The Blue Angel
The Blue Angel (German: Der blaue Engel) is a 1930 German musical comedy-drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Kurt Gerron. Written by Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller and Robert Liebmann, with uncredited contributions by Sternberg, it is based on Heinrich Mann's 1905 novel Professor Unrat (Professor Filth) and set in an unspecified northern German port city.[2] The Blue Angel presents the tragic transformation of a respectable professor into a cabaret clown and his descent into madness. The film was the first feature-length German sound film and brought Dietrich international fame.[3] It also introduced her signature song, Friedrich Hollaender and Robert Liebmann's "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". The film is considered a classic of German cinema.
This article is about the 1930 film. For other uses, see Blue Angel (disambiguation).The Blue Angel
Der blaue Engel
- Carl Zuckmayer
- Karl Vollmöller
- Robert Liebmann
- Josef von Sternberg
- Walter Klee
- Sam Winston
- Friedrich Hollaender
- Robert Liebmann (lyrics)
- Franz Waxman (orchestrations)
- 1 April 1930 (Germany)[1]
108 minutes
- German
- English
$77,982 (2001 re-release)[1]
The film was shot simultaneously in German- and English-language versions. Though the English version was once considered a lost film, a print was discovered in a German film archive, restored and screened at San Francisco's Berlin and Beyond film festival on January 19, 2009.[4] The German version is considered to be "obviously superior";[5] it is longer and not marred by actors struggling with English pronunciation.[6]
The film also features the famous carillon of the Garrison Church at Potsdam playing "Üb' immer Treu und Redlichkeit" ("Always Be True and Faithful") as well as an orchestral version of the song. The original melody was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for Papageno's aria "Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen" from The Magic Flute. In the German Reich and subsequently the Weimar Republic, the lyrics of "Üb' immer Treu und Redlichkeit" symbolized Prussian virtues: "Use always fidelity and honesty / Up to your cold grave / And stray not one inch / From the ways of the Lord".
Background[edit]
By 1929, Sternberg had completed a number of films for Paramount, none of which were box-office successes. However, Paramount's sister studio in Germany, UFA, asked him to direct Emil Jannings in his first sound film. Jannings was the Oscar-winning star of Sternberg's 1928 film The Last Command, and had specially requested Sternberg's participation, despite an "early clash of temperaments" on the set.[10][11][12]
Though The Blue Angel and Morocco, both from 1930, are often cited as his first sound films, Sternberg had already directed "a startling experiment" in asynchronous sound techniques with his 1929 Thunderbolt.[13]
Casting Lola Lola[edit]
Singer Lucie Mannheim was favored by UFA producer Erich Pommer for the part of Lola, with support from leading man Emil Jannings, but Sternberg vetoed her as insufficiently glamorous for a major production. Sternberg also rejected author Heinrich Mann's actress-girlfriend Trude Hesterberg. Brigitte Helm, seriously considered by Sternberg, was not available for the part. Sternberg and Pommer settled on stage and film actress Käthe Haack for the amount of 25,000 Reichsmarks.[14]
Sternberg first saw 29-year-old Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich at a music revue called the Zwei Krawatten (Two Neckties), which was produced by dramatist Georg Kaiser. Sternberg began immediately to groom Dietrich into "the woman he saw she could become."
Critic Andrew Sarris remarks on the irony of the relationship: "Josef von Sternberg is too often subordinated to the mystique of Marlene Dietrich...the Svengali-Trilby publicity that enshrouded The Blue Angel – and the other six Sternberg-Dietrich film collaborations – obscured the more meaningful merits not only of these particular works but of Sternberg's career as a whole."[15]
Release[edit]
The Blue Angel was scheduled for its Berlin premiere on 1 April 1930, but UFA owner and industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, unhappy with socialist Heinrich Mann's association with the production, blocked release. Production manager Pommer defended the film, and Mann issued a statement distancing his anti-bourgeois critique from Sternberg's more sympathetic portrayal of professor Immanuel Rath in his movie version.[26] Sternberg, who declared himself apolitical, had departed the country in February, shortly after the film was completed, and conflict ensued. Hugenberg ultimately relented on grounds of financial expediency, still convinced that Sternberg had concealed within The Blue Angel "a parody of the German bourgeoisie."[27][28]
The film proved to be "an instant international success."[29][30] Dietrich, at Sternberg's insistence, was brought to Hollywood under contract to Paramount, where the studio would film and release Morocco in 1930 before The Blue Angel would appear in American theatres in 1931.[31]