In the smoky haze of pre-Code cinema, Marlene Dietrich’s siren song lures men into a labyrinth of madness and despair, where love twists into something far more sinister.

 

Long before the stark shadows of film noir dominated screens, Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman (1935) wove a tapestry of psychological torment disguised as romantic intrigue. This overlooked gem from Hollywood’s golden age harbours dark horror elements that prefigure the obsessions of later thrillers, turning seduction into a weapon of the soul.

 

  • The film’s hypnotic portrayal of a femme fatale whose charm erodes sanity, blending melodrama with creeping dread.
  • Sternberg’s masterful use of light and shadow to evoke an atmosphere of inescapable psychological entrapment.
  • Its exploration of masochistic desire and illusionary love as harbingers of personal apocalypse.

 

The Siren’s Irresistible Call

At its core, The Devil Is a Woman unfolds in the sultry backdrop of 19th-century Spain, where Captain Luis Don Pedro (Lionel Atwill) recounts his fateful encounter with the enigmatic Donus Maria (Marlene Dietrich). Flashbacks reveal a woman who drifts through lives like a tempest, leaving wreckage in her wake. She first captivates a young lieutenant, Antonio Galvan (Cesar Romero), ensnaring him with her gypsy dances and whispered promises. When Pedro intervenes, ostensibly to save the boy, he falls prey to the same spell. Maria’s manipulations are subtle yet devastating: a stolen glance here, a fabricated tale of woe there, all orchestrated to feed her whims. The narrative builds tension through these layered deceptions, where each revelation peels back another layer of illusion, exposing the raw horror of vulnerability.

The film’s opening sequence sets a tone of foreboding elegance. Carnival revellers in Seville provide a colourful facade, but Sternberg’s camera lingers on Dietrich’s face, framed by veils and cigarette smoke, her eyes holding secrets that promise both ecstasy and ruin. This is no mere romance; it’s a descent into psychological quicksand. Supporting players like Alison Skipworth as the ageing Ines add pathos, her unrequited devotion to Maria mirroring the men’s folly. Edward Everett Horton brings comic relief as a hapless suitor, yet even his levity underscores the tragedy—laughter in the face of inevitable doom. The plot crescendos in a duel and a desperate chase, but the true climax lies in Pedro’s shattered illusions, a moment of horror as profound as any ghostly apparition.

Shadows That Consume the Soul

Sternberg’s visual style transforms the film into a psychological horror chamber. Cinematographer Ernest Haller employs chiaroscuro lighting to carve Dietrich’s features into ethereal masks, her shadows elongating like predatory tendrils. Interiors drip with opulent decay: velvet drapes in bordellos, flickering candlelight in hidden alcoves, all suggesting a world where desire festers into obsession. One pivotal scene unfolds in a confessional booth, where Maria’s lies intertwine with religious iconography, profaning the sacred and amplifying the profane horror of moral corruption. The camera’s slow pans across her adorned body—jewels, furs, lace—fetishize her as both idol and demon.

Mise-en-scène here serves dread’s architecture. Mirrors abound, reflecting fragmented selves and hinting at fractured psyches. In a memorable montage, Pedro’s descent is charted through hallucinatory dissolves: Maria’s laughter echoing, her silhouette multiplying like a nightmare swarm. Sound design, though rudimentary by modern standards, heightens unease—distant flamenco guitars twist into dissonant wails, underscoring emotional turmoil. These elements coalesce to evoke the horror of the uncanny: the familiar lover revealed as monstrous other. Sternberg, drawing from his German Expressionist roots, infuses the frame with angular compositions that trap characters, visually manifesting their mental prisons.

The Masochistic Abyss of Desire

Thematically, the film probes the terror of self-inflicted ruin. Maria embodies the Jungian anima gone rogue, a projection of male longing that devours its host. Pedro’s arc is a study in masochism; he knows her perfidy yet craves the lash of betrayal. Scenes of him pawning heirlooms for her luxuries pulse with grotesque pathos, his dignity evaporating in service to her caprice. Antonio’s youthful ardour fares no better, reduced to puppetry. Even secondary victims, like the Baron (John Lodge), succumb, their rational facades crumbling under her gaze.

Gender dynamics amplify the horror. In a pre-Code era unbound by Hays Office strictures, Maria wields sexuality as sorcery, subverting patriarchal norms. Her power terrifies because it’s innate, unearned by virtue of beauty alone—a primal fear of the uncontrollable feminine. Yet Sternberg humanizes her through fleeting vulnerabilities: a tear-streaked plea, a momentary tenderness. This ambiguity heightens dread; is she devil incarnate or merely human frailty magnified? The film anticipates Sunset Boulevard‘s Norma Desmond, but roots its horror in Edwardian decadence, echoing Huysmans’ À rebours where aesthetic excess breeds spiritual void.

Cinematographic Nightmares Unveiled

Sternberg’s direction dissects obsession with surgical precision. Close-ups on Dietrich’s lips parting around innuendo-laden dialogue create intimate horror, as if the viewer too risks ensnarement. Tracking shots follow characters through labyrinthine streets, symbolizing futile escape. The film’s rhythm mimics addiction’s cycle: languid seduction sequences accelerate into frantic pursuits, mirroring heartbeat’s escalation. Production notes reveal Sternberg’s autocratic set, clashing with Paramount executives over budget overruns, yet yielding a visual feast undiluted by compromise.

