i rented this specifically because it was mentioned in the blurb on #71 as an inspiration for that film. i'll save drawing connections for the next post. as for "The Blue Angel" on it's own, it has the distinct flavor of a 30's PSA-ish morality tale without demonizing the woman who "lures" the poor bastard to his "fall" from "respectable society". all those catch-words and -phrases are in quotes to convey the film's ambivalence about defining them. audiences could read the surface of the story as an indictment of lascivious living and wantoness in women (including this shallow super-text floating above the real story is an age old censorship-dodging trick), but if you're paying attention you'll notice that she never deceives him or pretends to be something she's not, and she doesn't pass judgement on him. it's the "fallen" male character who really gets dissected: his obsession with respectability and subsequent "descent" into impropriety, his silly (but destructive) clinging to scraps of the honor he never had, his grotesque inability to settle on a self. i'm not clear on the historical moment in Germany when this was filmed, but i feel like the professor makes a good stand-in for institutional hypocrisy in any era, and the film's real moral is that hypocrisy will tear you apart and leave you death-gripping your old desk in a hobo clown outfit.
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