The Blue Angel

Wednesday 5 August at 7.30pm [NB: showing at the Rialto]

Josef von Sternberg | Germany | 1930 | 104 mins | DCP, B&W | PG low level violence | In German with English subtitles

In Weimar Germany, a respectable professor risks everything after venturing into a nightclub and falling for cabaret siren Lola Lola. Marlene Dietrich stars.

“A modern tragedy and an erotic masterpiece” – Philip French

“Austrian-born, American-schooled Josef von Sternberg went to Berlin to direct Emil Jannings in the actor’s first sound film. But the performer for whom The Blue Angel is best remembered is not Jannings but Marlene Dietrich. Shot simultaneously in German and English-language versions the film made Dietrich an international icon with the role of Lola Lola, a performer in a cabaret dripping with atmospheric Weimar sleaze. Lola’s coarse crooning, bold manner, and signature costume — white top hat, black stockings, and little else — reduce Jannings’s prim professor to a groveling, crowing caricature of masochistic compulsion.”

– Juliet Clark, BAMPFA

“With her silver top hat and frilly underwear, Dietrich became world famous as she threw her head back in a gesture of extravagant abandon and breathily sang her keynote song about infatuated lovers fluttering around her like moths to a flame. In German, it’s: ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss / aus Liebe eingestellt’ — ’I am from top to toe, ready for love.’ But in the more famous English-language version, it’s: ‘Falling in love again, never wanted to…’”

– Peter Bradshaw, Guardian