The Angel of Color

Another movie I watched off my DVR this weekend is the 1930 German version of The Blue Angel.

The movie is probably best remembered for making a star out of Marlene Dietrich, but the movie is really about a different character. Prof. Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is a teacher of English at the local Gymnasium, which in the old German system was the most advanced and academic type of secondary education, so even though the subtitles refer to the institution as a college, it's probably more accurate that the students are about 16 or 17 and not fully legal adults. Anyhow, Prof. Rath is very stuffy and old-fashioned, with his one real joy in life being a songbird that unfortunately dies in the opening scene. As his maid says, it stopped singing long ago.

When Rath gets to the Gymnasium, he finds that his students seem more interested in Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), who is one of the acts at the local nightclub, except that this is one of those lower-class nightclubs. Rath thinks that somebody like Lola Lola is corrupting to the morals of German youth, and he's horrified that they would even buy postcards with her image! (For heaven's sake, these are pubescent men. Of course they're going to have sex on the brain.) Not only that, but Rath thinks it's his place to do something about it, making one wonder where the hell the parents are.

So Rath gets the brilliant idea to go off to the nightclub, Der blaue Engel (the titular "Blue Angel"), to see Lola Lola and what it is about her that make the students spend so much time there. But Rath is so strait-laced that at first, he doesn't get it at first. It isn't until the second visit, when another patron tries to enter Lola's dressing room and take advantage of her in a way that Rath doesn't approve of. What Rath doesn't realize is that he's actually been falling in love with Lola, so after the fight with the other patron, Rath, marries Lola!

This costs Rath his job at the Gymnasium, but gets Rath a new job as a clown in the nightclub act, which starts going around Germany. However, it eventually comes back to Rath's home town to perform at Der blaue Engel, only for everybody in town to mock him....

The Blue Angel is rightly known for Dietrich's performance, and it's certainly noteworthy even though Dietrich isn't as good a singer as her reputation might lead you to believe. Jannings is good, although I failed to develop much sympathy for his character. Couldn't he understand simple human biology would lead his students to tak an interest in Lola?

For me, it didn't help that the print TCM ran wasn't the best. My German is generally good enough that I could more or less get by with cpationing in German. Here, I found the German soundtrack very difficult to follow. The visuals also didn't look particularly crisp to me.

The Blue Angel is available on DVD and Blu-ray, with a two-disc set from Kino Lorber, which includes both the German version and an English version that was made simultaneously (Hollywood also made multiple language versions of movies in the early sound days, most notably Anna Christie).