Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg: one of the great early pairings of director and star. They were an excellent, dynamic team during the 1930s, many of Dietrich’s best remembered roles and looks alike came from her seven collaborations with Sternberg, who plucked her out of obscurity in Germany and brought her to Hollywood. Just before that though they made one film together on European soil. Sternberg, who had built a career in the States, had been lured back by the prospect of directing Germany’s first sound movie starring one of its’ great early export actors: Emil Jannings -whom Sternberg had directed to the first ever Academy Award win for Best Actor in The Last Command. The subject would be an adaptation of an important novel by socialist writer Heinrich Mann, Professor Unrat, renamed (possibly for greater marketing purposes) The Blue Angel. It is the story of a middle-aged professor’s fall from grace in pursuit of a seductive young cabaret performer. For this part, Sternberg cast an entrancing Berlin stage actress whom he himself it seemed had been seduced by.
The Blue Angel, along with Fritz Lang’s M the following year, feels like the last breath of the Weimar German drama, in the vein of something like Pandora’s Box in some of its’ themes and bleakness. Its’ design and aesthetics as well, they feel very rooted in the cinematic language of the late silent period, from the set designs, to the expressive costuming, to the contrasts. Yet it feels immortal -or somewhat out of time, its’ moral structure beyond specificity. The movie’s largely a comedy -though its’ farcical elements aren’t as potent as its’ classical tragic ones. It still is powerful in its’ incisive, uncompromising themes, and the nature of its’ story, a blueprint for several movies to come, as well as the ways it interestingly mirrors reality for its’ featured leads.
Jannings is Immanuel Rath, a much mocked professor at a gymnasium (in Germany, a school to prepare students for university) who finds his class circulating photographs of a cabaret singer called Lola Lola (Dietrich). Evidently wanting to police their moral character he goes to the club, the Blue Angel, to catch them -only to meet and become infatuated with Lola himself. This obsession soon leads to him giving up his career, marrying Lola, and subsequently being emasculated through various indignities forced on him as a showbiz husband -ultimately playing the clown in her routine.
Rath was written originally as a direct satire of the German elite class, with his downfall being a satisfying comeuppance given his wealth and social privilege. That it should happen because of a libertine young woman in working class entertainment only adds to the cathartic humiliation. But such open disdain for the beneficiaries of class politics didn’t play well in 1930, and especially if one wanted a film to do well in America, so Sternberg lent Rath a degree of pathos, gave him some humanity. He is still a hopelessly pathetic figure but you can feel for him on some level -understand the sadness of his life’s purpose giving way to being an object of ridicule by youth; the tragedy of this amplified when he quite literally becomes the worlds’ saddest clown, jeered at with even greater viciousness. At the same time, he is the only architect of his own misfortunes, the film acting in many ways as a cautionary tale on impulsivity, giving in to the whims of lust.
What makes The Blue Angel interesting and puts it ahead of even several films that came after, is the way it subtly subverts the seductress trope. Often these types of stories will present the woman as a femme fatale who lures the man to his fate. Not so in this case. Lola is not seen to consciously seduce Rath (why would she, he’s a much older man). They first meet by happenstance, and though she is buoyant and flatters him, she’s missing several of the usual coding signifiers. Her demeanour and body language don’t ever suggest such a thing -at least not to him specifically. Her show itself is full of sensuality (she has that famous erotic pose with her leg upright as she sings “Falling in Love Again” -a Dietrich signature that I had no idea originated here), but outside of that she just seems to be a professional if modestly sexually liberal performer who is honestly charmed by Rath, perhaps to some level of irony, but with an authentic interest. It is Rath himself who contrives further meetings, who “accidentally” steals her panties to return them the next night, who goes out of his way to defend her against burly critics with lecherous designs. There’s no sign of manipulation on her part, although her attitude to their relationship doesn’t seem to be serious. Yes she sleeps with him, but afterwards laughs in bewilderment at his proposal of marriage -she still accepts, but one could imagine that being due to his fortuitous station in life. And of course later we see she certainly isn’t sexually exclusive. But again it doesn’t play her for wicked in this, even her sexual openness doesn’t seem tied to morality. Sternberg never suggests she’s entirely blameless, there’s clearly some social climbing going on, but all of it comes down ultimately to Rath’s choices, his mistakes, his susceptibility to his foolish desires.
And it takes place in this world that is a kind of stylized imagining of that era’s Berlin. Sternberg’s scope of this film seems small -not only in the sparse number of locations but in the sometimes claustrophobic look to them. This is especially apparent in the last act where Rath is being constrained by his limitations in this relationship -the Blue Angel even seems smaller in his final performance there. Sternberg is known for the specificity of his compositions, often in reference to aesthetics of Baroque art -a classic example of this is the shot of Dietrich’s illuminated face looking upward in Shanghai Express, evocative of something like Rembrandt. And in subtler ways it can be found in The Blue Angel as well, such as in the framing of Lola’s performances, in which figures behind her are mere flat extras as the lighting settles on her form. In various medium shots, elements in the background are deliberately unfocused centring the faces more -and this has a particular effect when it comes to Rath in his clown make-up, which makes him look less like a clown than a deformed vagabond. It’s an immensely pitiable look that conveys a very Quasimodo kind of sadness to him, especially with that cone around his neck and that frown.
To the whole of Rath’s arc, there’s a pathos there that resonates beyond the confines of the movie, though perhaps a less empathetic one. Jannings had been a relatively significant, respected actor of the silent era in both Germany and Hollywood -and he had had a working relationship with Sternberg. But on this film, meant to be a major vehicle for himself, Sternberg was clearly pushing Dietrich as much as possible, to Jannings’ consternation. And indeed, despite his billing and the commendable intensity of his performance, she overshadowed him in the movie itself and in all conversation about it. The Blue Angel became her star-making film, while for Jannings, like Rath, it marked the beginning of his downfall. This was the last movie he made for Sternberg and for Hollywood audiences. Shortly after, Sternberg and Dietrich went back to the States, while he remained in Germany. He remained in Germany in 1933 while dozens of his contemporaries fled, and as the Nazi regime took hold, he became one of the foremost stars of their propaganda machine. While Dietrich was conquering Hollywood, Jannings’ reputation in most of the world swiftly became dirt, playing exaggerated German heroes, disgusting Jewish villains. And after the war, he could barely again find work. Dietrich went on to a long and celebrated career, either forgetting Jannings or talking shit about him, dying peacefully in old age in 1992. Jannings’ name stuck around merely as Oscar trivia, and the first blight on that institution -he died in near-obscurity in 1950. As in the movie, a tragedy of his own making; Rath brought down as Lola rises. It’s as uncanny as it is appropriate.
Marlene Dietrich really is the star of the show. Anyone coming to the movie for the first time is watching for her, and she is fantastic. An instant icon radiating a certain confident presence unlike any before her, and with a style utterly entrancing -to be only beat by her later film of 1930, Morocco. Sternberg’s “discovery” of her really was something to be proud of. Her debut in The Blue Angel kind of overshadows the film itself, especially her musical performances, but it is still such a fascinating piece of art that represents so many crossroads in its’ history; between silent and talkie, the end of the Weimar era and the encroachment of the Nazis, an outgoing star and an incoming one, and two different styles of moral narratives that meet curiously here. A beginning and an end can both be found in The Blue Angel, one of the great unsung works of classic gothic cinema.
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