Josef von Sternberg and his then-paramour Ms. Dietrich's one-two punch in 1930, released before MOROCCO, the very first Hollywood star vehicle for her, coupled with a gorgeous Cary Grant. THE BLUE ANGEL was shot simultaneously in both German and English, actually it is the very first German full-talkie feature and the first sound picture for the German thespian Emil Jannings, who was quite sought-after in the wake of becoming the first recipient of Oscar's BEST ACTOR honor in 1929. While talkie is still in its incipient years, von Sternberg account-ably fillets the source novel to keep the central story concise: a middle-aged professor of local gymnasium, Immanuel Rath (Jannings), whose well-maintained scholar life starts to come undone when he is hopelessly swept off his feet by a cabaret performer Lola Lola (Dietrich, a star was born at the age of 29, a sublime rarity in the ageist Hollywood) and marries her. Professor Rath is not a particularly beloved character, a bachelor lives in a tiny gymnasial apartment, often mocked by his pupils as Professor Rubbish, but as an educator, he holds absolute sway in his class, he can impudently blow his nose in front of his students with no one dare to mutter a word. As staid and prudish as he is, his sortie to the infamous titular club inadvertently plies him with the wanting respect from his peers, he is granted with a reserved balcony seat from the magician Kiepert (Gerron), the head of the itinerant troupe, and Lola Lola, that seductive chanteuse, with all her sexualized paraphernalia (stockings, millinery, and bared-skin), he cottons to her prima facie, so much so that, moral yardstick and social rectitude simply evaporate when being contextualized under that sultry spell. To Lola, Immanuel is definitely not her first suitor - but she obliges his in-earnest affection which is garnished with a tad goofiness - and wouldn't be her last, out of her line of business, and more saliently, out of her nature, flings and smooches are congenital to her like the air she breathes, that is nothing to do with love, Lola Lola is a modernized vixen, but she has no scruples of who she is and has no intention to change for anyone else's sake. So the downhill of Prof. Rath is rather plain in sight, he is shorn of his erstwhile respected vocation and assumes the role of the lowest rung in the troupe, the clown, in order to cling to his flamboyant wife, and consumed by the gnawing frustration, jealousy and rancor, until a fatal return to the Blue Angel club becomes his undoing. Emil Jannings, at first, seems to be stuck in Professor Rath's bookish carapace with eye-rolling tedium, but strangely carries off the often incoherently designated transformation of his character to a purely riveting acme edging the ending where he doesn't need to speak one single word but a catharsis of poignancy and empathy has been eloquently conveyed through his gesticulation and bearings (with a substantive helping hand from the make-up department), that's what a thespian well-burnished in silent pictures can pull off in an elemental thrust. By comparison, Dietrich's Lola Lola is above all, deployed as a signifier of temptation but conferred with understated nonchalance and flippancy, only that recurring ditty "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)", composed by Friedrich Hollaender, is deathless together with Lola Lola's mold-breaking manifesto of women's screen presentation. Albeit some perceptible hiccups in its audio track, Josef von Sternberg's pioneering black-and- white oldie mostly retains its verve and potency in its Gothic mise-en-scène, emphatic character presentation and visual splendor (Kiepert's magic trick is a primitive hoot), showing up the metamorphic bridge between a full-fledged silent era and the irrevocable prevalence of talkie which would bring sea change to both performers and filmmakers alike.

"The Blue Angel" from 1930 made a star out of Marlene Dietrich and has a great performance by Emil Jannings. It's a very dark tale of obsession leading to degradation.The film is based on a novel by Heinrich Mann directed by Josef von Sternberg. It concerns a professor (Jannings) who goes to a club, The Blue Angel, where he learns his students go, and meets the hypnotic Lola (Dietrich). He falls in love with her, marries her, and starts down a road that leads to hell.This is a movie about images -- a dead bird, the magnificent Lola, Jannings as a clown, his descent into madness, his image in a mirror, and the final shot of him, utterly destroyed, at his old professor desk.This is German filmmaking at its best. Von Sternberg and Dietrich would head for America; Jannings, a Nazi collaborator, would stay put. Later Dietrich called him a "ham." He does give a big performance, but somehow, it isn't over the top. On a side note - Jannings was the winner of the first Academy Award, but in reality, he placed second. The winner? Rin Tin Tin. The Academy believed it wouldn't put them in a good light to give the award to a dog, so they denied Rin his award and gave it to Jannings instead. It's said he used to carry it with him.

An elderly professor (Emil Jannings)'s ordered life spins dangerously out of control when he falls for a nightclub singer (Marlene Dietrich).How do you beat the combination of Emil Jannings, one of the greatest actors of German cinema, and Marlene Dietrich, who is something of a legend? I mean, is any other German-American actress of her generation even close to being as famous? (I could say Lil Dagover, but many would say "who?") The film was released in both German and English versions. I only watched the English one (so far), so the difference is unclear. One thing can be said: Dietrich was much more natural in English than Jannings, who seems out of place. When she tells him to speak "in her language", it is quite believable that English is her native tongue.

Seems like director Von Sternberg had an axe to grind with men or the middle class. Emil Janning's Professor is staid and repressed but seems like a decent person and I don't know why he must be seen to lose it so much, if, as the director said, this was not a political allegory. That is either disingenuous or the Professor is not the stable person he seems the first 2/3 of the film. The only other explanation is that Von Sternberg sees Lola (the amazing Marlene Dietrich) as a very destructive person. I found this an overly melodramatic film which makes a cartoonish depiction of a middle-class German. The acting is fantastic from Dietrich and Jannings but I found this a baffling film. I had expected that the Professor would fall in love and they would have a more stable relationship, but their relationship falls apart when the Professor is completely irrational at the attention his wife is getting. While this isn't unreasonable, that he becomes SO unhinged seems really unlikely. I don't understand why his seemingly sweet wife and also someone who seemed deeply in love with him turns away from him so quickly. If Von Sternberg wanted to make that storyline, they should have made the Professor a bit more unlikable. This was really a disappointing film. I hoped for a more nuanced, thoughtful depiction of a man learning to see the beauty in things he had previously looked down on. Von Sternberg makes the Professor a baffling character through which there is no throughline from his character before and after marrying Lola.