"Der Blaue Engel" (Film-Still)

Marlene Dietrich and Rosa Valetti
(censored version)

gelatin silver print

UFA (Universum Film AG) Logo (superimposed) , "Film-Prüfstelle Berlin Genehmigt" (blindstamp)

Rare censored advertising photo of the German film Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) from 1930. Marlene Dietrich as the seductive Lola Lola was staged too revealingly for publication in the advertising for the film. The ufa (Universum Film AG) quickly retouched a dark skirt to avoid censorship, as the stamp on the back from the “Film-Prüfstelle Berlin” with “ Genehmigt” (approved) shows. (See also the uncensored version, inv. no. S-275)
The Blue Angel is considered one of the first important sound films in German cinema and was directed by Josef von Sternberg. The film is based on the novel Professor Unrat (1905) by Heinrich Mann. The film tells the tragic story of Professor Immanuel Rath (played by Emil Jannings), a strict grammar school teacher who falls in love with the seductive cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). His obsessive passion for her leads to his social and personal downfall. In its staging of physicality and morality, The Blue Angel shows a struggle between discipline and drive, between social order and individual desire. The film is therefore not only a tragedy about an impossible love, but also a reflection of the social upheavals of its time. The film and, above all, the well-known song “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” (I'm set on love from head to toe) made Marlene Dietrich a world star.
A few years later, Luchino Visconti also referred to this scene in his film The Damned (1969), but while The Blue Angel shows an individual decline, The Damned deals with the collective decline of an entire elite class.
(Christoph Fuchs)