One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) is showing May 29 - June 28, 2020 in the United States in the series Weimar Cinema.
Josef von Sternberg was a mathematician. He invented the formula: looking + a lot of light = passion. The formula seems rather simple but hundreds of variants make it highly complex. In many of his films, including The Blue Angel (1930), light seems to be merely an assistant when it comes to the ever so morally dangerous and beautiful act of seduction. Somebody directs the light as if it were Cupid’s arrow. But who is it? The image of the actress holding a light is clearly a deception. The light is on her. Yet, being not only a mathematician but also a physicist, von Sternberg knew that with light three aspects cannot to be ignored: 1. Where can it be seen? (the answer in his case: everywhere between the shadows of life). 2. Where does it come from? (the answer in his case: from the world of showbiz, nightclubs and from somewhere inside women). 3. Where does it travel? (the answer in his case: through things like curtains, lampshades, dresses and hair). When everybody was in awe with the beautiful effect light had on Marlene Dietrich’s blonde hair or her sparkling eyes and flashy dresses, von Sternberg was thinking about the way light travels from the spotlight to his actress in order to create something that is not quite real. He was searching for the surreality of being smitten and he found it in the way light transforms people and objects. The way of light + passion = cinema. However, The Blue Angel also shows that this kind of cinema (and passion) is an illusion and as soon as the lights go out and everything changes back (to normal?) we recognize jealousy, fatalism and the impossibility of light. So, Von Sternberg’s final formula would be: passion - light = humiliation/death.