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. 

 

“A Foreign Affair”: Billy Wilder 's Bittersweet Take on Post-War Germany

My Billy Wilder journey continues, as I work my way through Joe McBride's comprehensive Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge. This week I saw one of Wilder’s more unheralded triumphs, the 1948 A Foreign Affair. This dark romantic comedy stands out partly because of where it was filmed: in the rubble of Berlin, following the end of World War II. (At the close of his wartime service in the U.S. Army, Wilder was promised government assistance if he shot a movie in occupied Deutschland, thus giving a boost to the ruined German economy as well as to the revival of the German film industry.) A Foreign Affair deals, sometimes sardonically, with the Allies’ efforts to rebuild the devastated German capital. But its primary subject is, as always with Wilder, the vagaries of the human heart. Though Nazis, and their collaborators, are hardly looked on with favor in the course of the film, the occupying American army does not escape unscathed. And a visiting American congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour is treated with all the satirical thrust that Wilder can muster.

Jean Arthur came out of retirement to play Phoebe Frost, a strait-laced Iowa congresswoman bent on improving the morale of the occupying U.S. troops. When she strays from the official tour, she’s alarmed to find that young American servicemen, mistaking her for a blonde fraulein, are eager to canoodle. She’s also appalled when she observes that locals (especially attractive young women) are more than happy to bestow their favors on Americans who can provide them with chocolate bars and nylon stockings. Pretending to be a giggly German maedchen, she goes along with two G.I. Joes to a seedy local club. That’s where she frowns with disapproval on a nightclub singer, Erika von Schlütow, played by Marlene Dietrich with her usual potent mix of glamour and irony.

Though Dietrich herself was known for her unrelenting opposition to Hitler and his thugs, her character in this film represents the German citizens who will do whatever it takes to get by. That’s why, although she’s embroiled in a powerful (and possibly sado-masochistic) relationship with an American officer, John Lund’s Captain Pringle, there’s also a Nazi higher-up lurking in her past. The film’s most striking moments involve her encounters with Congresswoman Frost, who in an ironic turnabout must look to Erika to save her from public humiliation, not to mention  legal jeopardy. Connecting the two women is Captain Pringle, who is not above taking on romance as part of his military duties.

 Looking back on Wilder’s life, as McBride does so effectively, it’s rather startling to see him focusing on the post-war neediness of the German populace. Wilder, a Jewish man who grew up in Vienna and began his filmmaking career in Berlin, was never able to save his own mother and other relatives from the Nazi death camps. Needless to say, he had no great love for the German hierarchy that led the country into war. And his life in the United States, from 1933 onward, paved the way for fame and fortune in his adopted land. Still, unlike Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, he cannot view the German people as undeserving of sympathy.  Scrounging for food and small luxury items (as well as the occasional moment of fun) in their bombed-out city, they awaken his compassion. And it’s in keeping with his mordant temperament that he resists simple delineations of right and wrong. So A Foreign Affair offers up not (as per its poster) hilarious comedy, but rather food for thought, which is far more nourishing than a chocolate bar.

 Joe McBride, the man himself, adds to this post with some important info for cinéastes:"Did you know I did the audio commentary on the recent Kino Lorber Blu-ray edition?For a long time the film was MIA in home video." He adds the all-important Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Affair-Blu-ray-Jean-Arthur/dp/B07SNNNMQ7