The Blue Angel [Der blaue Engel] is one of the first German language sound films (filmed simultaneously in an English-language version), and the picture that represents the initial collaboration between Josef von Sternberg and his immortal muse, Marlene Dietrich.
Following up his role in von Sternberg’s great silent The Last Command, Emil Jannings portrays a schoolteacher named Immanuel Rath, whose fateful expedition to catch his students frequenting the cabaret known as “The Blue Angel” leads to his own rapture with the establishment’s main attraction Lola (Dietrich) — and, as a result, triggers the downward spiral of his life and fortune.Directed by von Sternberg while on loan from America to the pioneering German producer Erich Pommer, The Blue Angel is at once captivating, devastating, and powerfully erotic, laced-through with Sternberg’s masterful cinematography.
From here, the director and Dietrich would go on to make six more films together in the span of five years, and leave a legacy of some of the most indelible iconography in the cinema of glamour and obsession.
The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present The Blue Angel in a new Dual Format presentation that incorporates both versions of the film in 1080p HD for the first time in the UK.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY + DVD) EDITION
- New 1080p HD presentation of both the German-language and English-language versions of the film, with progressive encodes on the DVD
- Newly translated optional subtitles on the German-language version, and SDH on the English-language version
- New and exclusive video essay on the films by critic and scholar Tag Gallagher
- New and exclusive feature-length audio commentary by critic and scholar Tony Rayns on the German-language version
- Original 1929 screen test with Marlene Dietrich
- Archival 1971 interview clip with Dietrich
- Three clips of Dietrich in performance from 1963 and 1972 concerts
- Theatrical and re-release trailers
- 48-PAGE BOOKLET containing a 1968 essay by Josef von Sternberg about the film; a complete timeline of the film’s production history by Werner Sudendorf; and copious rare archival imagery from the production provided by Sudendorf and the Deutsche Kinemathe
