"The Blue Angel"

[stoutfellow]

Last night I decided to go with another oldie, and watched "The Blue Angel", a 1930 German film starring Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich. (It was Dietrich's first major role.) It's a rather sordid story about a professor whose life is ruined when he gets involved with a cabaret singer. (I have a bit of a quarrel with the translators. My German isn't very good, and the sound was rather muddy, but it was clearly stated that he was a professor at a gymnasium, which I believe is more like a high school than a college; the subtitles, though, suggested that he was a college professor.)

It occurs to me to compare the situation in this movie with one popular theme in modern USAn film and song - the idea that people from the lower classes are freer, more alive than the educated and the genteel. I'm thinking of, for instance, Billy Joel's song "Uptown Girl" and the TV series "Moonlighting", but there are plenty of other examples. In "The Blue Angel", by contrast, Professor Rath's infatuation with Lola Lola is presented as an absolute disaster for him. I have to wonder: is the popular view today (and its relative, the appeal of the "bad boy") any better - any more realistic - than the view presented in "The Blue Angel"?

Actually, one could probably box the compass by looking at stories where someone lower-class is elevated by the attentions of someone upper-class ("Sabrina", or "My Fair Lady", for example - and yes, I know that Shaw didn't intend for Henry Higgins and Eliza to be romantically involved, but the film clearly does), or where someone lower-class is destroyed by involvement with someone upper-class. That last is rarer; the only example that comes to my mind is Sholom Aleichem's "Schprintze". (Tevye had more daughters than appear in "Fiddler on the Roof"; Schprintze was the eldest, and her story is a sad one.)

I wish I knew more. It would be interesting to look at the times and places where these different sorts of story were popular.

Comments

Class in Movies

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

A lot of the John Hughes "teen" movies -- "Pretty in Pink" etc, -- go to that issue, sometimes with benefit to the class-crossers and sometimes not.

Dudley Moore's "Arthur" and sequels take a particular bent. As does "Pretty Woman" -- (ever read about the version of that, as pitched? $6000, A love triangle: Julia Robert's character reaches and teaches the Richard Gere character enough about getting in touch with his feelings and respecting his partner that Gere can finally reconcile with his (uncast and unseen in the final version) rich fiance', leaving the hooker back on the street after the week, only $6000 to show for her efforts.

Then there is how Princess Leia redeems the soul of smuggler Han Solo ...

Re: Class in Movies

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

No, I hadn't heard of that version of "Pretty Woman". It fits the pattern well enough, though - Gere's character is evidently improved by his association with the hooker, even if the relationship ends. I wouldn't have thought of this, but "Roman Holiday" gives yet another variation on the theme - both characters are improved, even though their relationship ends by mutual consent. Hunh.