The Blue Angel (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #41 extract: The Blue Angel (1930)

The Blue Angel is one of the first talking pictures to come out of Germany and also one of the last great films from the Weimar period (an era of huge development after WWI that came before Hitler's definitive rise to power in 1933). This epoch is Germany's cinematic Golden Era which saw incredible experimentation in the avant-garde and epic feats achieved in genre cinema. 

The Blue Angel as a product of these times deals, as many of the Expressionist films do, with naivety and emasculation - which can be thought of as a reaction to the first World War and an interaction with the significant chip it left on Germany's shoulder. This is then a deeply sad film that, despite hints of comedy and sexual liberation, really dwells upon themes of repression and naivety, and then regret and remorse before exploding with violence and futility. This itself says a lot about 1930s Germany, and so history bolsters the powerful melancholic tragicomedy that this is, which has left me utterly stunned.