The life and films of Marlene DietrichBy David Stuart Ryan, bestselling author of John Lennon's Secret  The filming of The Blue AngelHe had to shoot all the scenes first in German and then in English, although some in the English version of the film are left in German where they involve minor characters. Von Sternberg was allowed to create an astonishingly realistic film by Hollywood standards. The studio bosses did not know he was creating the old corrupt Europe he knew so well rather than a tinsel town fabrication. The film opens beautifully with the teacher, Emil Jannings, in his classroom, while echoing footsteps are heard, before cutting to a cleaning lady throwing some water over a poster advertising the performances of 'Lola Lola' at 'The Blue Angel' cabaret bar. On the poster a small angel clings to Lola Lola's leg, which is long and elegant. Her torso is barely covered by a tight fitting garment. It is more daring than the outfit Marlene wore in the film, for people still emerging from the stiff public morality of the German imperial heyday, it was distinctly shocking. Von Sternberg knew exactly how far he could go, and in Lola Lola he wished to create his own ideal of the sexually provocative woman who had learnt her trade the hard way on the streets. Von Sternberg claimed he merely revealed what was already there in Marlene Dietrich, he had immediately spotted the insouciance of the true Berliner, hard to shock and hard to outwit. From the very beginning they were lovers off the screen, and this allowed her to sit with him until late into the night as he looked at the day's rushes and prepared himself for the next morning's shoot. When he scanned through the reels, frame by frame, she became aware of a master craftsman at work, every shot was perfectly framed, perfectly lit, even the sound quality has another dimension to it in setting the mood, indeed he appreciated more of its emotional qualities than many later directors who supplied the emotive quality from background music. In 'The Blue Angel', every sense is called into play, here von Sternberg had learnt from the old High German expressionist cinema which created film from the play of light and dark, so that a whole world is summoned up, rather than just an action depicted. The loving attention to detail means that the film even today retains its extraordinary vivid quality while the players are immensely believable. All this is the work of von Sternberg alone, who demanded and got the absolute right to dictate how each set looked and was lit. The sound had to be right at the time the film was shot, there was no facility for adding the soundtrack later in a dub, but all these technical details were mastered completely by a man who had learnt his trade so painstakingly restoring each frame of a film by hand, he knew more about each technical function than even the alleged technicians. Filming followed a set pattern, it was just like going to work at an office. From 7am the actors prepared their make-up ready for action at 9am. However, it was rare for this to go altogether smoothly. Jannings was an actor who could only deliver his performance after he had suitably raised his emotional temperature, and on 'The Blue Angel' Marlene had the chance to see at first hand exactly what this entailed. If von Sternberg made the fatal mistake of not enquiring after Emil's health, the word would come from his dressing room that he was mortally unwell and would not be able to perform. Von Sternberg would then visit Jannings in his dressing room where he sat facing the mirror, a quivering mass of jellified fear who could not face the performance he was due to give. Only von Sternberg's entreaties and frequent reassurances that he was indeed the greatest actor in the world persuaded him to venture out, when he would give a superlative performace. In the early days of the shoot, he was playing the bombastic, bullying schoolmaster who was precise in his routine, sitting there imperiously waiting to be served his breakfast by his landlady and then fastidiously checking his handkerchief is in place in his top pocket before venturing out to rule his pupils, aged from 16-18, with a rod of iron. It is in one of these lessons that he comes across a picture of Lola Lola for the first time, the onlooker is required to blow up the skirts of Lola Lola to reveal her long legs. Soon he discovers more pictures of the cabaret artist and is determined to follow his charges to see what manner of woman it is who has them in her grasp. All this part of the film Jannings managed with superb aplomb, but for the actor and for the character it is a descent into hell. First, he has to defend Lola Lola against the demands of a sea captain who delivers a champagne bottle to her dressing room and believes this is enough to purchase her for the night. At the time the film was set, 1924, this would indeed have been the case for many a cabaret artiste taking her chances in the inflation-ruined country. Professor Umraut sees the captain off with a bellowing denunciation and a firm fist. He wins over Lola Lola's grudging admiration while he is rewarded with a glimpse from the bottom of a spiral staircase of her vagina as she tosses down her French camy knickers to him. All this is perfectly registered on Jannings' face, the shock turning to intrigue turning to reluctant but heartfelt pursuit of the delicious fruit he has not tasted in his very ordered life. For the ultimate seduction of the professor, von Sternberg had ordered Friedrich Hollander to compose a song, which, with his knowledge of the Berlin cabaret scene, perfectly matches the mood of the early 1920s. In literal English translation it says,
'I am from top to toe built for love In the even more cool English lyrics this is reworked as:
