 (twenty years ago) link
six years pass...
nine years pass...
one year passes...
Well, an inaugural viewing of Shanghai Express was a helluva way to kick off the new filmic year (particularly since I capped off 2020 with the abysmal King of Jazz, easily the worst Criterion release I've seen). Was pleasantly surprised to discover that Morbs and I gave it the same Letterboxd rating (he'd be so proud!). I've been enjoying the box set (Dietrich is a beguiling delight throughout, Sahara was lightweight but similarly sumptuous, and Dishonored was a better version of Garbo's overly-melodramatic Mata Hari from later that same year) but this is where things really clicked for me. I've been watching so many films from this particular era lately and I haven't encountered anything else that's as visually/compositionally dazzling but in such an understated way. As if I was watching a less tits-out Berkeley production, if that makes sense. It felt truly lived-in and immersive, like Altman's production design. The story was...well, it didn't get in the way.
― Telly Salivas (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 5 January 2021 00:49 (three years ago) link
two months pass...
Booming post, Old Lunch.
I don't recall viewing the ending as ambiguously as you did, but I find it easy to ignore a most post-Code 30s and 40s films' endings (e.g., Lang's Ministry of Fear which I just watched and ends with an absurdly cheerful wedding preparation joke between two people who should be psychologically shattered by their recent experiences).
I'd add the opening segment where Marshall and friends stumble on the bathing women to the setpiece list. Totally dreamy, which seems like a purely aesthetic choice at first but then makes works perfectly as that meeting story becomes the child's bedtime myth version of his parents.
― rob, Sunday, 7 March 2021 14:59 (three years ago) link