BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1930	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	106:23 minutes	Other Extras	Biographies - Cast
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Josef von Sternberg
Studio Distributor	Force Video	Starring	Marlene Dietrich Emil Jannings Kurt Gerron Hans Albers Rosa Valetti Reinhold Bernt Eduard von Winterstein Hans Roth Rolf Muller
Case	Transparent Amaray
RRP	$29.95	Music	Friedrich Hollander

    Doctor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is a respected member of the teaching staff at the local college, who happens to discover his students with provocative postcards of a nightclub singer, Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), currently the star at "The Blue Angel" nightclub. When he discovers that his students seem to be spending a lot of their time at "The Blue Angel", he visits the nightclub in order to catch the students. Of course, in the process he falls for the beguiling charms of this evil temptress of minimal clothing standards, resulting in a sad decline from respected professor to beloved husband of Lola to local joke.

    Okay, it may not be the greatest story ever written, but for 1930 this is an extraordinary depiction of the degradation of one man through the sleazy clubs of the time. Quite extraordinarily effective direction by Josef von Sternberg for its day, filled with such little details as the famed Dietrich undergarment adjustment, makes this a fascinating watch for film historians. Emil Jannings was supposedly the star of this film, and there is no doubt that he does a damn fine job of depicting the character changes in the professor, but this is Marlene Dietrich's film the moment she makes an appearance. Whilst she herself apparently found it quite vulgar, her performance as Lola justifiably won her international fame. It is a performance that simply convinces totally that Lola is a woman born of the sleazy nightclubs, and that Dietrich is the perfect embodiment of the character. However, there is much to enjoy in other performances here, notably Kurt Gerron as the leader of the troupe (and its magician) and that of Rosa Valetti as his suffering wife Guste.

    But this film is almost as notable for how it demonstrates the slow move away from the silent era into the "talkie" era. This is one of those early efforts along that journey and it is interesting how tentative the use of sound is in the film. A classic? Possibly, but only because this is Marlene Dietrich at the blooming of a legendary career.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

    Overall, the general transfer is a little on the dark side, but it has to be said that overall the definition is not too bad at all. Clarity is again quite variable indeed, although in general it does not plumb any atrocious depths and most of the film is quite reasonably acceptable. Shadow detail is, as to be expected, quite poor. There is much more consistency in this transfer when compared to say M, although what is presumably the odd reel of the original film transfer is noticeably poorer than others. There was also a noticeable, but not especially distracting, lack of vertical stability in the film during the opening credits, but this was the only time that this seemed to be problem. There is a consistent problem with the the contrast with the film lightening and darkening in a sort of flashing light effect, which is clearly an inherent problem in the original film print. Once you get used to it, it is not unduly bothersome. Be aware, the editing of the film is quite poor, therefore there are plenty of editing jumps to put up with.

    This is a reasonably acceptable black and white transfer for its age. Whilst there is a lack of depth to the black and white tones, at no time does it descend into anything too murky at all, although there is still the prevalence of gray tones as opposed to black and white tones. However, this simply has to be expected in a film of this vintage as once again it is doubtful that anything close to a pristine print would be available as a master.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts. Video artefacts were not a problem either. However, the usual encyclopaedia of film artefacts was on display: scratches, dirt, and so on. Obviously these a quite distracting at times, but in a film of this vintage it is no worse than I would expect.

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack on the DVD, a German Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, which is very much mono. The soundtrack is accompanied with English subtitles (which are permanently on), interestingly in yellow rather than the normal white. I found the yellow a little easier to read in general, although the font chosen was not the best. There did appear to be some jumps in the subtitles, and a very rudimentary understanding of basic German is advantageous as not everything got subtitled. Even if you do not understand German, it is not a problem as you will get the gist of what is going on. The cover says the film was done in both German and English, so it is pleasing that we have the original German soundtrack. Like any soundtrack of the era, there was some distortion, some audio drop out and some minor background noise, but overall not that bad. There are some quite lengthy periods of silence in the film, in what I like of term the "effective use of silence". There is something quite ethereal about seeing action on film without any accompanying sound.

    The dialogue was reasonably clear and easy to understand throughout.

    There did not appear to be any audio sync problems with the transfer, which surprised me a little as I was certainly expecting some. However, my German is not good so it is a little difficult to be definite on the matter.

    Whilst Friedrich Hollander is credited with the music, there is not an awful lot of musical contribution to the film, apart from the songs given to Marlene Dietrich. Again, this illustrates the unsteady journey from silent film to "talkies".

    This is again a quite raw mono soundtrack straight out of the centre speaker and definitely nothing too much in the way of surround speakers are required here.

Menu

Biographies - Cast

    The overall video quality is passable for a film of this vintage.

    The overall audio quality is also passable for a film of this vintage.

    I still think that the extras need more effort, given the historical nature of the film.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris
27th October 1999