'Falling in love again, what am I to do The performance was wrung from Marlene by a director who was obsessive on the phrasing, the looks to be cast at the professor, the suggestive raising of the legs to reveal pale thighs shrouded in frilly knickers. Throughout most of the film he had one of the four cameras trained on Marlene's pelvis, precisely the angle of one of the most famous shots in the film lexicon where Marlene sits on a barrel revealing her charms. She has transported herself back to the world she knew so well of the cabaret clubs, eyeing up a likely customer for the night, evaluating and inviting the pick of the evening's audience, who for the purposes of the film is to be the shy but melting school professor. At one point von Sternberg shouted in a mock exasperated voice, 'Adjust your knickers, we can see your pubic hair, you filthy sow.' Marlene laughed. Leni Riefestahl, who was on set that day and had been in the running for the part, remembers it being less pungent a comment, but there was a distinctly coarse side to von Sternberg even on the film set. After 200 takes, no less, the song was committed to film and von Sternberg finally moved on, but for Marlene her career was forever haunted by this near perfect evocation of the Berlin cabaret atmosphere of the mid 20s, and who knew that better than her? She had been a chorus girl for 7 years and only the previous year had she finally stopped dancing and flashing her legs for a living when the film and stage work was not plentiful, as happened often. Film shoots lasted a few weeks, and usually she appeared in one or two scenes at most. The pay was normally in the range of 50 to 100 marks, little more than a shop girl's monthly wage. The actors and actresses were expected to make up for this with the perks of the jobs at parties and private gatherings. Marlene lived for the shows, they were her life, on top of which she was increasingly the one who kept the household together, Rudi's career had never really progressed from those first early days of promise. The atmosphere of the film set subtly changed after the professor proposed to Lola Lola and she, laughing a hard-bitten Berlin street girl laugh, accepted. In the film the professor is dismissed from the school by the headmaster when the boys mock his obsession with Lola Lola through their explicit drawings on the blackboard. In the early morning make-up sessions, Jannings developed the obsessions of someone who demands to be punished. One day he fell to the floor in a nervous state of exhaustion after saying he could not possibly go on with 'that tart' again. He was by now insanely jealous of her 'lunches' when von Sterberg and she would retire to a hotel to enact for themselves the grand passion that can spark between man and woman, it was a mood to perfectly match the obsessions depicted on the film. But Emil was determined not to be upstaged. He wanted von Sternberg to lunch with him, to keep Marlene out of the director's favoured regard. 'What can a woman give you, that I can't?' he pitifully demanded of von Sternberg. 'Don't I offer you my soul, my body, in every performance. Punish me if it is not good enough, here whip me, whip me I say for not being the actor who matches your demands.' Von Sternberg obediently whipped Jannings and Jannings returned to the sound set purged of all hate for the dictatorial director, who never handed out praise but merely put the performers through their motions again and again and again till it matched what he had in his mind and would never reveal to the actors. They were merely puppets in his eyes, there to follow his instructions to the letter. This Marlene knew and obediently followed, realising it was how she would progress in her own acting career. Von Sternberg had seen how the best of Hollywood films were directed and it was a new experience for Marlene to witness this fanatical attention to every detail, with a vision imposed on the chaotic scenes from high above. The actors never had the whole picture and would have to wait for the film itself to unravel the full message he was seeking to capture on celluloid. Marlene was aware from the details von Sternberg worked into every scene that he was determined The Blue Angel cabaret bar was to be seen as a decadent low-life bar with no redeeming features. A sad faced clown surveys the professor on each visit and gives a perfect depiction of the vanity of all human wishes with his wan, sad but still curious face as he sees the fate of another unfortunate unfolding. Bears are tugged past the fat and ageing performer's dressing room by bit-part players, seedy magicians well past their prime come in and out of Lola Lola's room, all around is an air of depravity with no turning back, this is the end of all hopes the film clearly says in a stunningly realistic portrayal of the mood of those times. It is 'Joyless Street' again, where only the besmirching of innocence gives true pleasure to the players, and Lola Lola cannot help but be the instrument of downfall for all that the old Germany stood for, so well portrayed in the stout frame and certainties of Professor Umraut. Marlene quickly realised that Josef von Sternberg saw another cuckolding in the story. Just as the years flash by from the marriage of 1925 to the present day of 1929 in the film, so her own married life flashed by. For Marlene and for von Sternberg, there was an element of Rudi in the professor's fate, forced by circumstance to become her clown-like assistant after he is unable to work in his own calling. Nemesis comes in the film when the manager of the cabaret insists they are to return to his hometown of Lbeck to perform. The professor will hear none of it but is forced to realise he has no choice, he has become a camp follower of the