The Blue Angel Reviews

Ze Drunken Angel

This is an historic film that launched the career of Marlene Dietrich. It became her trademark and her performance in this movie has been imitated by Liza Minelli in ?Cabaret?, Madeleine Kahn in ?Blazing Saddles? and a host of lesser knowns particularly female impersonators.

The story concerns a teacher of English (played extremely ponderously by Emil Jannings) who has great difficulty in making his curiously mature students say 'the' instead of 'ze'. From one of them he confiscates a postcard of a night club performer, Lola Lola, and so invades the club in order to try and capture his mischievous students. Here he meets and falls in love with Lola Lola (Dietrich). She is a rather sexually ambiguous woman, gorgeous face and body but seemingly unattracted to the men who fall under her spell. Because of her he gets sacked from his job but still he marries her and starts travelling with the show. After 5 years he has become a drunk, an oafish, humiliated stooge to a fat magician whilst Dietrich quite openly dallies with other men. His downfall is complete when the show returns to his old town.

Today it seems a rather clunky affair. It was made right at the beginning of the sound era when the difficulties of recording simultaneous sound and motion fixed cameras to the floor, no tracking shots, pans, zooms, hardly any of the free flowing cinematography to which we are accustomed today. In addition the crude sound makes Dietrich?s voice very harsh especially when singing, more like a band saw than a femme fatale. All this means that you have to use a lot of imagination to compensate when watching this film.

WARNING. To broaden the film?s international appeal it was made in two languages, German and English. Many of the lesser actors could not speak English and their parts are still in German. Jannings and Dietrich were fluent but some of the other actors? accents are so thick it is really hard to understand them. So unless you are pathologically averse to reading whilst viewing make sure you get the German version.

Fantastic

This is a really excellent film. The photography is superb, giving the film a really dark, claustrophobic atmosphere. I loves the short sequences when the Professor is walking about the streets. This must have been one of the first talkies, and it's interesting to note that the acting styles of some of the actors still resemble the styles that the silent films in which they were accustomed to starring in demanded. Well worth a watch, and, as a previous reviewer suggested, rent the German version - not the English version.

Boring

I know alot of people love this movie - but i hated it.

itwasboring and took forever to get to the point. eventually had to turn off.

Marlene Dietrich black-and-white classic

Set in Germany of the turn of the 20th Century: Marlene Dietrich stars as the 'femme fatale' of a touring cabaret company performing at the local music hall, the 'Blue Angel'. The film portrays the downfall of a respected schoolteacher who in forbidding his sixth-formers from viewing [Dietrich] falls under her destructive spell. Marlene sings. The plot unfolds with attractive humour turning to dark pathos.

Well worth the effort

The first twenty minutes is a bit laboured (German humour) but bear with it or just skip it. On the other hand the last twenty minutes are tremendous.

The story (once it gets going) is the familiar tale of a mismatched couple whose hopeful romance is destroyed by their situation. Dietrich is charming, and Jannings' descent into madness electrifying.

The direction is as stylish as you would expect, although a bit stagey, and it is noticably lacking the smouldering close- ups of the Hollywood Sternberg/Dietrich canon.

By the way the German version includes Dietrich's screen test which is suberb: get the disc just for this.

magic!

there have been great technical advances in movie-making since 1930, but for pulling the heart strings they don't come any better than this one. i guess it must be the combination of a moving story, fine director, & superstar acting that makes this film a genuine classic, seemingly slow & simple to start, but how it grows on one right up to the tragic climax - just wonderful!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Slapstick nonsense

Oh dear this is ghastly. I'm amazed it's reached classic status, as the acting by Emil Jannings is hammy, the plotlines drawn out, corny and irrelevant, and while it's a fascinating theme for a film (upright citizen drawn into depravity and ultimate downfall by femme fatale) you could easily reduce the whole thing to 45 minutes. The 30-year-old 'schoolboys' are laughable too.

Marlene's singing is dire, though that doesn't matter as she's a great screen presence and her character from this film has become an iconic image. Apart from those scenes where she's performing, you can easily fast forward through the rest of it and not miss anything of worth. Disappointing.

English speakers, go for subtitles

I love this film and would whole heartedly recommend it to everyone with any interest in the Weimar era, German cinema in general or early 20th century sound films. (And Marlene, of course.) For the best possible experience, however, avoid the English language version.

Touching tragedy

I watched this film not really knowing what it was going to be about so I was totally caught up in the way it began as humour and slowly got darker and darker. The strict but bumbling and likable professor is well captured at the start and it is his decency that endears him to Dietrich's showgirl (even if it is his anger that first leads him to the Blue Angel).

He becomes infatuated with Lola Lola an infatuation that leads rather quickly to his downfall and his inevitable final humiliation. The ending is heart-breaking and makes you realise how far we've come since the first scenes of the professor having his breakfast.

The acting is great and the scenes in the club and the dark streets of the Professor's home town are atmospherically potrayed and overall it ends up being a moving and sad story. I can't say I liked Lola's singing much though.

Marlene before Holywood

Just watch and enjoy, a gem from the past. Marlene before the style got to her. You can see it coming. Look for the photography and lighting, the interior of the club is a hoot.