User Reviews

It's almost hard for me to picture what I will tell about The Blue Angel to those I recommend it to. It's a very special movie, and not necessarily for the only reason that some remember the film mostly for. Of course, Marlene Dietrich, in her debut, is stunningly sexy, in clothing in some scenes (and the legs of course) that must've caused some turned eyebrows on its first release. But despite her great charisma, and a certain feminine attitude that was unique for the time, there is really another big factor that makes the Blue Angel work a lot more for me than I thought. Hearing about the film, I got the impression it might be more of a vehicle for Dietrich, the inspiration for what would come in Madeline Kahn's equally memorable turn in Blazing Saddles. What I didn't expect was such a well-rounded, bittersweet kind of story going along, not to mention a sublime, powerful lead performance.

It's really the story of Professor Rath, played without a cue missed (and with some of his own ingenuity) by Emil Jannings. Here is a teacher with high morals, and little tolerance for his College student's impudence. He finds out from a classmate interrogation that some of the kids are sneaking off to 'the Blue Angel', a club with dancers, music, and singing in half-naked costumes. He meets Lola (Dietrich) and against all his better judgment, he falls in head over heels, loses his job, and then...well, it might be best to leave it there. What then ensues is a sort of collision of an enriching structure from director Josef von Sternberg (in that the unexpected occurs at times, if only in the little behaviors and bits of business with the characters), and Janning's acting.

I loved how it sort of went past the barriers that might have stifled other filmmakers at the turn of the start of silent to sound- the musical numbers makes the Blue Angel club seem hypnotic, sensual, and a little crazy. Then the use of the camera, its stillness most times, focusing on the subtleties of the acting, bring forward the remnants of the finely-tuned theatrical acting from the silent era. What Jannings does here is make a character with a total arc, in this sort of downward spiral that soon occurs once he's made his decision in terms of how he feels vs his career. The last twenty minutes or so, when it finally comes back around for the teacher a 180- from respected teacher to, well, you'll see- is rather shocking, and not as light and amusing as during the first forty minutes or so.

But it also shows that Jannings, more often than not, is fearless in his timing and expressions. It's not a completely realistic performance here and there, but it sometimes doesn't need to be. Sternberg sets up such a mood that persists, with little touches (i.e. Shots of the statues moving as the clock chimes, expressionistic angles), that give Janning's enough room to do what he does. He helps make the character, who at first seems very expectable and usual (a cranky teacher) into someone we care about. Of course, one doesn't discount Dietrich's presence in the film as enough to seek out the film. She doesn't necessarily give a great acting turn, but in terms of just a great screen presence at times, of providing enough airs to make it clear why Janning's character is falling for her like this. That there are good supporting actors all around them is a plus as well.

It's one of those rare films you might smile one minute and then get a little sad at the next. It's quite a lovely little movie.

"The Blue Angel" from 1930 made a star out of Marlene Dietrich and has a great performance by Emil Jannings. It's a very dark tale of obsession leading to degradation.

The film is based on a novel by Heinrich Mann directed by Josef von Sternberg. It concerns a professor (Jannings) who goes to a club, The Blue Angel, where he learns his students go, and meets the hypnotic Lola (Dietrich). He falls in love with her, marries her, and starts down a road that leads to hell.

This is a movie about images -- a dead bird, the magnificent Lola, Jannings as a clown, his descent into madness, his image in a mirror, and the final shot of him, utterly destroyed, at his old professor desk.

This is German filmmaking at its best. Von Sternberg and Dietrich would head for America; Jannings, a Nazi collaborator, would stay put. Later Dietrich called him a "ham." He does give a big performance, but somehow, it isn't over the top.

On a side note - Jannings was the winner of the first Academy Award, but in reality, he placed second. The winner? Rin Tin Tin. The Academy believed it wouldn't put them in a good light to give the award to a dog, so they denied Rin his award and gave it to Jannings instead. It's said he used to carry it with him.

I guess I wasn't sure what to expect ... all I knew about "Blue Angel" before I saw it tonight was that it had Marlene Dietrich in it and it was supposed to be a classic. That's it! I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the story that this movie told.