seedy show. He is forced on stage after having been announced as the former professor from the local high school. As he stands there in front of the mocking crowd, he catches a glimpse of Lola Lola in the arms of the leading man and realises he has lost her as a rotten egg is smashed over his skull and he is meant to give a 'cock a doddle do' crow. In a stunning acting performance, Jannings conveys all the shame and ridicule heaped upon his great frame, the whippings and pleadings in his dressing room allowed him to reach this demonic stage of utter desolation. In the film a new Marlene Dietrich is unveiled, for as life once again mirrors art, she maintained her affair with Hans Albers at the same time as the new one with von Sternberg had commenced. No man, even a film director, was going to own her. Von Sternberg saw his own cuckolding and faithfully captured it on film. The only part of The Blue Angel where Marlene's acting fails, is the look of shock on her face when she is discovered in the arms of the leading man. The old hyperbole of the silent films is sketched on her features, it is unbelievable, not least because she always expected her men to realise that because they had loved her, it did not in any way mean that they owned me. She was always and forever determined to be a free agent, ready to give the blessings of her physical love to whoever she thought so deserved, for her love had a universal yet strangely impersonal character, an emotion to be used to calm the world and refresh its eyes when they became downcast. This she had learnt at high cost on the streets of Berlin in the early 20s, soon it was a lesson she could usefully apply to rest of the world as the first hints of renewed depression and recession began to be hinted at in the beginning months of 1930. By mid February the film was complete, although von Sternberg would let no one see it until the premier on March 30. As soon as the film was cut to von Sternberg's satisfaction he had returned to America, with the promise that he would arrange a film contract with Paramount for Marlene , since he was absolutely certain that the film would be a major success. She was far less certain, and noted that the UFA executives declined to take up their option on seeing the preview von Sternberg arranged for Erich Pommer, the producer, and his bosses. Finally the cable came through from Hollywood, she had a contract and began preparations for departing to America. She explained to Rudi and Maria that she would go on ahead, that the first film could easily be a disaster, and there was no point in uprooting their lives with this failure in prospect. At the same time she was determined to leave Berlin on a high note. At the first showing of the film, the day before the official premiere, neither she nor Emil Jannings were allowed to be present. Jannings had a presentiment that all was not well for his career. He had told von Sternberg that he never wished to work with him or see him ever again, even though he said, 'I will weep on hearing of your death, and you will weep on hearing of mine.' With that he had scuttled out of von Sternberg's office, difficult to the last. They certainly never did meet again, though with the benefit of the years it is possible to appreciate that this was Emil Jannings' finest performance, he captured the wretched professor and his fate perfectly. That it found a deep resonance within his own tortured self had much to do with this fine acting performance. By the time of the premiere Marlene still did not know whether she had a hit or a flop on her hands, she could not imagine why Germany or, even more, America, should be emotionally involved in the fate of one of the many cabaret girls who could be found in every sleazy bar in either country. But she prepared for the premiere as though it were a film set, dressed in a sequinned body-hugging dress. As the lights went down she pressed up to the glass in the viewing room at the back of the cinema where they could see the reaction of the audience (in those days people reacted to film rather like they still do to theatre). Emil Jannings affected a nonchalent lack of concern at the reaction of the public, even turning his back on the screen to natter about anything but the film to his cronies, after all he was the most famous actor in the world. By the time the film reached the first scenes where Lola Lola is depicted in action in 'The Blue Angel' Marlene became aware of a buzz in the audience. Their hearts were warming to this sailor's girl with her Low German accent, her casual acceptance of her role as a temptress. By the time of the film's end, with Lola Lola sitting astride a chair singing defiantly to the audience of 'Falling in Love Again', she had become a new person, a star, both on screen and in her own estimation. The audience applause was deafening and rolled on and on as she made her way towards the exit for a car which Willi Forsch had laid on. Clutching champagne glasses and luggage they fell about in the back as it roared off into the night, throwing their glasses out behind onto the road. Willi hugged Marlene, delighted for her success, and she showered him with kisses, all too aware that the stardom she had long sought now finally beckoned. They caught the boat train with seconds to spare, indeed the train's departure was delayed until her arrival. She was not to know that it would be long months before she would return again to Berlin, and in a sense she never really came back at all. You can now continue the story by paying a fee of $15 online with your credit card, this takes just one minute, you will then be given access to the rest of the novel online which you may print out for private reading if you wish.
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