The Blue Angel (1930)

 Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel"

Adapted from Herman Mann's 1905 novel, "Professor Unrat (Professor Filth)," "The Blue Angel" is a 1930 masterpiece directly by Josef von Sternberg. Many of Mann's narratives were abandoned by Sternberg, as he kept only the story involving a high-class authoritarian bourgeois professor falling for a cabaret singer. During filming, Sternberg altered dialogue, added scenes, and modified characterizations that gave the script an entirely new dimension. He was formally requested by Berlin's UFA Studios and by the film's attached star, Emil Jennings - who Sternberg worked with previously on his 1928 film, "The Last Command." Sternberg also personally casted the role of the cabaret singer after extensive searching. He settled on Marlene Dietrich, who was a complete unknown at the time. After her performance in this film, her and Sternberg went to Hollywood together and created a run of 6 films that are now considered the highlight of their body of work. "The Blue Angel" was the film, however, that launched their international success and firmly established Josef von Sternberg as a master filmmaker. 

The protagonist of the film, Professor Immanuel Rath, works as an educator at a local Gymnasium in Weimar, Germany (a Gymnasium begin a high-class school in which the students are expected to go to university). We are shown the Professor as being authoritarian in nature. He is very strict with his students and exerts his power over them. Even if they are mischievous and drawing cartoons on his notebooks, they stand at attention whenever he walks in. He has them stand up when reading their English literature and even humiliates a boy for not being able to pronounce the English word "the" correctly. He is a master of speech and expects the same from his students. This state of control and order is displayed by Sternberg with barren and white walls, the orderly rows of desks, and harsh silences in between spoken dialogue. The Professor has such authoritarian mindset over his students, that when one of the students admit to him that the other students go down to the local nightclub "The Blue Angel," he makes a trip there himself to catch them in the act. His need for control extends outside of the classroom as well. 

Rather than paint a literal world, Stenberg utilizes German expressionism to meticulously craft a mise-en-scene. This mise-en-scene and a intense use of lighting demonstrates a mood, atmosphere, or psychological understanding. As Professor Raff travels the Weimar streets to catch his students at The Blue Angel, Sternberg uses dark shadows to cover the streets and houses - illustrating the eerie decrepitness of the environment which mirrors the Professor's psychological descent into a debase world.   

The world of the Blue Angel is a stark opposite to the world of Rath's classroom. Where his classroom was a place of law and order, the Blue Angel is a place of disorder and debauchery. Sternberg creates a theatrical view of a carnivalesque life mixing this debauchery with decadence. He creates no room for "dead space" between the actors by instilling every scene with props, decorations, lights, cords, hanging drapes, costumes, frames, etc. This enables an emotional confusion that is brought about by a chaotic visual stimuli. This also gets added with the intentionality of sound. The cheering and drunkenly crowds mixed with the carnival-like music and singing abruptly interject the silences when Raff first meets the lead cabaret singer, Lola. The beautiful Lola intrigues the Professor, both in style and sexuality. She even seems to appear as an antithesis to him. She is very revealing in her manner, wearing revealing clothing, showing her bare back and shoulders, not afraid to lift up her bare legs, and totally comfortable with her body and sexuality. This directly contrasts with the dignity, order, and concealment by Raff. However, it appears this comfort by Lola adds some level of mystery to her. Whereas with the Professor, there is no mystery. Her nonchalant attitude and relaxed demeanor directly contrasts with Raff. Perhaps this is why he falls for her. Not only that, the environment she resides in is a world with a heartbeat. This carnival of disorder provides a stark different to the cold and dead environment of Raff's classroom. His classroom is without clutter or visual stimulus. Because of this, it is also without life. Not only does Lola and her environment seem to entice Raff because it offers him freedom from the emptiness he currently finds himself in. 

This duality between chaos and order mirrored Sternberg's childhood. He lived in a poverty-stricken home with strict rules. However, his home was near Prater, Vienna's massive carnival. This locale gleefully welcomed him away from his oppressive and destitute domesticity and provided him a space for debauchery with scenes of the grotesque, sordid interactions, and an atmosphere of relaxed morality. Sternberg's childhood was a disharmony of extremes, which he instill in all of his films, especially "The Blue Angel." 

Falling in love with Lola ends up changing the Professor's life forever. His seductions are viewed by his students, as they spy on him while he spends time with her. After learning of his own hypocrisy, the students no longer follow his strict order. His classroom erupt into chaos. He not only walks in to find explicit cartoons drawn of him on the chalkboard, but his students erupt into a cohesive verbal disregard for his commands and orders. The disorder that he associates with through Lola and the Blue Angel has now seeped into his orderly world, as all his power and control begins to disintegrate. Regardless of this, he admits to his administrator that he is in love with Lola and will marry her, which he does. Not only this, but he joins the travelling troupe around Germany so that he won't be without her. 

