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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

A Brief Film Review: Blue Angel by Joseph Von Strindberg


A movie shot in the Pre-World War period. This movie is known as the emblematic of Wiemar Germany. Joseph Von Strindberg is the director who was deeply influenced by the Hollywood film ideology and its apparatus.

Blue Angel is the story of an eccentric absent-minded professor marrying a destitute vagrant girl of a local cabaret. This turns his life totally. His life long suppression of his sexual desires manifest as a sort of adoration of her feminine skills. He forgets all his academic life and leaves it in a moment of humiliation by his students. The very students were the reason for his accidental visit to the cabaret. The vagrant girl is the headline of this cabaret. She is named ‘Lola Lola’.

The whole movie is taken in a working class township. From the discipline of the class room and monotony of Professor Rath, story progresses to the anarchist world of cabaret and low art. From an academician ‘Rath’ transforms into a weird clown in the company of destitute and flesh traders.

But ‘Lola Lola’ and her instincts remain the same; always she is attracted to new men. When Professor Rath meets Lola for the first time a clown is found roaming passively all over the cabaret. Fate of Professor turns out to be the same, but he has an societal ego influenced by  his education that resist the subjugation of his ego to her libido. She treats him like a slave.

Many a people find the elements of Jungian analytic psychology in this movie. There are some scenes where Prof: Rath shows gestures of a child in front of the charismatic Lola. It is sometimes denoted as the subjugation of his societal self to the intrinsic anima of his masculine psyche.

The film is a good composition of humor, tragedy and transient states of mind. The film set is full of stairs and narrow streets. Also we can see most of the events in the movie is shot inside various indoor locations.

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