The Devil's in Love: A dusty, weird little caper

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you are the type who needs a movie to make sense or stay in one genre for more than ten minutes, skip this. But if you have a soft spot for weird, forgotten studio era fluff where everyone talks like they are in a hurry to catch a train, you might find something here.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Devil's in Love (1933) through its definitive frames.

It is definitely not for anyone who hates dusty backlots or plots that feel like they were stitched together by three different people in the middle of a lunch break.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Devil's in Love (1933) through its definitive frames.

Notes from the cheap seats

The whole setup with the murder conviction is handled so fast it gave me whiplash. One minute he is a doctor, the next he is on the run, and suddenly we are in a completely different movie.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Devil's in Love (1933) through its definitive frames.

Loretta Young is doing the heavy lifting here, honestly. She is stuck in a script that barely knows what to do with her, but she is the only one who seems to remember that movies are supposed to have human beings in them.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Devil's in Love (1933) through its definitive frames.

There is this one scene where a character just... talks at a wall. I do not think the camera knew what to do, so it just stayed there for about six seconds too long. I checked my phone for a second and when I looked back, the tension had evaporated entirely.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Devil's in Love (1933) through its definitive frames.

The Bela factor

Bela Lugosi shows up, and you can practically feel the movie perk up. He is not doing much, but he brings this weird, heavy gravity that the rest of the film is missing. It makes you wonder what the movie would have been if it just let him run the show for a bit.

It is not as grand or technically ambitious as Napoleon, obviously. It is more like those breezy, slightly frantic things you find buried on a shelf next to The Common Law. It is just a movie that exists, you know?

Bits and pieces

• The uniforms look like they have been sitting in a storage locker since the Great War.
• The dialogue is mostly just people barking orders at each other while looking concerned.
• I swear the same three desert bushes appear in every outdoor shot.
• There is a moment involving a horse that I am 90% sure was not in the script.

It is not a good film by any standard metric. But it has this frantic, sweaty energy that is hard to totally dislike. Just do not go looking for high art. It is barely trying to be anything more than an hour of noise, and that is fine.