Review: The Blue Angel

Originally published on www.moviemuser.co.uk

As a lover of old Hollywood films, especially those made during the film industry’s golden age – because in my opinion the films were just better as they had a type of mystical Hollywood gloss painted over them – I was excited at the prospect of reviewing a film from 1930. This was in part to see a film from this era that I’d not heard of. It was also because the film was made not long after the transition into the talkies and, of course, it features film legend Marlene Dietrich.

However, like most good things they always seem a bit too good to be true, and that is certainly the case when it comes to this film. It’s being released as part of a Masters of Cinema series in a dual format (DVD & Blu-ray) edition that also features both English and German language versions of the film. The movie depicts the downward spiral of a school teacher (Emil Jannings), whose attempts to catch his students frequenting a local cabaret bar leads to his own enthusiasm for the bar’s main attraction, Lola (Dietrich), which results in both his life and fortune entering a time of turmoil.

Despite being included in the Masters of Cinema collection, unfortunately I couldn’t find anything too magnificent about it. In fact I can think of a few other films from the 1930s, such as Grand Hotel and Of Human Bondage, that would benefit more from a new HD release. They also feature legendary stars such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo, who are all on par with Miss Dietrich, if not better.

The film itself is rather boring, bland and has minimal dialogue to begin with; in fact it made me think of a rather bad version of the 1970 hit, Cabaret. It does have some good points when it comes to the use of the camera, mainly due to the panning that was very difficult back then due to static cameras, but apart from that there’s not much else to go on about.

Maybe it’s been seen as worthy to be included in this new collection due to it being the first collaboration between the director Josef Von Sternberg and Dietrich (it was also her ticket to Hollywood), who would make many more films together, but apart from that I can’t see any other reason why it would be included.

One thing I will say is that we get a clear indication of the twilight years of Marlene’s career, as she spent most of them as a cabaret singer touring the world. But apart from that, unless you’re a huge fan of Dietrich or old movies I’d give this a miss.

They don't make films like they used to!

So recently I’ve been thinking about films, and I’ve come to the conclusion that films today just aren’t as good as they used to be.

Sure films today are amazing, we have the ability to produce loads of special effects and we can even watch films in 3D now, allowing the films to almost come to life right in front of us, but they are just lacking that certain something.

Sure films made 50 years ago don’t have the amazing technical special effects that we have and the majority of them are made in black and white but they just had that something special, they had a certain magic about them if you will.

Maybe films today just don’t seem as magical because Hollywood and all the other picture houses around the world churn out about a million films a week these days (a slight exaggeration but you get what I mean), or maybe its because of the high rate of illegal downloading that stops people from going and experiencing the magic of the cinema, as you can now watch any film at anytime from the comfort of your own front room.

But does it really compare to the excitement of seeing something on the big screen? The answer to that I believe is no. It doesn’t because; you have other distractions at home to prevent you from getting totally engrossed in the amazement of the film.

I also think the magic of film has been lost due to us expecting more from films. Just think about it 70 years ago when the Wizard of Oz went from black and white to colour, that would have been absolutely amazing but now we expect bigger productions, more special effects and high action chase scenes. Our thirst for technology and advancement has taken away the brilliance of cinema.

The celebrity culture we now have has also taken away the cinematic magic that once was. Before you had these huge Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe who you could only access through the cinema system and they remained what they were because of this, elusive and unattainable film stars.

Now we have the likes Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt who my have hugely successful film careers, but are now more famous for being famous, we seem to care more about their relationship and how many children they have adopted rather than their film roles. I mean I have never actually seen Colin Farrell in a film, yet I seem to know everything about his personal life through magazines and TV shows.

The point I’m getting to is, I think the public have so much access to the media and those who are at the centre of it that we seem to view their lives as the movie narrative and not the film anymore. We have also become more dependent on big explosions and animated monsters that the movies actual message and plot.

It looks as though that Hollywood magic that once was has been replaced by a media saturated public that don’t really care much for the film anymore but more about the hustle and bustle surrounding the production of it.

No wonder they called it the Golden Age of Hollywood.