a private burning of a "Master Print" of the film for the Spanish Ambassador in Washington D.C. This diplomatic action was widely reported in Europe, but surviving prints of The Devil Is a Woman continued to be screened at domestic and overseas theaters. In October 1935, Spain formerly requested that Paramount cease international circulation of the film. A portion of the complaint cited a scene that showed "a Civil Guard drinking [alcohol] in a public cafe", and depicting the national police as buffoons, who appeared "ineffectual in curbing the riotous carnival". Studio head Adolph Zukor "agreed to suppress the film" and prints were recalled in November 1935. Sternberg's feature was marked as a film maudit (a cursed film) for many years. The movie was subsequently outlawed in Francoist Spain. Critical response The Devil Is a Woman, in its "worldly attitude toward the follies of romantic infatuation" makes a mockery of Hollywood's standard plot devices that prevailed up to that time. Sternberg acknowledged that it was "my last and most unpopular of this series", but Dietrich herself cherished The Devil Is a Woman as her favorite collaboration with Sternberg. Ostensibly a light romance, the story examines that fate of a self-respecting and urbane older gentleman who foolishly falls in love with a beautiful woman indifferent to his adoration – and suffers for his passion. Sternberg's "grisly" tale is also a precise, unadorned and "heartless parable of man’s eternal humiliation in the sex struggle." Dietrich, as a "devilish" and "devastating" Spanish joie de vivre, brandishes her cruelty with the rejoinder "If you really loved me, you would have killed yourself". The horror and pathos of the Don Pasqual character is that of a man in thrall to a woman who has no intention of satisfying his desires, and who perversely "derives amusement from his own suffering." Andre Sennwald, daily reviewer at The New York Times in 1935, defended Sternberg, calling the movie "one of the most sophisticated ever produced in America" and praising its "sly urbanity" and "the striking beauty of its settings and photography." Museum of Modern Art film curator Charles Silver regards The Devil Is a Woman as a veiled confessional of Sternberg's complex relationship with Dietrich. The leading male protagonists bear a striking physical resemblance to the director. Sternberg leaves the interpretation of Dietrich's Concha a mystery: "One of the most beautifully realized enigmas in the history of cinema."