by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Josef von Sternberg
CAST: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron, Rosa Valetti
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh
PLOT: An elderly professor’s ordered life spins dangerously out of control when he falls for a nightclub singer.
There are so many things I admire about The Blue Angel that I hardly know where to begin. The cinematography, the story, the acting, the unbearably tragic arc, the dichotomy of the main character, the debut performance of Marlene Dietrich…just ridiculously top notch all around. The final 20 minutes or so of the film are so searingly tragic and raw that there were times when I wanted to look away, not out of disgust, but out of social embarrassment. I’m fully aware of Emil Jannings’s Nazi sympathies, but love him or hate him, this is one of the greatest performances I’ve seen from any film of this period.
[Fair warning, I’m about to really run off at the mouth about this one, so make yourselves comfortable.]
Jannings plays Professor Immanuel Rath, a fussy, stuffy little man who teaches at a local school in Germany somewhere around 1924. Director von Sternberg directs Rath’s introductory scenes almost as if he were using sound only reluctantly. With a bare minimum of dialogue, we watch Rath’s morning process as he prepares his clothes just so, eats his breakfast just so, carries his books just so, and arrives at his classroom like Gandalf: never late, never early, but precisely when he means to. His upper-high school students, all male, respect him just enough to stand at attention upon his arrival, but are rebellious enough to write graffiti on his notebooks, turning his name from “Rath” to the German word for “trash.”
One day, he discovers that several of his male students are in possession of scandalous little postcards picturing a sensuous burlesque performer whose lower regions are covered by a little tuft of actual feathers pasted onto the card. Blow on the card just right, and her little feather skirt rises to reveal – well, nothing terribly scandalous by today’s standards, but certainly not family friendly in 1924. Rath is incensed. How dare these students profane their minds with such affronts to decency? (We get a brief glimpse of his hypocrisy as he experiments with the feather skirt himself when no one is watching.)
Rath discovers that some of his students have been frequenting a burlesque house called The Blue Angel to see the girl on the postcard. Her name is Lola Lola, portrayed by Marlene Dietrich in the role that made her a star. It’s all here: the skimpy outfits, those long legs, the pouty face, sitting backwards on a chair, and the singing voice that eventually led to concert hall appearances in later years when her acting career waned.
Enraged by the thought of his students attending something as inappropriate as a burlesque show, Rath storms to the Blue Angel that very night to try to catch them red-handed. All his wrath evaporates, though, when he spies Lola in the flesh while she performs. From that moment, he is doomed. He winds up in Lola’s dressing room where Lola, seasoned performer that she is, treats him as if he were a rich patron, showering him with compliments and, daringly, gifting him with a pair of her underpants. Talk about chutzpah.
Predictably, Rath’s students see him at the Blue Angel, and his authority in his classroom starts to wane. He returns there to give Lola’s underwear back, winds up in a box seat, and watches as she trills the song (in German) “Falling in Love Again.” She sings directly to him. He is smitten. He drunkenly stays the night in her boudoir (nothing happens) and is late to school the next day. At this point his authority over his students utterly vanishes, he announces his plans to propose to Lola, and his superior essentially fires him from his post.
It’s here where we get one of the first real masterstrokes in von Sternberg’s direction. Rath carefully empties his desk drawer, fussy as always, picks up a few books, stands, and then slowly looks over the empty classroom. As he stands, the camera slowly dollies back away from him, increasing our awareness of how large the empty room is, and putting a visual exclamation point on just how momentous his decision is. He’s throwing away his vocation, everything he’s ever known, and perhaps there’s a moment during this camera move when he is thinking to himself, “What the hell am I doing?” I’m not doing it justice verbally, but it’s a sensational moment, reminding me of the famous moment in Taxi Driver when Scorsese’s camera tactfully dollies off Travis Bickle during an embarrassing phone call.
