The Downfall of Professor Immanuel Rath

The Blue Angel (1930) directed by Josef von Sternberg is a tragedy.  The film is based on the novel, Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann.  It is about an existential, economic, and social downfall of a man, who foolishly risks everything he had for a fleeting desire for one woman.

The man, Prof. Dr. Immanuel Rath (why am I thinking of Immanuel Kant?) is played brilliantly by Emil Jannings and the woman for whom he hopelessly falls, Lola Lola is played by Marlene Dietrich.  The role of Lola Lola propelled Dietrich into stardom that was inevitably bound for Hollywood.

Professor Rath (mocked by his students with a name “Professor Unrat” meaning “professor garbage”) has a teaching post at a local gymnasium.  He is a stern man, bent on disciplining his pupils, while showing them value of Hamlet.  But he lacks passion in every way.  He deems himself far superior to others, both intellectually and morally.  He chooses a road of “professorial celibacy,” an “intellectual asceticism” that does not permit even one small thought about carnal pleasures.  He scolds his male students for visiting the local club, The Blue Angel and engaging in lurid fantasies while watching Lola Lola perform.

Of course, this is all fine and good..until the professor himself stumbles into the club and is smitten by Lola Lola.  And who could not be smitten with Marlene Dietrich?  She is a presence on the screen.  She takes over with her raw, aggressive, powerful masculinity and her piercing feminine eyes, which are just as deadly.

Professor Rath wants to resist her but he keeps coming back. His life begins to unravel and he is not himself.  Rath wants to do an honorable thing—he proposes to Lola Lola.  She laughs and laughs and laughs but still accepts his proposal.  One does feel some kind of pity for Rath but his passivity and lack of will power is more infuriating than pitiful.

Rath has been seduced not only by Lola Lola (which happened almost instantly) but also by the attention he has been receiving from her.  She treats him with amusement, and yet he, the man of the intellect, cannot see the utter indignity of it all.  He becomes a child in relation to Lola Lola who happily acquiesces to anything she says.  His will was never existent, and Lola Lola does not even have to demand anything of him.  She has already won the battle by merely sitting next to him.  Rath, just like with his students, is existentially impotent and anything and anyone has more power than him.

This is a dark film. It is not a film to watch if you want to be entertained, despite the fact that plot moves with a pace that calls on you to continue watching.

The imagery is exquisite in its symbolism—a dead bird at the beginning of the film, that “never sang anyway,” a professor imitating a rooster, a professor becoming a clown, among others—all are part of the strength of this film.

Jannings’ performance is near perfection, if not perfection.  One is conflicted in feelings whether to pity Rath or simply become increasingly frustrated with his passivity, or in the end, be totally indifferent to him.  Although not Jannings’ last film to be made, it seems that this role was the pinnacle of his career.  Sadly, he chose to stay in Germany during the rise of Hitler, and in his support of Nazism, he even starred in some Nazi propaganda films.  This is in contrast to Josef von Sternberg who was Jewish, and Dietrich who was very clear in her outspoken rejection of Nazism.

Josef von Sternberg

Despite this very disappointing fact, the film does not belong to Jannings but if it belongs to anyone, it is Heinrich Mann for writing the novel, and to Sternberg for directing the film.  Loud voiced rejections of Nazi ideology by Sternberg and Dietrich carry through any mixed emotions I might have that oftentimes take over the artistic vision.