47. The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) (1930)

Directed By Joseph Von Sternberg

Synopsis

Highschool teacher falls in love with loose moraled singer. Spiral of decay. Death.

Review

We had seen Von Sternberg here before with Docks of New York. As I said in that review it was a very stylish, yet empty film. The Blue Angel solves that by adding great actors and a very well executed plot to a very stylish film.

Firstly let's get Marlene Dietrich out of the way. She's fabulous. There, she's not a great singer, or particularly pretty, neither has she got a particularly amazing body, but there is something. She is fantastic, a great actress full of je ne sais quois (trans: I have no fucking idea why she is so great, but she is). Now let's talk about the actual star of the film, Emil Jannings, who had already impressed me in Murnau's Last Laugh. Again he plays the part of the once dignified man spiralling into despair, and does it perfectly.

Jannings interpretation is at the same time funny, pathetic, sweet, despairing, insane and suicidally depressed and spectacularly believable. Towards the end, the humiliation scene is particularly chilling. And if you thought this film was a musical light romp you are wrong. I will never listen to Falling In Love Again with the same ears. Dietrich is the flame and Jannings is the moth, and the end is inevitable.

The film's plot is also interesting, almost a perversion of Shaw's Pygmalion. Watch it comparing it to My Fair Lady and it is quite funny. There are two versions of the film, and English and a German one. The German is far superior, firstly the camerawork is better and secondly German is the native language of the actors, which makes them more comfortable. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

* In the movie Aliens, actress Cynthia Dale Scott, who plays Corporal Dietrich (as in Marlene Dietrich) has the words "BLUE ANGEL" written on the back of her helmet.
* Jean-Marc Lofficier wrote Superman's Metropolis, a trilogy of graphic novels for DC Comics illustrated by Ted McKeever, the third of which was entitled Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon, with the plot partly derived from The Blue Angel.