The Blue Angel

(Der blaue Engel) Marlene Dietrich’s iconic image is born in this raucous foray into Berlin’s cabaret scene, as an uptight professor finds himself pulled in by its magnetic lure. A buttoned-up schoolteacher is driven to insanity by obsessive desire, following a chance encounter with a chanteuse at a local cabaret. Headliner Lola Lola, brought to sparkling life by Dietrich – von Sternberg’s regular on-screen collaborator – soon seduces him from his respectable world and into Berlin’s erotic subterranea. Jannings is pitiful yet sympathetic as a hapless stooge unable to resist Lola’s world, in all its glamour and filth.