A TIMELESS SUPERSTAR - I GIVE YOU LOLA LOLA AND "THE BLUE ANGEL"

I am pretty sure that even the least film-savy one in our number has at least heard of this one… Oh come on, surely… Marlene Dietrich? “Falling in love again / Never wanted to/ What am I to do/ I can’t help it….” Surely it rings a bell? Yes, it’s parodied, we have heard it in voiceovers and such like more than once or twice, but nothing, I promise you, nothing beats the real thing… If you call yourself even a partial, marginal movie buff, I reckon you should see this. Like, really.
Meet Professor Immanual Rath. He is the teacher at the local high school and very, very prim and proper is he. That is why, when he discovers his pupils looking at risqué postcards in his class he is absolutely infuriated. He is informed that the lady in the postcards is the famous artist Lola Lola, and she can be seen in the local bar, The Blue Angel every night for a limited period. Naturally the professor does not at all approve of his pupils being corrupted in such places so he goes over to the bar the same night to investigate. There, the unthinkable will happen… Lola (Marlene Dietrich) will steal the professor’s heart away in one fell swoop. But this is the first step among many the professor will take into a life he could never have dreamt he would have…
This film has to be put into context. Lola (Dietrich) is unabashed, she flirts she is sexy, she is not ashamed of it, heck she uses it. Her open sexuality must have come as quite a shock for the audiences of the ‘30s. You may be tempted to scoff and say “Oh the ‘30s. They have nothing on us.” No. Trust me; Marlene Dietrich is sexy by any standards in any century. It is also interesting to note the specific way in which she was sexy. Hers was an unpretentious, completely natural and down to earth femininity, much in the same vein of Bridget Bardot a couple of decades later, in her earlier films especially. I mean, true, the film is very typical of turn of the century fare in its way, the “goodies” and the “baddies” are quite clearly marked (although possibly not as clearly as it could be, credit where its due Lola isn’t all bad) but still. Like a lot of early films, it depends a lot on typecasting as opposed to well-developed characters, I mean when all is said and done Lola is “the whore with the heart of gold”, a typical trope of a lot of films – even today. Naturally, at the end, following the “bad” path is punished; so in a sense I would have to retract my last comment and say that Lola is bad, at least as far as the values from those days go… And yet, you must watch this one. Lola is the first time so many things were openly portrayed on the big screen that you have to witness that historical moment… And when you do, you will see quite clearly that, that infamous song is a much-repeated classic for a very, very good reason.