The second half of the film involves Rath’s rash proposal to Lola, her improbable acceptance, and his slow inevitable decline. Up to now, von Sternberg’s direction has been impeccable, using dialogue only when necessary, relying on Emil Jannings’s imposing presence and impressive non-verbal acting, and on Marlene Dietrich’s inimitable beauty and sensuality to underscore their scenes together. Now, in the tragic second half, von Sternberg REALLY impresses.
Without going into too much detail (you deserve to be as wowed by this movie as I was), let me just list some moments that stood out to me, moments that felt as fresh and moving as any other movie I can think of.
THE WEDDING RECEPTION: At Rath and Lola’s reception, a magician conjures eggs from under Rath’s nose. The kittenish Lola playfully clucks like a hen. Rath, besotted beyond reason, smiles and crows like a rooster. The sight of him making such a ridiculous noise filled me with unease, a reaction I am still unable to completely unpack. Did I feel sorry for Rath? Maybe, but why? He has brought this on himself. Lola isn’t to blame for his unseemly behavior, though it is all too easy to see how she could be seen as the “villain” of the film. That is wrongheaded, in my opinion. If there is a villain in the movie, a person who brings about every bad thing that happens to Rath, it’s Rath himself.
THE EDITING: At one point, Rath discovers that Lola still carries large numbers of those feathery postcards to sell at her performances. He is adamant: “While I have a penny to my name, you will never sell another one of these postcards!” Lola’s response is simple, but both wise and somehow chilling: “Well, bring them with us anyway…you never know.” The camera fades out, and in the very next scene, Rath is sitting at a table, watching Lola perform, and as her song ends, he carefully gathers up the postcards before him and goes table to table, hawking them. With one single edit, von Sternberg captures not only how wrong Rath was, but also how quickly he has fallen from a place of petty pride to a lowly peddler. The effect was startling and disheartening at the same time.
THE CALENDAR: Lola is preparing for another performance. Rath is helping her with a primitive curling iron, but she complains that it’s too hot. To cool it down, Rath turns to a small day-to-day calendar on the wall, pulls a sheet off, and touches it to the iron to, I guess, burn off some of the heat. One isn’t enough, so he pulls another sheet off. We watch as the calendar’s sheets disappear one by one, then in a montage of burning sheets and curling irons as March turns to April turns to November turns to December, and quick as a flash it’s suddenly 1930…four years later. This astonishing sequence has as much impact as that moment in Cast Away when we fade out on Tom Hanks in the cave and fade back in with the title card FOUR YEARS LATER.
THE FINALE: Wow, I’m really going to have to tread carefully here, but the last 15-20 minutes seal the deal and make The Blue Angel one of the greatest classic films I’ve ever seen. There is enough heartbreaking pathos and awkwardness and humiliation to satisfy any fan of melodrama. It’s practically operatic, right down to the image of an anguished clown (long story, watch the movie and see what I mean). Rath’s rooster crows make an encore appearance, but the circumstances under which he makes those noises are just…I’m having trouble finding the right words. It’s genuinely hard to watch. Lola’s portion of responsibility in this sequence is undeniable, but honestly, it’s like that fable about the scorpion and the frog that ends with, “What’d you expect me to do? I’m a scorpion.” She is no more evil or immoral than a shark or an earthquake. In the end, Rath’s hypocrisy and intolerance are rewarded with a comeuppance that is richly deserved, but also pathetic and pitiful, in the most literal sense of those words.
The Blue Angel is one of the most uncompromising depictions of a tragic arc that I’ve ever seen, but it also manages to make the tragic figure inexplicably sympathetic, despite his hypocrisy. It is achingly, wonderfully sad and melodramatic and heartbreaking, tempered by the occasional song from Marlene Dietrich as well as just being able to gaze upon her from time to time. Watching it for the first time is an experience I will not soon forget. I hope I haven’t spoiled too much of it for you if you’ve never seen it, either. If you haven’t, I urge you to seek it out immediately. (The German version whenever possible…I’ve seen clips of the English version, and it simply does not carry the same weight as the German version.)
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 