Word: sternberger
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...despite his name, Sternberg, born in New York, had directed his nine previous films in America and after 1930 made thirteen more with which Blue Angel is completely consistent. It is true that Blue Angel is his most German work; so Scarlet Empress is similarly his most Russian and Morocco his most Arabic...
Thus the German myth's appearance in Blue Angel makes it seem an Expressionist film. But the weight of this material, the subject of the film, should not obscure our view of Sternberg's treatment of that material, for it's his treatment that is crucial to the film's meaning, especially for Jannings and Dietrich...
...townpeople's scorn. The economic theme in this plot, closely related to the real and feared decline of the German middle classes in the 20's, satisfyingly gives American film critics one of the few social facts in their consciousness. No wonder they include they include Josef von Sternberg's first sound film with the works of Lang, Murnau, and others...
...SCENE'S symbolic content is perfectly accessible. Such devices as the cage and the lamp, together with Sternberg's handling of depth and sets, set up a pleasant and very restricted environment out of which Jannings' character develops. But the same symbols have a deeper meaning which, through their integration into Sternberg's dramatic and visual scheme, establishes the pattern of the entire film. In this system the attraction of light is a crucial motivation of personal behavior, and Jannings' blindness to the globe behind him appears simultaneously with a restriction of depth that expresses the limitations of his moral...
...Harvard Film Study--"An American Tragedy" by Josef von Sternberg and "Design for Living" by Ernst Lubitsch, Carpenter Center Lecture Hall. Admission...