Der blaue Engel 1930

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Der blaue Engel (1930)
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Der blaue Engel (1930)

• Background to Weimar Cinema
• Film Aesthetics
• Key themes in Cinema
• Key figures involved with Der blaue Engel

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Background to Weimar Cinema

• Origins of German Cinema
• Max Reinhardt
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal Das fremde Mädchen (1913)
• WW1.
• Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) 1917.
• Erich Ludendorff
• Babelsberg

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Background to Weimar Cinema

• Germany wiped out by the war.
• parliamentary democracy.
• intellectual liberation.
• emancipation of women
• Spartakist movement (1918/19)
• Weimar Republic (1919)
• The new democratic structures were seen as weak
• direct action
• violence on the streets

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Background to Weimar Cinema

• chronic economic system
• 1923 hyperinflation
• 1929 saw the Wall Street crash
• acceleration in the pace of technological
  progress
• Highly contradictory period of history.
• freedom versus control

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Film Aesthetics

• Very successful period for German filmmakers
• Success of German Expressionism
• mise en scène
• internal- highly staged, non realist sets
• Brothers Grimm in their use of dark/violent
  folklore)
• lighting

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Film Aesthetics

• Robert Wiene 1919

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Film Aesthetics

• neue Sachlichkeit
• Shift towards social realism
• Straßenfilm
• Lack of expectation, pessimism, resignation,
  disillusionment
• use of melodrama

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Film Aesthetics

• G.W. Pabst, Die freudlose Gasse (1925)

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Key themes

• The impact of the new democracy on Germany
• The impact of technological progress
• The effects of modernity on the individual
  psyche
• The changing relationship of the sexes
• The impact on understandings of masculinity and
  femininity
• The continuing importance of class

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Background to Der blaue Engel

• Josef von Sternberg
• Born to a Jewish family in Vienna,
• spent much of his childhood in New York
• went to Germany to direct Der blaue Engel
• German and English versions simultaneously
• the first German-language talkie.

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Background to Der blaue Engel

• Emil Jannings
• Thought to be the real star of the film
• the first winner of the Academy Award for Best
  Actor for The Last Command (directed by von
  Sternberg)
• Could not make transition in the US to talkies

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Background to Der blaue Engel

• Marlene Dietrich
• Unknown at the time, became a star over night
• Worked with Max Reinhardt
• Sternberg as a mentor initially
• Active in ant-Nazi propaganda during war
• Went on to reach iconic status
• Image of the femme fatale
• Her body constructed as the epitome of female
  sexuality
• androgynous
• desire versus danger

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