To summarize the plot briefly: A stern, straight-laced professor (movingly portrayed by Emil Jannings, an actor I am not familiar with) falls in love with and marries Lola (Marlene Dietrich), a nightclub/cabaret singer. He is briefly happy, but then his life takes a tragic nose-dive into disrespectability and self-loathing.

Although the professor is portrayed as a stern disciplinarian who is feared and hated by his students, we see he actually has a very soft, sweet side underneath his gruff exterior. A particularly well-done, subtle scene at the very beginning of the movie involved the professor at breakfast, whistling for his pet bird. Anticipating the bird's tweeting response, the professor is ready with a lump of sugar in his hand for his beloved bird. When the bird doesn't respond, he walks to the cage and pulls out a stiff, obviously dead bird. The professor just stands there, dumbfounded, while his housekeeper walks over to him, takes the bird corpse from his hand, and tosses it into the fire. The professor walks back to his table and sadly drops the lump of sugar into his coffee. A simple scene, but terribly moving, and terribly telling of the sweet, sensitive soul that lies within this man.

Upon marrying Lola, the professor is shunned by his colleagues and loses his college job. He is reduced to hawking sexy postcards of his wife at her nightclub shows and, even more pathetically, to performing as a clown in her nightclub act.

The end of the movie finds the professor returning to The Blue Angel, the nightclub in his hometown where he first met Lola. He adamantly refuses to go on stage as a clown in front of his former colleagues and students, but the manager and his wife coerce him into it. This scene brought me to tears as the professor stood on stage in clown make-up and costume, while the manager/magician poked fun at him and made him the butt of jokes -- calling him empty-headed, breaking eggs on his forehead, and forcing him to cluck like a chicken, all the while his wife is offstage making out with some handsome stranger who showed up at the show. So sad, and so tragic.

Emil Jannings did an amazingly wonderful job of portraying this multidimensional professor. The movie was in German with English subtitles, so for me it wasn't so much the words that he said, but his facial expressions that conveyed the emotions to me.

The pacing of this movie might feel slow to viewers of modern-day go-go-go movies, but I feel the pace was exactly right for exploring the characters and emotions of both the professor and Lola.

If you have the patience for subtitled, slowly-developing movies, I do highly recommend this one.

My rating: 8/10

The film which was released in 1930 had propelled Marlene Dietrich (and her singing and her legs) to the international stardom. But the film belongs to Emil Jannings in the role of the respected, straight-laced, balding, aging, and portly High School English Professor who became absolutely obsessed by Dietrich's Lola - a cabaret's singer and dancer. His first step toward cabaret "The Blue Angel" was his first step to humiliation, madness, ruin, and ultimately, death. It is not the first time in the history or in Art when a man falls for a wrong (for him) woman ("Carmen", anyone?) and loses his mind, his status, and his life because of her but it is certainly one of the most heartbreaking stories that started as a light musical comedy and came to the sad but inevitable ending.

You remember when Melanie sang 'I've got a brand new pair of roller skates, you've got a brand new key"? The subliminal subtext was more than palpable, and it's what I immediately thought of when Lola Lola sang "But I don't let any man lay a paw on my keys". When Melanie Safka wrote her song there wasn't any hidden agenda there, she said "I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties tune", while people hearing it read their own ideas into the lyrics. Well, so much for that.

This film just struck me the wrong way on all kinds of levels. There's no way I could rationalize the attraction Lola (Marlene Dietrich) could have had for Professor Rath (Emil Jannings). I could see it going the other way of course, who wouldn't, but at the same time, the Professor would not have had a realistic view of himself to have fallen for a cabaret singer like Lola. Sure, the physical attraction was there, but throwing one's own life away for an unattainable goal seemed quite unrealistic. And yet, she married him anyway. Wow, I don't get it.

It's difficult for me to figure out what director von Sternburg was trying to convey here. Throughout, I never got the impression that Lola loved Rath, and after four years of married life she threw him over for the Maestro Mazeppa (Hans Albers), another man for whom there didn't seem to be any attraction. Rath going berserk and getting the strait jacket treatment was probably the most realistic aspect of the story for me, otherwise most of the film just didn't resonate with this viewer.