_Der Blaue Engel_...one of the *most* affecting movies I've ever seen. It's been probably been 25 years since I last saw it in undergraduate school. I was horribly depressed for days after seeing it. Especially the pitiful scene where he crowed like a rooster.
The thing about it is that there are actually three classes here at issue. The lower class, the upper class, and the bourgeoisie. The upper class had their own rules of decorum, and the lower class was pretty much expected to have loose morals, because, after all, they couldn't be *expected* to know any better. The class that *really* had to behave was the petite bourgeoisie. You are correct that a Gymnasium is a high school, but it is the secondary school for college-bound students, and frankly, I found the students who had just graduated from it and were freshmen at the university to have about the same level of education as our B.A. programs offer. Sobering thought, huh?
So, the middle class was expected to be the ultimate in conservative, staid, and *respectable* behavior. In particular, the teachers had an obligation to provide a moral compass for the students and never do anything that smacked of disrepute. The middle class did not forgive one of its own that crossed the line. For a teacher, being branded as "amoral," which, at the time, would include an affair with a cabaret singer, basically ended his life as he knew it. He would be shunned by his peers and avoided in general by his class for fear of contamination. And once he had fallen, and *knew* what it had cost him, his spirits, his self-respect, and confidence spiraled into a decline.
As I said, it's been 25 years since I've seen it, so maybe others could offer a different insight into the movie. We tend to be so egalitarian in America that, even though we *have* classes, the distinctions aren't so great, nor are they insurmountable, i.e., through education, marriage, etc. In the Germany of the time, those class differences meant everything. Heck, in _Woyzeck_, by Georg Buchner, (set in the late 1800s IIRC), Woyzeck, the soldier, could not even address his officer directly using the first person. As in, "Would HE like some tea?" You can see that the feelings from this movie have stayed with me for a l-o-n-g time!
How do you spell *cut-your-throat depressing*?
_Der Blaue Engel_...one of the *most* affecting movies I've ever seen. It's been probably been 25 years since I last saw it in undergraduate school. I was horribly depressed for days after seeing it. Especially the pitiful scene where he crowed like a rooster.
The thing about it is that there are actually three classes here at issue. The lower class, the upper class, and the bourgeoisie. The upper class had their own rules of decorum, and the lower class was pretty much expected to have loose morals, because, after all, they couldn't be *expected* to know any better. The class that *really* had to behave was the petite bourgeoisie. You are correct that a Gymnasium is a high school, but it is the secondary school for college-bound students, and frankly, I found the students who had just graduated from it and were freshmen at the university to have about the same level of education as our B.A. programs offer. Sobering thought, huh?
So, the middle class was expected to be the ultimate in conservative, staid, and *respectable* behavior. In particular, the teachers had an obligation to provide a moral compass for the students and never do anything that smacked of disrepute. The middle class did not forgive one of its own that crossed the line. For a teacher, being branded as "amoral," which, at the time, would include an affair with a cabaret singer, basically ended his life as he knew it. He would be shunned by his peers and avoided in general by his class for fear of contamination. And once he had fallen, and *knew* what it had cost him, his spirits, his self-respect, and confidence spiraled into a decline.
As I said, it's been 25 years since I've seen it, so maybe others could offer a different insight into the movie. We tend to be so egalitarian in America that, even though we *have* classes, the distinctions aren't so great, nor are they insurmountable, i.e., through education, marriage, etc. In the Germany of the time, those class differences meant everything. Heck, in _Woyzeck_, by Georg Buchner, (set in the late 1800s IIRC), Woyzeck, the soldier, could not even address his officer directly using the first person. As in, "Would HE like some tea?" You can see that the feelings from this movie have stayed with me for a l-o-n-g time!