En la estela de Carmen: Marlene Dietrich en "The Devil is a Woman"

• Autores: Hilaria Loyo Gómez
• Localización: Archivos de la filmoteca: revista de estudios históricos sobre la imagen, ISSN 0214-6606, Nº 51, 2005 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Carmen en Hollywood), págs. 48-65
• Idioma: español
• Títulos paralelos:
  • On Carmen’s Trail: Marlene Dietrichin The Devil Is a Woman
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• Dialnet Métricas: 2 Citas
• Resumen

  • Although Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman (1935) is not allegedly based on Mérimée’s novella or Bizet’s opera, many elements in the film bring the devilish character of Marlene Dietrich, Conchita Pérez, close to the figure of Carmen as sexual and ethnic other. The film is based on Pierre Louys’s novella “The Woman and the Puppet” (“La Femme et le pantin”, 1898), clearly indebted to Mérimée’s Carmen. This paper examines the extent to which the character of Dietrich follows, and the extent to which it departs from, the Carmen myth of female otherness.

    To achieve this goal, a comparative analysis of these narratives highlights their similarities and differences concerning aspects of gender, class and race in the construction of Carmen as a figure personifying the Spanish nation. A consideration of some relevant features composing Dietrich’s star persona as well as a general overview of in the different socio-historical contexts in the U.S.A. and Spain provide further insight into Dietrich’s defiance of Carmen’s fate as well as some explanation of the Spanish government’s condemnation of the film.