The Blue Angel (1930)A popular (and unintentionally humorous) sign which circulated in the French Quarter of New Orleans in the 19th century read: "Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women". For Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), a naive school teacher in 1920s Germany, the latter is good advice he would have done well to have heeded. The Blue Angel (1930) is the story of the aforementioned Rath and his fall from grace after he is seduced by the lovely cabaret performer, Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Though warned by a colleague at the school where he teaches to avoid women like Lola, Rath disregards the counsel and pays dearly for it.
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From the start of The Blue Angel, it is clear that Professor Rath is not a worldly man, but someone who has an inner craving for sweetness in his life--evidenced in part by the excess sugar he puts in his morning coffee. He lives in a dull apartment, festooned with cigars stubs and books. It's likely that every day has been the same for Rath for quite some time, which is marked when he periodically replaces his pet bird--the one we see consigned to the incinerator by his landlady is also likely not the first. He is mocked by his students as "Professor Garbage" (a play on his name in German) when he tries to teach them Shakespeare. It's not implausible to see him as a man who secretly pines for some kind of adventure. When Rath discovers a few postcards smuggled into class by his students from a bawdy burlesque they frequent in the evenings of the lovely Lola, he is aroused, even if he doesn't recognize the emotion anymore (if he ever did). His initial voyage into this den of iniquity is one made under the auspices of saving his students from becoming entrenched in vice, though in the process he comes face to face with the scantily clad chanteuse, who coyly begins her game of seduction on the unwitting teacher. Lola is very pretty, but it is in the almost indifferent way she coaxes his attraction with sly, sideways glances, a quick wit, and a knowing smirk--not to mention her provocative costumes--that sets the proverbial kettle boiling. When one of his students sneaks a pair of Lola's purloined panties into his coat pocket, Rath's second visit is under the premise of returning them--but by then, we and everyone (but Rath, apparently) knows that Lola's fangs are already sunk deep into her prey. After "rescuing" her from the advances of a drunken sailor looking to ply her with champagne, Lola delivers the pièce de résistance of her scheme with her famous performance of "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)", pulling out all the stops to secure the plummeting professor, tangling him in her web. Rath is so smitten that his life quickly spirals out of control. He disregards warnings about fooling around with women like Lola, and lets his raucous protegees get out of hand with their antics in class. As if out of defiance, Rath marries Lola; is this an attempt to try to tame her wild spirit, or is it a way for him to subconsciously justify his lust by bedding her in a guilt-free way? Either way, what Rath has really done is sign into a debt of sorts with metaphorical interest rates beyond his means. Rath soon discovers that the sweetness of his romance turns sour and rancid when he leaves behind his home and career to tour with his new bride. In time, he is reduced to a mere shell of his former self, hocking the very same postcards of his wife to bar patrons, and then further degraded by being forced to perform as a clown--a caricature of his former self--to help keep them afloat. When the time comes for the troupe to return to The Blue Angel, it is the first note in a litany of humiliation the likes of which are far beyond what he could have imagined in his worst nightmares. Ain't love grand?
One of the questions that lingers in The Blue Angel is whether Lola is truly a conniving minx just looking for the next sugar daddy, or whether Rath ruins his own life out of a warped sense of chivalry or even an ignorance of worldliness. When Rath finally explodes in insane rage at the end, Lola defends herself by firing back that she "hasn't done anything wrong". The question of whether she has or hasn't is one of the elements of The Blue Angel which grows more ambiguous as attitudes toward licentiousness and sexuality adapt with the times. There is the sense that Lola is merely part of a mechanism designed to take advantage of any fool who comes within the travelling performers' path, with other players in this elaborate game including the magician Kiepert (Kurt Gerron), and his wife, Guste (Rosa Valetti), who also toy with Rath's feelings in varying ways at intervals during his stay with them. Among one of the earlier figures seen stalking solemnly through the backstage at The Blue Angel is a sorrowful clown (Reinhold Bernt), who not only foreshadows Rath's own ignoble transformation, but suggests a prior victim of Lola et al. Is Lola even conscious of her depravity and the pain she causes Rath? Is the prejudice to judge her as a wanton woman who struts about on stage in costumes which are sometimes literally only half there just another form of so-called "slut shaming"? Marlene Dietrich's portrayal of the sexual and independent cabaret performer was so memorable, that although The Blue Angel gives top billing to Emil Jannings as Immanuel Rath, it is arguably best remembered for the movie which made Dietrich a sensation, and would inspire similar characters in other films, like Liza Minnelli's Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Barbara Sukowa's own "Lola" in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film of the same name. Whether Lola is a "proto-feminist" or a Delilah to Rath's Samson is a net of an argument which will likely be cast over an increasingly wider area as perceptions of morality change over time.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic entry from pre-World War II German cinema, heralding the introduction of Marlene Dietrich in an unforgettable role. The Blue Angel is a cautionary tale of the dangers of the freewheeling, hedonistic underworld and the scalawags who inhabit it, as well as the dangers of allowing naivete to blind you from the realities of the world.
One of the questions that lingers in The Blue Angel is whether Lola is truly a conniving minx just looking for the next sugar daddy, or whether Rath ruins his own life out of a warped sense of chivalry or even an ignorance of worldliness. When Rath finally explodes in insane rage at the end, Lola defends herself by firing back that she "hasn't done anything wrong". The question of whether she has or hasn't is one of the elements of The Blue Angel which grows more ambiguous as attitudes toward licentiousness and sexuality adapt with the times. There is the sense that Lola is merely part of a mechanism designed to take advantage of any fool who comes within the travelling performers' path, with other players in this elaborate game including the magician Kiepert (Kurt Gerron), and his wife, Guste (Rosa Valetti), who also toy with Rath's feelings in varying ways at intervals during his stay with them. Among one of the earlier figures seen stalking solemnly through the backstage at The Blue Angel is a sorrowful clown (Reinhold Bernt), who not only foreshadows Rath's own ignoble transformation, but suggests a prior victim of Lola et al. Is Lola even conscious of her depravity and the pain she causes Rath? Is the prejudice to judge her as a wanton woman who struts about on stage in costumes which are sometimes literally only half there just another form of so-called "slut shaming"? Marlene Dietrich's portrayal of the sexual and independent cabaret performer was so memorable, that although The Blue Angel gives top billing to Emil Jannings as Immanuel Rath, it is arguably best remembered for the movie which made Dietrich a sensation, and would inspire similar characters in other films, like Liza Minnelli's Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Barbara Sukowa's own "Lola" in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film of the same name. Whether Lola is a "proto-feminist" or a Delilah to Rath's Samson is a net of an argument which will likely be cast over an increasingly wider area as perceptions of morality change over time.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic entry from pre-World War II German cinema, heralding the introduction of Marlene Dietrich in an unforgettable role. The Blue Angel is a cautionary tale of the dangers of the freewheeling, hedonistic underworld and the scalawags who inhabit it, as well as the dangers of allowing naivete to blind you from the realities of the world.