The Cinema,Inc. presents
THE BLUE ANGEL
Sunday, February 12, 2012
7:00 pm
The Rialto Theatre
1620 Glenwood Avenue
Raleigh, North Carolina
The Blue Angel is a film about a Professor, Immanuel Rath (Emil Jennings), who leaves his natural habitat for the love of a woman who is not of his class, into a chaotic world he does not understand. In abandoning the “pigeonhole” that society has placed him in to try to possess a compelling force of nature, Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), he loses everything – Career, power, home, social standing, self-respect, and is finally destroyed by the choices he has made.
When the film opens Professor Rath is a strict and humorless schoolmaster who is shocked when he discovers the boys in his class have been spending their time at a sleazy cabaret called The Blue Angel, where an entertainer named Lola keeps the men in thrall and sells suggestive postcards of herself. Rath goes to the club in hopes of catching his students and giving them a severe dressing-down, but he instead finds himself entranced by the carefree atmosphere of the club, and is struck by Lola’s earthy, sensual beauty. Rath finds himself strongly attracted to Lola, and she later entertains him in her dressing room. When word of Rath’s infatuation with Lola spreads to his students, he is taunted mercilessly, and eventually Rath is dismissed from the school. Although Lola agrees to marry Rath, she shows little affection for him and delights in humiliating him, making him her servant and forcing him to play a clown in her stage show.
The Blue Angel was shot in both German and English language versions and Dietrich introduced what became her theme song, Friedrich Hollaender’s “Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It)”. The film is considered to be the first major German sound film and it brought world fame to Dietrich.™
The Blue Angel. Director: Josef von Sternberg. Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jennings. B&W, Germany, 1930, Not Rated, 113 Minutes.
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