[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Blue Angel on Friday, January 8. The show at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 Members/ $7 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

When Marlene Dietrich walked in to audition for the part of Lola Lola, she had no idea what a profound impact that day would have on her future acting career. Unprepared and uninterested, anyone else would have been shown the door based on her poor initial image. But there was something about her that sparkled beyond a mere unimpressive glance.

Dietrich had been an established stage performer and played many roles in films throughout much of the ‘20s, but on September 5, 1929, when Josef von Sternberg caught her performance in the music and dance revue Zwei Krawatten (Two Neckties), he knew he had to have her.

Dietrich was his Lola Lola much like Immanuel Rath (played by silent film superstar Emil Jannings) became her play toy that eventually led to the lead character’s self-destruction. The difference between the two was that Sternberg’s internal philosophy as a director was brash and ineffectual.  “I regard actors as marionettes,” Sternberg once said, “as pieces of color on my canvas.”¹

His canvas stretched out into every facet of filmmaking from the angle of lighting and how it reflected on people and props to a frame-by-frame perfectionism as produced from films like The Salvation Hunters, Underworld, and The Docks Of New York. But it was Dietrich who he treated as clay and was determined to sculpt her into a masterpiece. He used her essence and reputation to his full benefit. In Berlin, Dietrich had a reputation for being edgy and ahead of the times. She had a dedication to free love — although married and a mother — and was publicly promiscuous with her sexuality. Her anxiety regarding her morality during the shooting of the film was apparent as was Sternberg’s intentions. He once said, “I did not endow her with a personality that was not her own. I gave her nothing that she did not already have. What I did was make them visible for all to see.” ²

The Blue Angel was taken from Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. Mann was a political and social writer, searching and exposing the causes of equality, justice and freedom. These elements — although not as distinct as his other works — modestly leaked into what became considered his greatest contribution to the German novel. The story of  a school teacher going from an overpowering and tyrannical hatred towards his pupils to an obsessive need of love towards a cabaret singer read like a news event with its distinct directness of the story that tore into the reader’s psyche.

Sternberg omitted Mann’s social-political language and focused entirely on the central theme — a man’s self-abatement. When Mann wrote the novel, Unrat was autobiographical in a sense. He saw many traits in Unrat that came from his own image: isolation, loneliness, a desperation for love and his disillusionment and hostility to the world. This self-portrait transformed into Sternberg’s work as Mann said after seeing the film, “My head and Marlene Dietrich’s legs.” Mann’s pointed beard and broad head became the inspiration for Janning’s look in the film. ³

It was not long before shooting this film that Al Jolson tantalized viewers with the first “Talkie” singing appearance in film (The Jazz Singer). Vaudeville in nature, the songs in the The Blue Angel brought distinction. Filmed both in German and English for lack of overdubbing abilities, the music was used naturally from the clock chimes to the professor’s whistling to Lola’s vocal performances.

Embedded around musical punctuation, much of the film takes place in the Blue Angel Cafe and the consistent chaos of the audience and performers scurrying around. On occasion the professor stumbles upon the company clown which later in the film he becomes. Stopping to stare at this miserable creature, little does he know that he is really staring at his future demise.

Thematically, the film not only views the inner-struggle of a man, but a German society in struggle. The beginning of the film shows a shop owner pull open the blinds of a window to illuminate a poster of Lola Lola. Beginning to wash the window, she stops and stares at the poster, then without finishing walks away. Living conditions were worsening in Berlin and Sternberg fed off that negligibility both externally and internally. Our first vision of the professor, he is in his study and notices that his canary has died. The theme of the bird bounces back and forth throughout the film where at first she is his little bird singing away to him when he soon becomes her strutting rooster only to end up having eggs smashed in his face, smearing clown make up in an almost horrific manner. The transition from horrid rooster crows to unearthly shrieking is a stark realization. This is a man who captured the fear of the German psyche of the 1930s with stark reality. The professor’s rule from his teaching desk is the same monument he clutches just before he dies. Sternberg saw a city drenched in decadence only to be disillusioned by their own selfs.

Lola Lola had nothing to gain from Professor Rath. What we see is a societal schoolteacher who upheld high moral standards as a tyrannical disciplinarian and then gradually lost everything through her. In the end, she is no different than when she met him. We see Lola Lola on stage singing “Falling In Love” as a degraded and tormented Rath who looks like The Monster in Frankenstein stammering and screeching uncontrollably out of the cabaret and into the street. With peering glances into the audience and a sultry pose, Lola Lola dares anyone to try and love her.

It is questionable who made the film more famous, Dietrich or Sternberg, but it is clear that one could not have existed without the other.

Sources:

[1] and [2] Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich by Donald Spoto (Doubleday, 1992)
[3] The Brothers Mann: The Lives of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1871-1950 and 1875-1955 by Nigel Hamilton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

Additional Resources:

The German Cinema by Rogher Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel (New York/Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1971).
Movie Review: The Blue Angel by Mordaunt Hall (New York Times, December 6, 1930). http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE2D91F38E433A25755C0A9649D946194D6CF
Roger Ebert’s Review of <i>The Blue Angel</i>, September 28, 2001: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010928/REVIEWS/109280301/1023
Notes On Film: The Blue Angel by Thomas Caldwell (Cinema Autopsy, October 8, 2008). http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2008/10/08/notes-on-film-the-blue-angel/