A Foreign Affair (1948), The Blue Angel (1930)

Leave it to Billy Wilder to dare and make a comedy set in the ruins of occupied Berlin. Jean Arthur is Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (R-Iowa 8th District) who along with a number of her colleagues travels to Berlin as part of a House subcommittee investigating the morale of American solders there. Though their official escorts attempt to put the best possible spin on things Congresswoman Frost quickly notices the high level of fraternization going on between the G.I.'s and the native Frau's. Arthur sneaks away from her escorts to investigate the situation herself and in the company of a couple of solders who think she is a German girl chances upon a seedy nightclub where the troops are being entertained by cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich (always a cabaret singer that one).

When the Congresswomen discovers that Dietrich had been the girlfriend of a high ranking Nazi, and that an unknown American service man is sheltering her from being questioned in Nuremberg, she sets out to uncover the ner-do-wells identity. The officer Arthur enlists to assist her in this search is a member of her own congressional district, Capt. John Pringel (John Lund, a little known actor for whom this film was probably his career highlight). It turns out ironically that Pringel is the one sheltering Dietrich from the authorities as the two are carrying on an affair on the down low. Now Pringel must attempt to 'help' the congresswomen track down the offending solder while at the same time secretly obstructing her efforts to do so in order to save his own hide. When Arthur gets too close to discovering the truth Lund tries another strategy, seducing the romantically inexperienced congresswomen.

In course of time Lund actually falls for Arthur but then Dietrich unmasks him as her lover. Ms. Frost is heartbroken, but Lund is not punished as his superiors intend to use him to flush out Dietrich's old Nazi boyfriend whose in hiding but whose extreme jealousy for Dietrich might flush him out. In end,well what do you think?

Wilder cynicism combines well with co-writer Charles Brackett's more polished studio sensibilities; the two had a long and successful partnership which resulted in such hits as The Lost Weekend and The Major and the Minor. Lund gets suitably exasperated and is good at playing a man caught in the middle of a no win situation; I wonder why he never really made it as a comic even romantic leading man. Arthur is adorable as always, watch how she just melts like butter for Lund in her trademark Jean Arthur way. Dietrich plays a type she'd play many times and is good at it. I love the world worn pragmatism she displays, cozying up to which ever sides in power, as Lund's character comments she goes in for whatever's 'fashionable', 'last year it was a swastika, next year who knows, maybe a hammer and sickle.'

Sly and well executed but also demonstrating that old school Hollywood heart; I'm not sure why this movie isn't a better known piece of the Wilder canon. Grade: B+

The Blue Angel, the movie that made Dietrich a star and the first of her six films with director Joseph von Sternberg, is a well regarded mini-masterpiece. Emil Jannings, who was at the time considered about the best film actor there was, plays Immanuel Rath an esteemed English professor at a local Gymnasium (college preparatory high school) in a moderate sized German town during the post World War I pre-Nazi era. Never married and living in a small rented room, Rath is treated by his students as a sort of comic figure whom they mock behind his back.
One day Rath discovers that some of his students are in possession of 'racey' pictures of a cabaret singer (Dietrich of course). The students are too young to be admitted to the Blue Angel nightclub where she preforms, so Rath goes there in the hopes of catching some of his pupils on the premises.

Rath attempts to confront Dietrich about her apparent sanctioning of the boys visits, but is essentially immobilized by the singers sensuality and simple niceness to him. He goes back to the club the next night to return some of her panties which he accidentally took from her dressing room the previous evening. Rath later attempts to protect the woman's honor by driving off a lusty sailor and Dietrich is genuinely flattered by this having not been treated like a 'real lady' for some time. Some of Raths students discover that he is genuinely love struck and ribe him about this at school; he continues to see her and some of the school authorities find out about this threatening his career. Just before Dietrich and her fellow performers are about to leave town for there next booking Rath purposes, Dietrich accepts, and whole group think having a professor with them will lend the troop an aura of class. It does not.

Years pass, Rath is reduced to selling Dietrichs racy pictures, and he later becomes the groups clown. Dietrich is nice too and genuinely found of the professor but treats him as a cuckold. At a return engagement to Raths home town the professor is humiliated, the whole community seems to have come out to see the depths to which the once great man has fallen. He snaps. He is later found dead in his old classroom.

A tragedy in the true sense Jannings is excellent at playing the slow degradation of this once proud man. Though some of the sets might be slightly surrealistic, the moves goes for realism. Rath was never a really happy man, though he had self respect. With Dietrich he thinks he has found something greater for his life, the love he's never had. He gives up everything for her, and then slowly eats away at himself; once self righteous man he is now consumed by self hate. One of the interesting things about this movie, and apparently a part of von Sternbergs style is his lack of moral judgement, and unusually rounded characters. While it would be tempting to blame things on Dietrich, it is Rath who is really responsible for his condition, and Dietrich never comes across that badly. In German with subtitles I thing this might be the oldest foreign language sound film I've ever seen. That it crossed over to America at that time and made a mark, later allowing the anti-Nazi Dietrich to permanently leave German and continue a successful career in the states, is testament to its greatness.

Grade: A-