Review of The Blue Angel (1930) by Lynda M — 14 Oct 2009

Forbidden love! Though it tells a more basic story on the hard-nosed principles of infatuation gone sour, there's an essence of timeless tragedy behind it that is hard to ignore. Right from the beginning (since this was her breakout role), it's clear that Marlene Dietrich's sexual prowess, with her bottomless Germanic drawl and fulsome gams, was and always would be the disarming, unstoppable female force that she was originally presented as in this cautionary tale about a college professor who, after attempting to rectify the morally questionable hobbies of his students, gets sucked into the belly of the beast himself.

Yet in spite of Frau Dietrich's fame, we shouldn't forget that the real credit for this film should be reserved for the leading man. Emil Jannings's descent into a flaming wreckage of his formal self is both a glamorous yet harsh poem caught magnificently between Sternberg's checkered maze of back-alleys and cabaret closets.

A world-wide hit when it was first released, it has still retained much of its raw power.