Saturday, February 12, 2005
Director Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel is justifiably considered a classic. First, from what I understand, it was the first feature length German sound film, and second (more importantly) it was the film that made Marlene Dietrich a star. Unfortunately all classics weren’t created equal, and The Blue Angel, which I just saw for the first time last night (the German version at the Egyptian Theater), certainly hasn’t aged as well as one would have hoped. It’s definitely more than a bit creaky with age. The overly melodramatic story follows the downward slide of a respected professor (rosy-cheeked Emil Jennings) once he falls for dance hall girl Lola-Lola (Deitrich). While at first appearing to successfully break free from his routine, stuffy life, fired from his job and married to Deitrich, he quickly ends up as nothing more than a sad clown, and drifts into insanity. The scenes with Deitrich still breathe with life, and are for the most part a lot of fun (singing, drinking, smiling & showing some leg), but really the film tells the story of Jennings, and when the movie focuses on him it seems to come to a standstill. Especially during the first half of the film, the scenes filmed at the school with Jennings are too painfully long and dead feeling (this could partially be blamed on the early difficulties of filming for sound). His later scenes, flipping out, clucking like a chicken and trying to kill everybody in site - and eventually being restrained in a straight jacket, are hilariously over-the-top, but not very moving and actually quite silly - including the final torpid scene back at his old desk. The thirty minutes of great scenes with Marlene Deitrich are drowned out by seventy minutes of lifelessness. Thankfully, much greater things were still to come from Sternberg and his star, in their great films of the 1930s.
