Touched by a Blue Angel

The fame of The Blue Angel and Marlene Dietrich’s seductive Lola Lola are so intertwined that it’s surprising to see that the 1930 film put only one name—that of male star Emil Jannings—above its title. I was also bemused to discover that this film, made in Germany by German director Josef von Sternberg, was simultaneously shot both in German and in English, to appeal to international audiences. It seems von Sternberg, by this time under contract to Paramount, was asked to return to Paramount’s German sister-studio, UFA, to direct Jannings in his first sound film. The then-unknown Dietrich was not the original choice to play a sexy nightclub performer, but was discovered by von Sternberg when he saw her singing in a cabaret revue. He quickly hired her, determined to groom her into the woman he knew she could become. It clearly worked: in an eerie parallel to the action within the film, Dietrich became an overnight star, while Jannings faded into oblivion.

 It’s also worth noting that von Sternberg ultimately became sexually involved with Dietrich, resulting in a nasty scandal involving his then-wife, Riza Royce. Following their contentious divorce, he and Dietrich would end up making six Hollywood films together between 1930 and 1935. (Blonde Venus and The Devil is a Woman were some of the titles.) But none of them garnered as much international acclaim as The Blue Angel, the archetypal story of a proud man brought to his knees by an ill-considered love.

 Jannings’ Professor Immanuel Rath is a rather prissy middle-aged Shakespeare scholar who looks down on the rowdy high school boys he teaches. Shocked when his students all seem obsessed with a certain visiting nightclub performer (they pass around suggestive postcard images of a scantily clad Dietrich), he heads for the club called The Blue Angel to see for himself what the fuss is about. When he hears her sing “Falling in Love Again,” he is thoroughly smitten. Somehow, after imbibing heavily, he ends up spending the night in Lola’s bed, and by morning he’s out of a job. Undaunted, he proposes marriage, and Lola—clearly a gal who can’t say no—first bursts into peals of laughter and then graciously accepts. Both at first seem delighted with their new marital state, but their life together hinges on traveling with the nightclub act. Lola remains the star, while the once-dignified Rath is transformed into a clownish sidekick to the show’s resident magician. When the troupe returns to the town where Rath once terrorized his students, audiences are eagerly awaiting them. To make matters worse, Lola now seems attracted to another swain. After all, in the words of her theme song, she “can’t help it.”

 Aside from the vivid performances, von Sternberg uses some of the tricks of German Expressionism to keep the audience enthralled. Sets depicting quaint German towns are stylized, and small plot details—like the early death of Professor Rath’s pet canary—are used with maximum symbolic effect. A sad clown seen backstage as part of Lola’s performing troupe foreshadows the professor’s own diminution into a clownish figure, a butt of jokes, when the magician cracks eggs over his head as spectators burst into gales of raucous laughter. Lola’s signature “Falling in Love Again” is heard twice in the film. Early on, it sounds wistful and girlish; near the film’s end the same song is delivered in a way that comes across as thoroughly heartless. In all, The Blue Angel is a bravura achievement, and one that von Sternberg (who later famously taught Jim Morrison at UCLA) sadly never equaled.