Two things make it impossible to consign Josef von Sternberg's seedily atmospheric 1930 masterpiece The Blue Angel to the archives of museum land: it was the first film to put Marlene Dietrich in front of an international audience; and it features a towering performance from Emil Jannings as the professor whose fall from grace is precipitated by his obsession with Dietrich's archly vampish showgirl Lola-Lola. On both counts The Blue Angel remains a potent, vibrant work which still has moments of real relevance. Dietrich's performance is indeed hypnotic: von Sternberg lights her face and exposed flesh--shoulders and thighs--in a way that clearly indicates the erotic charge she generates among the men in the Blue Angel night club, and in Jennings in particular. Before our eyes his repressed, puritanical self-will disintegrates and his fate is sealed. The pivotal moment is, of course, when Dietrich teases her audience with "Falling in Love Again", her stockinged and suspendered legs astride a beer barrel, a top hat rakishly on her head. It would become the signature tune of her cabaret act in later years but here she delivers it with a far less studied, throwaway cheeriness; how, indeed, can it be her fault if men cluster around her like moths around a flame? This is the raw material on which an icon was built, but there is much else to fascinate in the film itself: you can still smell the pungent grim reality of a trouper's life on the road; and the professor's pathetic efforts to control his class of unruly boys still resonates today... this is an essential piece of film history.
On the DVD:The Blue Angel is presented in its German and English-language versions, both restored and digitally remastered. As far as the sound quality is concerned this is of limited benefit since there is a great deal of distortion on both versions. But thanks to the picture restoration we can see how von Sternberg treats Dietrich: her face becomes a radiant, mocking pool of light always in contrast with the dark, grainy characters around her. The English version (in truth, only the Dietrich/Jannings scenes were shot in each language) is slightly pruned, missing a key scene in which the professor's repressed sensitivity is established at the very beginning. So despite some erratic sub-titling, the German version remains definitive. And it also reveals the worldliness of the original lyrics to Friedrich Hollander's classic songs: "I Was Made for Love from Head to Toe" suggests a rather more robust attitude than the vague whimsy of "Falling in Love Again." A final thought: releasing films of this importance on DVD surely creates an opportunity to put them in context by including documentary and factual resources, but this release has no extras of any kind. At the very least it cries out for an authoritative commentary. --Piers Ford
4:3 Full Frame English\German Region 2 English
This Josef Von Sternberg film, based on Heinrich Mann's novel PROFESSOR UNRAT, made Marlene Dietrich a celebrity and began a tumultuous relationship between star and director that spanned Sternberg's most creative period. The film features Emil Jannings as Dr. Immanuel Rath, a provincial prep school teacher who becomes incensed when he learns his boys have become infatuated with Lola Lola (Dietrich), a cabaret singer. Heading to the Blue Angel, a nightclub, to catch his pupils, Rath instead becomes bewitched by the sensuous Lola himself, beginning an obsession that drives him to the depths of despair. Visionary, haunting, and emotionally unrelenting, THE BLUE ANGEL stands as Sternberg's crowning achievement. Filmed in both German and English simultaneously, the German version is generally considered superior to its English language counterpart.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Marlene, the accidental star What is amazing about this film is that it made an accidental star of Marlene Dietrich and resulted in a later, complete reversal of fortunes for the film's originally-intentioned 'real' star, Emile Jannings. Dietrich was 29 when she made this, and it rocketed her to global mega-stardom, making her the first-ever, truely, German Hollywood star. The Blue Angel showcases the glory of Germany's pre-Nazi, wonderful, Expressionist cinema, laying bare the reality of decadence with glimpses of the lingering... more info
One of the least-seen classics on a great special edition DV For all the mythmaking about Dietrich, the film actually rests on Emil Jannings expressive shoulders, offering yet another of his great men laid low, in this case by the love of a bad woman. It’s good but somewhat overfamiliar, and it’s surprisingly overlong – not fatally so, but enough for your attention to be stretched at points. Jannings has a field day, although it’s strange to note what an influence his performance seems to have had on British TV comedians: his cockcrowing nervous breakdown at... more info
Sternberg’s 1929 classic, precursor to “Cabaret” This film is fascinating for many reasons but certain adjustments are necessary, first it was one of the first “talkies” and that accounts for the constricted sound quality, the limited but acceptable quality of the film, and directing style in transition from silent to talkie.
Blue Angel was filmed twice concurrently, once in English and once in German, this review applies to the German (considered the best version) with sub titles.
However with minimal adjustment for social morals of the late... more info
Weimar Germany in its own eyes This was the first film I bought from pre-National Socialist Germany, and it was a treat. It seems surprisingly contemporary, and you can see what this thing about Dietrich was. Today she would be set as a dominatrix, no doubt - but here you can see what inspired the characterisations to come in Cabaret. It is a film with a moral - which we don't often get in today's post-Joseph Campbell pulp churned out by Hollywood.
![The Blue Angel [1930]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BTAY7Q09L._SL160_.jpg)
