Blue Angel, The, was an early German sound motion picture that made an international star of German actress Marlene Dietrich. The director was Josef von Sternberg. The Blue Angel was released in 1930. Because of its popularity, Dietrich and Von Sternberg moved to Hollywood, where he directed her in six more films from 1930 through 1935.
The Blue Angel is a study in the fall of a man from respectability to self-destruction. A teacher at a boy’s school goes to a nightclub, hoping to catch some of his students there violating school rules. The teacher immediately becomes infatuated with Lola, the club’s singer, and spends the night with her. As a result, he loses his teaching job. The man eventually marries Lola, and he is reduced to selling off-color photos of her while he accompanies her on tour. Lola soon becomes bored with her husband and treats him with scorn. The humiliated man leaves her and dies in his old classroom.
The film was based on the novel Professor Unrat (1905) by the noted German author Heinrich Mann. Dietrich became a sensation for her portrait of the sexy, vulgar Lola. In the film, Dietrich sang “Falling in Love Again,” a song that became closely identified with her. The famous German actor Emil Jannings played the teacher. The movie was filmed in both German and English.
See also Dietrich, Marlene ; Von Sternberg, Josef .