Censorship loomed large; released just before the Code’s enforcement, it flirts with taboo through implied bisexuality and nudity’s tease. Legends persist of Dietrich’s dominance, rewriting script on set, her persona bleeding into Maria. This meta-layer adds horror: art imitating the very manipulation it depicts. Compared to Sternberg’s earlier Dietrich vehicles like The Blue Angel, this iteration refines the template, stripping away cabaret bombast for intimate psychosis.

Echoes in the Horror Canon

The Devil Is a Woman casts long shadows over psychological horror. Its fatal attraction motif prefigures Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Polanski’s Repulsion, where feminine enigma unravels male composure. In slashers and gialli, the vampiric seductress evolves, but Sternberg’s version grounds her in emotional realism, making the terror visceral. Cult status grew post-restoration, influencing neo-noir like Black Swan, where artistic obsession devours. Culturally, it reflects Depression-era anxieties: escapist glamour masking economic despair, love as illusory salve.

Legacy endures in fashion and queer readings; Dietrich’s androgynous allure inspires drag and camp horror. Remnants surface in Mulholland Drive‘s doppelgangers, illusions shattering into abyss. Box-office failure at release—Paramount axed the Sternberg-Dietrich partnership—belies its endurance, a phoenix from commercial ashes.

Illusions Shattered: Special Effects and Artifice

For 1935, effects rely on optical wizardry and practical ingenuity. Double exposures blend Maria’s images in Pedro’s reveries, evoking ghostly hauntings. Matte paintings conjure Seville’s grandeur, their artificiality mirroring narrative deceit. Costumier Travis Banton drapes Dietrich in 47 changes, each gown a seductive trap—black lace evoking widow’s weeds, crimson evoking blood. These ‘effects’ forge psychological realism; no monsters needed when human frailty suffices.

Editing by Viola Lawrence quick-cuts between past and present, disorienting like trauma flashbacks, pioneering subjective horror. Sound mixing layers whispers over music, burrowing into subconscious—a technique echoed in The Innocents. Challenges abounded: Sternberg’s perfectionism ballooned costs to $800,000, scandalous then. Yet innovation triumphed, cementing its status as proto-horror artistry.

Director in the Spotlight

Josef von Sternberg, born Jonas Stern in Vienna on 29 May 1894, emerged from humble immigrant roots in New York City’s Lower East Side. Dropping out of school at 16, he toiled as a photographer’s assistant and film lab worker, honing an obsessive eye for light. His breakthrough came with Underworld (1927), a gangster saga that codified the crime genre with expressionist flair. Collaborating with Marlene Dietrich launched his zenith: The Blue Angel (1930) catapulted her to stardom, followed by six more Paramount vehicles blending exoticism and eroticism.

Sternberg’s style—baroque lighting, veiling actresses in mist—stemmed from painting influences like Rembrandt and orientalism. Exiled from Hollywood post-The Devil Is a Woman due to clashes with producers, he taught at UCLA, authored Fun in a Chinese Laundry (1965), a memoir blending philosophy and vitriol. Later works include The Saga of Anatahan (1953), a Japanese cannibal tale shot in colour. Filmography highlights: Salvation Hunters (1925), his debut; Thunderbolt (1929), Oscar-nominated; Shanghai Express (1932), box-office smash; The Scarlet Empress (1934), tsarist debauchery; The Last Command (1928), Hollywood satire; Crime and Punishment (1935), Dostoevsky adaptation; Jet Pilot (1957), Cold War romp with Howard Hughes. He died 22 December 1969 in Hollywood, leaving a legacy of auteur defiance.

 

Actor in the Spotlight

Marlene Dietrich, born Maria Magdalene Dietrich on 27 December 1901 in Berlin, navigated Weimar cabaret and silent films before Sternberg’s alchemy. Daughter of a military tailor and seamstress, she rebelled via violin studies and stage acting. The Blue Angel (1930) immortalised her as Lola Lola, thigh-gartered temptress. Hollywood embraced her contralto voice and tuxedoed glamour, navigating bisexuality rumours with poise.

World War II saw her USO tours, renouncing Nazi roots; she became American citizen in 1937. Post-war, she conquered stage revues, then faded into cabaret and Just a Gigolo (1978). Awards include Légion d’honneur (1950s) and AFI Lifetime Achievement (1993, posthumous nod). Filmography gems: Morocco (1930), bisexual kiss icon; Destry Rides Again (1939), comedic cowgirl; Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Hitchcockian twist; Touch of Evil (1958), Welles’ bordello madame; Rancho Notorious (1952), vengeance western; Scarlet Empress (1934), Catherine the Great; Desire (1936), jewel heist romp; Angel (1937), marital chill. She died 6 May 1992 in Paris, embodying eternal enigma.

 

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Bibliography

Ferguson, O. (1935) Review of The Devil Is a Woman. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/04/25/movies/the-devil-is-a-woman-with-marlene-dietrich-opens-last-of-sternberg-series.html (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Higham, C. (1977) Marlene: The Life of Marlene Dietrich. W.W. Norton & Company.

Sarris, A. (1968) The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968. Dutton.

Sternberg, J. von (1965) Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Macmillan.

Weinberg, H. G. (1975) The Lubitsch Touch: A Critical Study. Dover Publications [adapted for Sternberg parallels].

Williams, J. S. (2002) ‘Shadows of Desire: Sternberg and the Erotics of Vision’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 19(3), pp. 215-230.

Wood, R. (1989) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. Columbia University Press [contextual chapter on pre-Code].