The Frame » film-Germany http://frame.the-frame.com from the pen of Jandy Stone Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:17:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 #93 – The Blue Angel http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/93-the-blue-angel/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/93-the-blue-angel/#comments Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:49:56 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=427 This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films.

blueangel

Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel)
Germany 1931; dir: Josef von Sternberg
starring: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich
screened 7/5/08; New Beverly Cinema

Previous Viewing Experience: Never seen it, nor anything else directed by von Sternberg or starring Jannings, though I’ve seen several later Dietrich films.

Knowledge Before Viewing: In a meta sense, I’m aware that von Sternberg and Dietrich are a well-known actress-director team, and that Dietrich made waves for her masculin costuming in this and/or her other films with him. More specifically, I know the basic story has something to do with I’m not looking forward to this one too terribly much. It sounds like an offputting combination of dirty old man lechery and moralizing. Add in early sound era awkwardness, and yeah. Sorta ambivalent. Hopefully seeing it in a theatre (fortuitous timing on the New Beverly’s part!) will help.

Brief Synopsis: My pre-viewing synopsis is fairly close, actually. The Professor (Jannings) finds his students sneaking off to the local cabaret, but when he goes there to catch them at it, he ends up falling for Lola Lola (Dietrich) himself. She encourages him and eventually they marry. But when the show goes back on the road, he’s reduced to performing clown parts to earn his keep and stay with her.

Response: I wound up liking this a lot more than I initially expected to. One of my favorite films it probably won’t ever be, but it was definitely worthwhile at least seeing once to experience such a young Marlene Dietrich. She’s absolutely delightful from start to finish (outside of, perhaps, a few scenes near the end where she gets to be quite the little bitch). The story is far more focused on the Professor, though, and his fall from esteemed academic and community leader to pathetic joke after he marries Lola. And this being to some degree a Gemran Expressionist film, his decline gets a little on the overwrought side at times. I did particularly like the recurring bird imagery – both the Professor and Lola keep birds, linking them before they’re, um, linked, and an early shot of a dead bird provides a foreshadowing glimpse of how this is all going to work out. In terms of moralizing, the message is apparently “don’t marry flighty showgirls much younger than you because it’ll ruin your life.” Which, actually, is probably good advice.

Overall Rating: Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2008/10/08/93-the-blue-angel/feed/ 0 The Lives of Others http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/06/22/the-lives-of-others/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/06/22/the-lives-of-others/#comments Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:48:45 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=331 I went into this thinking “it better be pretty darn good if it’s going to compensate for my bitterness at it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Pan’s Labyrinth.” And you know, it’s not better than Pan’s, but it IS pretty darn good. It’s the late 1980s in East Berlin; one main character is a surveillance agent, the other is the writer he’s assigned to watch. As the writer gets more and more involved in subversive activities, his surveiller gets more and more entrenched in his life and eventually begins covering up evidence from his superiors. There’s an element of predictability to all of this, but it’s handled with a great deal of finesse in both acting and directing. The end of the movie, after the Berlin Wall has come down, is also very effective. I figure if something not Pan’s Labyrinth had to be named the best foreign film of the year, The Lives of Others is a more than acceptable choice.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/06/22/the-lives-of-others/feed/ 0 Sophie Scholl: The Last Days http://frame.the-frame.com/2006/04/11/sophie-scholl-the-last-days/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2006/04/11/sophie-scholl-the-last-days/#comments Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:07:11 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=85 Sophie Scholl was a 21-year-old student in Munich in the early 1940s, and she and her brother were arrested in 1943 for distributing leaflets that detailed the failure of the Nazi army on the Russian front and the inability of Germany to win the war due to Hitler’s poor leadership. A large portion of the movie is taken up with Sophie’s interrogation by a Nazi police investigator, and even though it’s basically the two of them talking, it’s absolutely riveting. Sophie’s strength of character and steadfastness in her beliefs stymie the otherwise formidable investigator, and by the end it’s clear that although they will always be on opposite sides of the Nazi question, he has gained a grudging respect for her.

Julia Jentsch is incredible as Sophie, imbuing her with a quiet intensity that carries the movie along. It’s made clear that Sophie is a Christian, and she prays several times throughout the film. She knows the Nazis are perpetuating heinous acts against humanity, against the Jews in particular, and she doesn’t shy away from telling the investigator exactly what she thinks about that. But it’s also clear that her problems with Hitler are not only humanitarian, but also political…this girl is no bleeding heart, but clear-headed and able to see that Hitler is bad not only for Jews and other “undesirables”, but for Germany itself and the German people in general. This is a point of view that I don’t think has been terribly well-represented, certainly not in film.
Superior

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2006/04/11/sophie-scholl-the-last-days/feed/ 0 Aguirre, the Wrath of God http://frame.the-frame.com/2006/03/28/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2006/03/28/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god/#comments Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:28:33 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=55 Aguirre, the Wrath of GodInteresting. I really didn’t know what to expect from this, my first Herzog film. I knew only that he was a well-known director, almost as well known for his eccentricity as for his films. I was prepared for slow-moving, and that’s a good thing. Herzog really takes his time, from the very opening shots of a caravan of Conquistadors arduously crossing the Andes mountains, exploring Peru under Pizarro. This could either be very boring or indicative of the strain underwent by these early explorers. Or both. Anyway. The movie is really about obsession and megalomania, as Pizarro’s second-in-command takes a smaller force on down the Amazon river once the going gets too rough for the entire crew to continue. Soon a battle of the wills begins, as the nobleman in charge wants to turn back and rejoin Pizarro (this after one raft is destroyed), while the maniacal soldier refuses to listen and mutinies, wanting the gold of El Dorado and possession of the empire of South America. Meanwhile, the natives are picking people off with arrows, sickness runs rampant, and the food is getting scarce. It’s a tour-de-force for Klaus Kinski, as the soldier who ends up king of all he surveys, but is it a victory? Glad I watched it, but not one I’d necessarily come back to, except possibly if studying Herzog.
Well Above Average

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