Images - That Obscure Object of Desire

<BODY bgcolor="#CCCC99"> <font size="2"><p>DVD Review <font size="4"><br>That Obscure Object of Desire</font> <br>by Gary Morris</font> <p>Pierre Louys’ novel <i>The Woman and the Puppet</i>, first published in 1898, has been a popular source for cinema, with at least seven adaptations starting as early as 1920 (an American silent by the same name) through 1982 (a German version called <i>Aphrodite</i>). Josef von Sternberg put his gossamer-and-smoke stamp on it in 1936 under the studio-enforced title of <i>The Devil Is a Woman</i>, with Dietrich as the heartless tease Concha Perez and first Lionel Atwill, then Cesar Romero, as her much-abused boytoys. The property suited Sternberg’s sadomasochistic worldview perfectly, but it would take Luis Buñuel, four decades later, to show what Sternberg could only suggest. <p><a href="default-nf.htm">Go to the review</a></font> </body>