Classic Gold
Author: The_unemployed_cynic from Netherlands
22 December 2001
First -and only- time I saw Der Blaue Engel, I was a boy of about 13-14 years old. Even though this was over 35 years ago, I still remember how this movie blew me away. I came out of the theater with a new understanding of the world and the human condition.
The story is in essence about love, and what it can make a person do. It is also about what people will do to each other, a theme this movie takes to it's extreme. The acting is supreme, the atmosphere breathtaking, the music score fabulous. Marlene sings one of the great songs in movie history; German cabaret pur sang.
This is a European film in the best sense of the word. It gives the spectator the feeling of being picked up and dropped somewhere in time and place, to witness a dramatic sequence of events in the lives of a small group of people. It starts out jolly enough, but pretty soon you feel that things are going to go terribly wrong. And sure enough, they do.
The young boy that was I, left this movie with a weird mixture of feelings. On the one hand the fear of ever being trapped in such a romantic cul-de-sac, and of losing all human dignity. On the other, a deep longing to experience those bitter emotions. Isn't this the greatest accolade for a tragedy: that it moves you to tears, but at the same time makes you want to experience the sad events that caused those tears?
26 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
A classic of cinema
Author: radlov from Luxembourg
15 November 1999
This movie should merit a place in the upper region of the 250 top movies, somewhere in the neighborhood of "Citizen Kane" and "Twelve Angry Men". Apparently it is not very well known in the USA.
In Germany and in countries where the German language is rather familiar, it is rightly considered as one of the classics of cinema.
Amazing, that Sternberg, only a couple of years after the invention of the "talky" could produce a masterpiece that has seldom been surpassed. It was this movie that launched the carreer of Marlene Dietrich, with her famous song "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt".
I had seen the movie many years ago. When I saw it for the second time about a year ago, I realized that Emile Jennings acting, as the rather silly teacher at the local grammar school who sacrifies his career because of a cabaret girl, was not less impressive than that of Marlene Dietrich. A pity that I did never see another film with this great actor.
32 out of 42 people found the following review useful:
28 out of 36 people found the following review useful:
Indelible images
Author: marie_D from California
26 February 2000
I just got through watching The Blue Angel (1930) for the second time in a month. When I was watching the beginning this time, I thought: oh, this isn't as powerful as I remembered. I even thought Jannings was overdoing it a little -- he couldn't be as good as I remembered. And then it absolutely knocked me for a loop all over again.
Bear in mind that I have a tape that cost $3.98. The film looked old and scratchy, the tape quality was bad, and the sound was poor. This is one of the very earliest sound movies and the sound technique was sometimes distracting. After the first 20 minutes, I couldn't have cared less about the technology. The images of this film are burned into my brain. The business at the very beginning with the dead bird and the sugar cube, the caricatures on the blackboards, Lola's reaction to the marriage proposal, the wedding party and, most of all, the entire last half hour of this film -- none of that left me in the three weeks since my first viewing and it lost none of its impact the second time around.
Emil Jannings was just absolutely wonderful. His face in the mirror toward the end is heartbreaking. He doesn't have to say a word. This was Dietrich's debut, and she is great too, but it is Jannings' picture.
Highly recommended. 10/10
20 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
an entertaining, funny/sad classic
Author: MisterWhiplash from United States
28 December 2005
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.
23 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
Descent Into Hell
Author: howdymax from Las Cruces, New Mexico
7 January 2002
I think this is more a commentary on the human condition than it is a movie review. von Sternberg presents Professor Rath as pompous, rather inflexible and naive, and then reduces him gradually to a pitiful, self-debasing wretch - much like Tyrone Power's character in "Nightmare Alley". Rath, appears to me, not so much the victim as a drunken jaywalker who wanders out into traffic and is totally shocked when he is hit by a truck. Emil Jannings, without doubt, delivers everything that von Sternberg could have asked for.
