Film Review: The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel, 1930)

One of the least appreciated aspects of new film technologies is that they often solve problems by creating whole new set of complications and challenges. Early sound films give plenty of such examples, even those that became successful and iconic like The Blue Angel, 1930 German melodrama directed by Josef von Sternberg.

The film is based on Professor Unrat (“Professor Filth”), novel by Heinrich Mann. The plot is set in unnamed port city in Northern Germany and the main character is Professor Immanuel Rath (played by Emil Jannings), teacher who considers himself to be one of the more respected members of community. Rath, who lives alone, is actually not particularly liked by anybody, especially his students who detest his authoritarian ways of running the classroom. When he discovers that some of the students circulate provocative photographs of Lola Lola (played by Marlen Dietrich), main singer in seedy cabaret “The Blue Angel”, he is convinced that some of them frequent that place. He goes there to confront them, but instead ends in Lola’s dressing room where it doesn’t take long to be charmed and seduced by beautiful young woman. When they spend the night together, he misses his class and loses his job. Instead he marries Lola and but after few years his money dries up and he is forced to take humiliating jobs as member of Lola’s travelling troupe. It all culminates when he is forced to perform as clown in his home town while Lola in backstage doesn’t hide her adulterous intentions with young and dashing strongman Mazeppa (played by Hans Albers).

The Blue Angel was first fully sound film in the career of Austrian film maker Josef von Sternberg, who had already made his name with series of visually impressive melodramas and genre films in silent era Hollywood. It was also one of the more expensive and ambitious productions of UFA, studio that dominated cinema industry of interwar Germany. Producer Erich Pommer saw new sound technology as opportunity to provide audience with something that they couldn’t have experienced on screen before – music and talking. The script in which large sections of plot take place in cabaret, therefore, ideally served this purpose and allowed film to feature songs that would become great hits in decades to come. They include “Ich bin die Fesche Lolla” and “Ich bin von Köpf bis Fuss auf Liebe engestellt”, the latter used and film’s main theme and better known for his English language cover “Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It)”. All those songs were performed by Marlene Dietrich, who had been relatively unknown Berlin entertainer. Dietrich performs wonderfully in the film, although some of her performances are affected by still relatively poor quality of sound recordings, significantly inferior than on versions of the same songs recorded by Dietrich later on vinyl.

But it is Dietrich’s iconic presence on screen as “vampish” femme fatale that made this film huge success and instantly turned into major international star. Her costume, although relatively skimpy, is rather tame for the standards of Weimar Germany, but Dietrich nevertheless manages to oozes eroticism and seduce audience as easily as her character wins middle-aged buttoned-up conservative professor. Dietrich plays this role quite naturally. Lola isn’t calculated seductress; she meets, seduces and marries professor on impulse, just as she betrays him in the same way. Dietrich has the same effect on seemingly respectable middle-class intellectual as on crude sea captain (played by Wilhelm Diegelmann) as Rath’s young horny students. And she is quite aware that effect she has on man, by admitting in fatalistic song lyrics.

Emil Jannings, Swiss actor playing Professor Rath, was at the time production much bigger star than Dietrich, with successful Hollywood career that netted him the first Oscar for Best Actor. He gives very strong performance in Blue Angel, creating character that the audience can both despise, ridicule and take pity on at the film’s melodramatic finale. By strange irony, his fate in real life in some way resembled fate of Professor Rath. Unlike Dietrich, who immediately got herself a Paramount contract, went to Hollywood and became undisputed global star, he decided to stay in Germany and later supported Nazi regime and its propaganda efforts in Second World War, ending the life in infamy. This fate was, however, much kinder than one suffered by another cast member, Kurt Gerron, actor playing Kiepert, intimidating and manipulating magician and leader of Lola’s troupe. Fourteen years after this role Gerron, an Austrian Jew, was murdered by Nazis during Holocaust in most cynical and duplicitous way, after being coerced into helping their propaganda.

Those who watch The Blue Angel would also notice that film, despite being “talkie”, actually features relatively little dialogue. This is partly due to certain practical problems brought by sound technology. Unlike silent films, that could have easily been translated into foreign languages merely by inserting different intertitles, sound films required new technology. Dubbing was still considered too complicated and expensive, and so were the subtitles. Instead, a somewhat clunkier solution of problem (still practiced by various Indian cinema industries) was found in making the different version of the same film on different language. The Blue Angel, apart from original German, received English language version with the same plot, director and cast, which was, with great success distributed in USA and other Anglophonic countries. This version is, however, considered inferior to German language version, because actors, include more experienced Jannings, still had to struggle with heavy accents. Despite those difficulties, The Blue Angel became big international hit and secured its place in cinema history. Von Sternberg and Dietrich continued their cooperation in Hollywood resulting in five more films. The Blue Angel was later subjects of various remakes, including rather loose reinterpretation in Lola, 1981 drama by Rainer Werner Fassbinder starring Barbara Sukowa. Performance by Marlene Dietrich also inspired many memorable musical numbers like those of Helmut Berger in Visconti’s Damned, Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles or Carice Van Houten in Verhoeven’s The Black Book.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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