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The Blue Angel (1930)
This is most often remembered for one performance, but the intense dramatic tension that occurs is a team effort, and Marlene Dietrich's performance would hardly have the power it does without Emil Jannings' painful breakdown. This is the kind of tragedy marked from scene one, and though its conclusion seems inrevitable it is not easy to watch, nor to shake off. Joseph von Sternberg shows masterful direction and a vision which hailed a story still risque by today's standards. It says something about a director when he can shoot Marlene and anyone else in the same frame and not have the former absorb complete audience attention. In fact, there's a perfect symmetry between her dangerous screen persona and Jannings' innocent one; the audience is forced into a situation where they must choose between enjoying the force of Marlene's cruel but sexy manipulation and helping a man too blinded by his own naivety find his way out of a terrible darkness. It's a classic story of hunter and hunted, of the power of the siren, of curiosity and the cat. And it's electric.
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