I have never been a big Marlene Dietrich fan, but I have to admit that, in this early effort, her utter sexuality and the casual way she dispenses it is hypnotic. Her character is also complex. Between her first encounter with Rath and those final scenes, her attitude toward him changes from amusement and ridicule to concern, pity, and even affection. His return to his home town and his descent into total degradation is painful to watch, yet she chooses this opportunity to humiliate him even further by offering herself to Mazeppa while he watches. I'm baffled.
The corruption and hopelessness of the German cafe circuit is a perfect backdrop for this study of the human condition. When one reaches their absolute nadir - like Rath - there are few choices left. Suicide, violent hostility, or if you are lucky - the determination and will to climb out of the cesspool. Rath was a day late and a reichsmark short. I would like to think that if he had more time he would have made it.
18 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Humiliation, Degradation, Despair
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York
7 June 2007
Proper and respectable Emil Jannings, a teacher at a boys high school takes quite an interest in their moral well being. Seems there's this naughty establishment called The Blue Angel in his town where women have been known to entertain in various states of undress. Some of his boys have some postcards of one of the dancers and Jannings catches them with it. After confiscating the material, Jannings decides to go down to the Blue Angel and tell them not to be catering to minors.
Of course he takes one look at the subject of those naughty postcards and since it turns out to be Marlene Dietrich, he realizes his own education has been sadly neglected.
He's spotted the kids in the establishment, but they've spotted him as well. From an authoritarian figure, Jannings is now a figure of derision and has no authority in or out of the classroom. He marries Marlene and tours with her company as a clown. A return to his hometown proves to be more than he can bear.
Though Marlene Dietrich became an international sex symbol from this film and got a Hollywood contract as a result, the film is really the story of Jannings, his downfall, his humiliation, his degradation. Their respective career paths were really meeting halfway in this film. She was going to America on the strength of this film, Jannings was returning to Germany where he became a very big star and leader of Adolph Hitler's amen corner in German cinema
In the supporting cast is also Kurt Gerron who is a magician and manager of the troupe of entertainers Marlene and Jannings are part of. His life had the worst tragedy of all, as a Jew he met death in Auschwitz, but not after undergoing a lot of humiliation before. Not unlike what Jannings had in the film, but this was real life.
The Blue Angel is a milestone film for many people and in an indirect way for Adolph Hitler as well since he got his biggest film star from the cast. Still though it's a stunning bit of cinema with performances that still hold up very well today.
18 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Marlene Dietrich's ticket to Hollywood Stardom!
Author: mdm-11 from United States
12 October 2004
Joseph von Sternberg 'packaged' his muse, Marlene Dietrich to become a world star with "The Blue Angel". The disturbing story of a revue entertainer (Dietrich) and the middle aged professor(Emil Jannings)who falls madly in love with, and later is destroyed by her, based on the novel "Professor Unrat".
Many unforgettable songs by Friedrich Hollander are featured, most noteworthy of course "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt" ("Falling in Love Again") and "Ich bin die feche Lola" ("They Call Me Naughty Lola").
There is an English language version available (filmed simultaneously for an intended International release), but I recommend the original German with subtitles. Many effects are lost with the former. I can highly recommend this film, a must for fans of either the stars or the director!*****
Marlene Dietrich at her best in the German language version of Joseph Von Sternbergs THE BLUE ANGEL, unfortuonatly the English language version was rushed and not made very well so the film never really went down well with 1930s English speaking audiences. The film to me is a dark look at self destruction and degradation. My favourite scene in the film is at the end when Lola Lola is sitting almost triumphantly on a bar stool crooning "falling in love again" whilst her lover, the once great professer slips out into the dark street preparing to walk the long road to death. Although visually the film is no longer superior and Dietrich does not appear to have lost any of her plumpness as she would for her American debut she still appears radiant and her on screen persona would never be quite so strong again, maybe it is because this is the only film that Dietrich would make speaking in her Mother tongue.
9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Emotionally moving portrayal of a sensitive man's downfall
Author: Ursula 2.7T from my sofa
5 January 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
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
