L'ange bleu

Curt Jurgens and Mae Britt are spectacular in this underrated film. It is an intense and gripping love story. The film is also brightened by Stella Stevens in a very small part during her brief tenure as a 20th Century Fox starlet.

This is one remake that is better than the original, even though that original is one of the classics of world cinema. This remake is also fundamentally different. In the original, Lola Lola was the main character. Not only that, but the professor was just a buffoon. Neither character was particularly appealing. Lola was cruel. The professor was a fool.

In the remake, the professor is the main character and he is treated realistically. (I suspect that this is truer to the Heinrich Mann novel also.) The professor teaches biology, and for years has taught his boys about the birds and the bees--literally, without having a clue of the feelings associated with those birds and bees. Then, he sees Lola and is bowled over. It is easy for her to seduce him. The next morning, he, being a German gentleman, proposes marriage to her. She is touched and flattered and accepts. The school where he teaches is outraged and orders him to give up this plan, but the professor remains true to his intended. He is fired. He tries to get a position elsewhere, but all schools are closed to him. Soon, he has spent all his savings and he and Lola are reduced to poverty. Lola goes back to the cabaret job and supports him. Soon, the management demands that the professor stop being a sponge and earn his keep. ...

I won't tell you the rest of the story. It is dramatic and moving. This is the definitive version of this story. Lola and the professor are sympathetic, and the movie is far more moving. The production values are high and the movie is in color. When will the owners of this movie see fit to put it on DVD?

During the 1950s, it became fashionable in Hollywood to revisit film classics of the 1930s that, however, all turned out to be vastly inferior to the originals and are now quite hard to come by. The film under review is one of them and, amusingly enough, the copy I landed – sourced from a pan-and-scanned Fox Movie Channel TV screening – is preceded by a snippet from the opening credits of John Huston's THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN (1958)!

Coming almost 30 years after the film that had turned Marlene Dietrich into an international sensation, the color remake updates the setting to a more contemporary one but then follows its prototype in a disheartening scene-by-scene fashion for most of its running time! The pointlessness of the venture is doubly exposed by the fact that director Josef von Sternberg had already filmed the movie in English at the same time that he made the superior German one (which had also been the nation's first Talkie).

Although May Britt and Curd Jurgens are decent enough as the central couple, they are no match for Dietrich and Emil Jannings in the original and, indeed, I kept wondering how much better the film would have played had it been shot a decade later with Max Von Sydow and iconic chanteuse Nico (of "The Velvet Underground & Nico" fame) in the lead! Jurgens was an international star who had been brought to Hollywood two years previously for Nicholas Ray's BITTER VICTORY and remained in demand for the rest of his life (he died of a heart-attack in 1982). Britt (who is still alive today and turns 78 today!) had started out in Italy – her most notable film there being Raffaello Matarazzo's THE SHIP OF CONDEMNED WOMEN (1954) – but she subsequently came to Hollywood and appeared in the likes of WAR AND PEACE (1956) and THE YOUNG LIONS (1958; also for Fox and Dmytryk) before landing the role of Lola-Lola; afterwards, she made little of consequence – except for her penultimate film, HAUNTS (1977) – and is now chiefly remembered for the stir her 1960 marriage to Sammy Davis Jr. had created in those less tolerant times. Frankly, Jurgens' students are a rather uninteresting lot here, and it is left for character actors like Theodor Bikel (as Lola-Lola's employer) and John Banner (as Jurgens' empathizing principal) to come off best among the supporting cast members.

Although the director had this to say on the movie in his autobiography, "It was a film none of us had to be ashamed of, but the rule still holds – never remake a classic, even a minor one", the truth is that his handling (exacerbated by the strict adherence to the original and the addition of a couple of musical numbers) is mostly an indifferent one. Screenwriter Nigel Balchin – who would soon be penning the underrated and ambiguous semi-Western THE SINGER NOT THE SONG (1961) – takes care to portray Jurgens' sterile, ordered life (by repeatedly showing him strategically meeting his Headmaster on their way to school) before his unheralded meeting with Lola-Lola but then proceeds to alter the main characters in such a way that we are led to a lame upbeat ending far removed from the powerfully poignant one depicted by Jannings and Sternberg in 1930. In fact, here Britt pities Jurgens' final degradation (parading as a clown in front of his townspeople) and purposefully kisses her young former flame in front of him – an act which precipitates his quitting the sleazy milieu and march onward, accompanied by Jurgen's ex-boss, towards the prospect of regaining his old position as schoolteacher! Ultimately, it is in Leon Shamroy's garish cinematography (with blue understandably dominating the color scheme) that the film's major asset is to be found…but whether that relative advantage over the Sternberg version is enough to compensate for its many shortcomings is another matter entirely!

Unnecessary remake that gets most of what made the original distinctive wrong.

While May Britt is a very pretty girl she possesses none of the magical allure nor cheap commonness that Marlene Dietrich brought to the part of Lola-Lola. Without those essential elements explaining her ability to ensnare the professor so utterly that he throws his life away on her the picture has an empty center. Also updating the setting to the 50's removes the air of decadent decay that hung over the first's Weimar Germany.

There are some good things chief among them Curd Jurgens's lead performance. His slow slide into degradation is compelling and he's the reason to see the film but Dmytryk's direction is listless and therefore the film is uninspired.

Interesting to see John Banner who was best known as the simple-minded Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Heroes cast here as an erudite educator. He's also quite good in his small role.

A foolish decision to remake something so closely associated with one particular legendary figure. A losing proposition from the start, something that Marilyn Monroe, Spencer Tracy & Fredric March-all of whom were offered the roles first and rejected them obviously realized. Why bother when you know from the start your film will never measure up.

Remake of a 1930 classic that starred Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in a mismatched love affair. In the remake, Curt Jurgens has the Jannings role of an aging professor who becomes entranced with a tawdry cafe singer (Britt). He marries her and it's all downhill from there. He quickly becomes her toady. Britt as the singer Lola Lola is nothing to write home about, but Jurgens pulls out all the stops as the beleaguered professor whose life quickly falls apart after he becomes involved with the singer and her subculture. His marriage proposal scene is almost painful to watch in its intensity. Theodore Bikel plays the singer's impresario. I would suggest you stick with the original. Dietrich exuded a star power that Britt completely lacks. If you do watch it, watch it for Jurgens' masterful portrayal of a desperate man.