Angel (1937)

 Ernst Lubitsch’s “Angel”

Thematic Elements: 

Ernest Lubitsch’s Angel is a film that suggests our perceptions are not what they seem. Our society, our industries, and the individuals in our life may be more multifaceted than their external appearances. Lubitsch portrays a society of abundance, wealth, and superciliousness – and then goes to reveal that these are perhaps just pretenses and what is actually underneath may be more complicated and greyer. The first setting we are invited into is a Parisian whorehouse. The whorehouse is even portrayed with Art Deco design, glistening chandeliers, roses and lilies that spill out over crystal vases, everything laced with silk, and everything completely white – as if to portray a sense of purity and lavishness. Maria, our protagonist, we learn to be a former prostitute. After meeting Anthony in this lavish whorehouse, they spend the evening together. Anthony original assumptions about Maria become subverted when he comes to the conclusion that she is actually an angel and calls her ‘Angel’ as such. His original assessment of her as a whore as now changed to viewing her with purity. After parting ways, Maria goes back to her home in London where the audience discovers that she is actually the wife of a wealthy government diplomat, Frederick Barker. Frederick Barker believes his wife to be completely pure and angelic. As the events of the film unfold, Anthony coincidentally meets up with Sir Barker as the two of them are veterans of the first world war, having shared the same prostitute at one point respectively during the war. The film then plays the game of ‘will they find out or won’t they?’ as the three characters share dinner together. By the end of the film, Antony discovers not only that his wife cheated on him, but that she is in fact a former prostitute. This completely shattered his original image of her, once she was pure and angelic and now she is an impure former prostitute. At the final scene of the film, however, he chooses to accept this newfound identity of his wife and continue to love and be with her. This theme is best summed up by author Gerald Mast: ““Without ever using the word or showing any overt act of prostitution, Lubitsch constructs a film about one man who is willing to admit that a whore can be an angel and a second who must deal with the fact that his apparently angelic wife is a former whore.” Lubitsch uses these subversions of what we see to show us what is. The same can be said with everyone in the film.  Sir Barker, as affluent as he is, always dressed in suits, always enjoying fine dining, being tended to by servants, and living luxuriously, he himself even professionally deals in darker elements of the human condition in that he and his fellow diplomats are discussing the notions of going to war. He is also not unaccustomed to the dealing of prostitution, as him and Anthony discussing sharing the same woman at one point of the film. Even the servants share a taste of modern snobbish attitudes, one of them remarking that in assisting Sir Barker in meeting Russian diplomats, he was surprised and delighted by their tail coats and white ties and was appalled by the notion that the Frenchmen did not have manservants. The servants’ pretentiousness mirrors that of their masters. This pretentiousness is only a way for them to be judging of other to cover up for their own insecurities. Lubitsch is saying that under all this pretentiousness of all these characters lies a more morally grey persona. 

Camerawork:

 Lubitsch uses restraint in his direction of Angel. The characters themselves show restraint in their behavior. Rather than yelling or screaming at each other, they are completely civilized. This is the kind of direction of the acting that many call ‘The Lubitsch Touch,’ allowing the characters to behave in more proper ways of etiquette. Another Lubitsch restraint and a staple of most Lubitsch film is not allowing us to see important moments happening to the characters. He rather focuses the camera on a telephones or windows while other things are happening. An example of this is when the big dinner scene happens in the film, Lubitsch instead takes us into the kitchen with the servants. The servants examine the food that has been brought back into the kitchen, noticing that Maria and Anthony have barely touched their food while Sir Barker has eaten all of his. This casual conversation tells the audience the internal mindsets of the characters without actually showing the characters at all. In being restrained with how the characters behave and what we see, we are made to come up with a better understanding of what is happening outside of what is literally being said. 

Best Shot: 

One significant shot in the film is when the two men are discussing ‘Angel’. It is interesting to note how both men, who are talking about the same woman, both clearly have entirely different perceptions of her.