Five years later, he is now a clown in this troupe, made to walk on stage and have eggs smashed on his head while he clucks like a chicken. Not only this, he finds out that he is being cuckholded by Lola with various 'clients.' On top of all this, Raff is ordered to perform his act once again at the Blue Angel, in front of all his former students and members of the faculty who once respected him. While on stage being humiliated in front of his former colleagues and students, he spots Lola with the new strongman act, Mazeppa. With this, he goes into a crazed state of insanity and begins to crow incoherently. The master of speech has now been reduced to a wordless lunatic who has to be restrained with a straightjacket.

In the end, it was Lola who held the power all along, as she was able to bring a respectable bourgeois authoritarian to his knees and reduce him to nothing but an clucking chicken. Even though she is viewed in the film as a lowly prostitute and cabaret singer, she still has the power to control others. Rath's power was merely an illusion, as he postured and yelled over his young students. Lola, unlike Raff, was cool, casual, and mysterious. Her sexuality was the power she held over others, which provided her the necessary requirements for living in a debase landscape. In one particular scene while she is seducing Mazeppa, Sternberg allows a fishnet hanging from the wall and ceiling to take up a quarter of the screen as she seductively beckons him. The fishnet displays the notion that she is trapping him in her net, as one would a fish in a fishnet. This is just like she did with the Professor in the beginning.

However, it is not Lola that set out to ruin a man's life - this does not appear to be her intention. One reason for this is in this song that she sings in the film. The lyrics convey that she is red hot, and every man that comes near her burns up. Even though she has an air of mystery, she does not seem to intentionally act transgressive, as her entire social attitude is very nonchalant. Perhaps this is just the mystery of Lola, as the viewer never intimately knows her. This mystery to her is perhaps one of the enticing qualities about her, and one of the reasons both Raff and the viewer fall in love with her. She represents that which is unattainable, something wild and free. This freedom directly contrasts to the caged organization and rigidness of the environment Raff administers. 

In the end, the rigid structure administered by the Professor gets swallowed by the moral degradation of the German landscape - a landscape riddled with the fallouts of the Great War. Poverty, poor infrastructure, and hyperinflation brought a totally perilous existence for the German people by 1930. This caused a fear of societal collapse, which is demonstrated through the inevitability of the Professor's downfall. As the film progresses, he not only cannot keep control over his students, but he cannot keep control of himself more importantly. As biographer John Baxter notes, "The tragedy of Immanuel Raff was not that he lost his head over a woman, but that he could not reconcile the loss of power with the acquisition of freedom. When Rath is forced to relinquish his authority [over] his students, he sinks into alienated apathy." This descent by Rath was not something that was taken by Lola, but something that was slowly given freely. This economic and social descent by the German people was an incredible fear and concern in 1930, as their social and economic landscape became more and more suffocating. These fears would be the very thing that enabled the rise of an authoritarian regime, one that seduced the same energy and flare as Lola did to Raff. This reconciles the ideas presented in the film, that comfort and security, even the control you have over your own self, are merely an illusion. You are never actually in control over your instincts, lusts, or your sense of security. 

The title of the film, "Der Blaue Engel," is a double meaning. Blaue can also mean 'drunk.' This intoxication is presented by Sternberg with innumerable visual spectacles. The wild audiences, the chorus lines, the dancing bear, the unimpressed chorus line, and the clowns all provided a visual sense of intoxication that Sternberg needed to enrapture the viewer with the heightened reality. This mise-en-scene approach was necessary for Sternberg. UFA spared no expense for the production of the film, as the newly implemented Klangfilm sound processes allowed for audio and visuals. However, the limited technology of 1930 meant that the camera had to remain immobile in a soundproof both with Sternberg and the cameraman. Because of this, each frame barely moves. With this limitation, Sternberg frames every scene with immaculately detailed composition. 

Sternberg's films also thematically presents themes of real vs fake, and it is no different with this film. Not only is the theatricality of Lola's performances on display in the story itself, but the lines of reality begin to blur behind the camera as well. Sternberg and Dietrich began an affair during filming. Emil Jannings, the renowned German star playing Professor Rath, saw the closeness between the director and actress and the care he took in displaying her on screen. Jannings would become hysterical and engage in histrionics, and would often threat to quit the production. The famed actor started off the production a respectable member of his craft and through jealously and resentment, turned into a hysterical mockery of his own image. Not only this, "The Blue Angel" would be the actor's last great cinematic moment in the spotlight, as he could no longer find high end work thereon. This eerily mirrors the downfall of Rath in the film, as the respectable professor is reduced to a babbling insane man through his jealously and resentments. Sternberg's film once again blurs the lines of reality in fiction. This time, in an entirely metacontextual way.  

"The Blue Angel" became a great success for Germany as well as Sternberg and Dietrich. These two of them would go on to make more great films together in Hollywood before eventually calling it quits in 1935. Dietrich's total control over her own personage and her indelible sexual image allowed her great success over the next 30 years, as she became a queer icon and blurred the lines of sexuality and gender. Sternberg's career would last as long as his collaboration with Dietrich. After the two of them departed, he would find limited creative work, eventually assisting other director with his mastery of lighting. It was "The Blue Angel," however, that cemented him as a master of the film medium.