Word: deviled
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Devil Is a Woman (Paramount). Marlene Dietrich is one of the most beautiful and dynamic actresses in Hollywood. Director Josef von Sternberg is an eccentric specialist who enjoys filling his camera lens with shadows, antique furniture, objects d'art and confetti. To most observers, these salient characteristics might suggest that, for the purpose of manufacturing profitable moving pictures, Director von Sternberg and Cinemactress Dietrich constituted less than an ideal partnership. To the executives of Paramount, on the other hand, they justified a series of five pictures (Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress), few of which made...
Adapted by John Dos Passos from a novel by Pierre Louys, filmed in Director von Sternberg's best darkly sardonic style, The Devil Is a Woman is a slow, rococo anecdote about the vicious sex-life of a Spanish cafe dancer (Dietrich) and the middle-aged army officer (Lionel Atwill) whose career is shattered by his morbid passion for her. Infinitely more adult in its approach to human values than such a picture as The Scoundrel (see above), this effort by one of Hollywood's most famed directors is correspondingly more childish in its manner. After winding through...
Dean Sperry reviews all the other opinions of Wordsworth's dismal anti-climax, giving in every case the devil his due and showing what facts each ignores. His own belief is, that Wordsworth in embracing the sensationalist psychology from Hartly, out of Locke and Hume, was pursuing a course detrimental to the continuation and enhancement of his poetic powers and the Dean gives his reasons lucidly and even persuasively...
...next scene, the wooden leg of pious but ignorant Minnie has been replaced by real, flesh and blood leg through the intercession of the lovely little devil. The leg, through sometimes a perfectly obedient leg, is under the control of some mysterious power...
There are three subtly hilarious dialogues to close out the play between the dainty little devil and the soul of the rector, the devil and the judging angel, and the devil and Minnie, with the blue-stockinged, red slippered appendage new well under control...