Willing Seduction

The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84545-572-9
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 8, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 459 g

Reihe: Film Europa

Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 film The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel) is among the best known films of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). A significant landmark as one of Germany’s first major sound films, it is known primarily for launching Marlene Dietrich into Hollywood stardom and for initiating the mythic pairing of the Austrian-born American director von Sternberg with the star performer Dietrich.

This fascinating cultural history of The Blue Angel provides a new interpretive framework with which to approach this classic Weimar film and suggests that discourses on mass and high culture are integral to the film’s thematic and narrative structure. These discourses surface above all in the relationship between the two main characters, the cabaret entertainer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) and the high school teacher Immanuel Rath (one-time Oscar winner Emil Jannings). In addition to offering insight into some of the major debates that informed the Weimar Republic, this book demonstrates that similar issues continue to shape the contemporary cultural landscape of Germany. Barbara Kosta thus also looks at Dietrich as a contemporary cultural icon and at her symbolic value since German unification and at Lola Lola’s various “incarnations.”

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kosta, Barbara

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Einzelne Filmschauspieler, Filmregisseure, Drehbuchautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Mass Entertainment and “Serious” Culture

Chapter 2. Distraction, Deception, and Visuality

Chapter 3. Disillusionment and Esprit: Weimar’s Modern Woman

Chapter 4. The Seductions of Sound

Chapter 5. The Actuality of The Blue Angel: Dietrich, Germany, and Mass Culture

Fade Out: The Credits

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Kosta, Barbara
Barbara Kosta is Professor in the Department of German Studies and an affiliated faculty member of Women’s Studies and Media Arts at the University of Arizona, where she teaches courses on twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and film. She is the author of Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (1994), co-author of the first-year German textbook auf deutsch! (1990), and co-editor of Writing Against Boundaries: Gender, Ethnicity and Nationality in the German-speaking Context (2003).