The Blue Angel

By VARIETY STAFF

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20th Century-Fox. Director Edward Dmytryk; Producer Jack Cummings; Screenplay Nigel Balchin; Camera Leon Shamroy; Editor Jack W. Holmes; Music Hugo Friedhofer; Art Director Lyle R. Wheeler, Maurice Ransford
 
Curt Jurgens
May Britt
Theodore Bikel
John Banner
Fabrizio Mioni
 

When UFA made Der blaue Engel it catapulted Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, producer Erich Pommer and director Josef von Sternberg into international repute. Later that year (1930), Paramount dubbed an English version and 'Legs' Dietrich was on the road to Hollywood renown. This remake is not the rocker that the Jannings-Dietrich impact made but neither Germany's Curt Jurgens nor Sweden's May Britt need be ashamed of their performances.

Perhaps counting the most against them is the somewhat familiar plot motivation - the femme fatale and the destruction of the German professor who succumbs to her wiles. But the prime shortcoming is the decision to give this saga a post-midcentury topicality in 1950s West Germany.

Britt is an eyeful as the seductress. Her shoulder-length blonde hair; her saucy mien and manner; the Dietrichesque style of straddling the chairs, showing off her saucy gams, are eyefuls in every department. She handles two vocal reprises of Frederick Hollander's 'Falling in Love Again' and also projects the new thematic, 'Lola Lola' which Jay Livingston and Ray Evans fashioned for her.

Jurgens proves a flexible performer. He disguises his masculine attractiveness under an authentic German academician's mien, impersonating the unworldly schoolmaster with conviction.

Film was part-shot in Bavaria and the interiors in Hollywood. Support is authentic.

(Color) Widescreen. Extract of a review from 1959. Running time: 107 MIN.