“Your boys should see you now”

A metamorphosis, a humuliation, a sureal transformation.Why? For the price of love.The last sequences of The Blue Angel are unatainnable and untouched in their description of a nightmare: Depraved from his honor, Rath stands in front of his people, his past, his then-life.Like a prisoner in front of his act.Like a mother in front of her dead child.The horror,the pain.And then, a lugubre cocorico arises from his mouth.It’s shocking,it’s disturbing.The savoir-faire of Von Sternberg is all witnessed in the final moments of the excellent “The Blue Angel”.
Besides Marlene Dietrich’s sensual beauty, besides the beautiful and inspired expressionist camera-work,besides Emile Janning’s spectacular performance, it’s the surreal downhill to hell that Von Sterberg filmed with passion that is most remembered in the film.