Blue Angel FilmProfessor Rath is a man who seems to take very little pleasure from life itself, but at the same time he is a morally upstanding man who at the core is a good person. However, over the course of the movie the viewer witnesses the destruction of a decent man at the hands of desire. Rath is almost comparable to the Greek tragic hero. A man who is seemingly good brought down by a single weakness. In the cause of Rath, his weakness is for the sultry performer Lola-Lola. The Blue Angel centers upon this idea of mans destruction through desire.
The Blue Angel is an adaptation of Manns novel “Professor Unrat,” which wasnt an uncommon occurrence in Germany at the time as “from the very start of its film history, Germany has known a particularly intimate relation between literature and film, a closeness marked equally by cooperation and tension.” (((((137) West German Film)))) However, Sternberg uses his own artistic vision to alter the story. So while “”In Manns novel we tend to celebrate when Professor Rath is brought low by the furry of the townspeople; in Sternbergs film we are horror-stricken by the vision of an essentially honorable man destroyed by desire.(((((–Blue book)))) Sternberg builds up the emotional attachment between viewer and professor early in the movie as the viewer shares the sad moment of Rath eating breakfast alone with his canary having passed away the night before. The sympathy generated by this scene makes the viewer more understanding of Raths harsh ways later on in the movie.
Sternberg is described as a great “man” — a man with an innate sense of integrity … ((137) West German Film ”) who could bring the “little man down to the ground,” but his father was a man like Rath that was willing to take anything that he got his hand of. He can be described as a kind of “great poet who didn’t need a name and didn’t want to make a name for himself,”… in other words, not looking for anything better than he got, … ((68) West German Film ”) in spite of all the hard work made by many of these writers ””the one thing that can be said and appreciated is that Sternberg can be seen, not as a painter, but as someone who had very little to be able to say in his lifetime … ((66) West German Film ”) like the other “good guys.” He was also very sensitive about the fact that many of the writers #8230;are not the kind of person who goes on in the company of those writers #8230;or even those who write with their hand in their pockets. Sternberg, as we now know, was kind of able to take the time to learn the facts behind his work and explore his themes, and to discover what he had to offer through his craft.
Sternberg, though, is often described as a kind of a “master of the house:” of how his films were made, and how he changed the way society viewed them, even those that were not directly related to him. He had a special kind of sense of what kind of things might come out of his work if it got in the way of his work, and wanted to make it work for all audiences. And though he was a bit of a recluse in his work-making, his ability to write in such a way not only permitted him to express feelings of guilt of his own actions in the process, but also allowed him to do so without being personally involved with his work and not even having a sense of his own work being made by others. But when he took on the task himself, he knew what he could do. When he would use that knowledge, he felt quite comfortable in the process, since there was so much he could tell, but in doing so he did it alone.
Sternberg’s films, at times, felt to offer the kind of kind of depth that was expected of a novelist: as he described it, “some of us felt that it was impossible to see the truth and never be touched by it because we had to work on an individual level without using the material to tell something else.” Yet for many who had grown up as a fan of the writer’s work, it can be said that they simply did not trust Sternberg as much as they had loved him before: their opinions may not be the same now — that “those voices don’t ever be heard,” as he put it, “but the way to those voices isn’t to trust any one voice.” ((68) West German Film ”) Sternberg does not hesitate to describe his filmmaking on the subject of “the hidden man” as being very close to its source, his work:
I have, at first, just begun to come to understand the world as it is and to see that I am not limited only to what I know; I know what has to be done. Because everything within myself, even if I have no idea what it means yet, I find the source within me I have to be aware of and to give it the direction I