This is definitely not a clone of "The Blue Angel", not even an up-dated remake. It carries only the faint echo of the original -- a man of high respect falls in love with a hooker and makes himself ridiculous.
That's about as far as the resemblance goes. Armin Mueller-Stahl is not a professor but rather a bureaucrat, the Director of Buildings, or something, in the Germany of 1955, during the prosperous and corrupt times of the economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder, when the whole world was being flooded with VWs, Blaupunkts, and Zeiss cameras. Germany was rebuilding itself and the air was scented with mint.
Mueller-Stahl sits on top of construction and he's a stern and precise man. He arrives at eight in the morning and expects his slightly dizzy secretary to be in the office one minute before he gets there. So far, so good. Then he meets accidentally Lola, Barbara Sukova, a beautiful, well-dressed woman half his age. Improbably, he is possessed by her and her perfume. He has no idea that she's a night club singer and hooker in a local dive. Every time he dates her, she's properly dressed, perceptive, and a little prim.
Then he finds out her nether identity. He gets drunk and I get lost. The original ended with the professor imitating a rooster in the night club act. I followed that just fine. But this one has Mueller-Stahl marrying Sukova, evidently allowing the corruption to continue, if there actually IS any corruption, while Sukova runs off in her wedding gown to jump into bed with her pimp. In the final shot, somebody asks Mueller-Stahl if he's happy now, and when he replies, with a satisfied smile, "Yes -- I am happy," it reminded me of Shylock's exit line in "The Merchant of Venice." Shylock has just been stripped of everything he believes in, including his religion, and he says, "I am content." Well, I'm not.
Muller-Stahl went on to make a number of films in America and he was always distinctive in a nice, likable way, as he is here. Sukova makes no particular impression. She's just another pretty girl, in a role in which Marlene Dietrich was a presence. Mario Adorf is a bulky greaseball who stands to profit most from the new construction. He smokes cigars and looks villainous. Hugh O'Brien beat hell out of him in a remake of "Ten Little Indians" -- and I'm glad. The colors are lurid and we don't really get much of a sense of place.
I understand that Fassbinder is a highly respected director who died young, and I've always enjoyed Armin Mueller-Stahl, but this effort strikes me as only a bit more than routine.
That's about as far as the resemblance goes. Armin Mueller-Stahl is not a professor but rather a bureaucrat, the Director of Buildings, or something, in the Germany of 1955, during the prosperous and corrupt times of the economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder, when the whole world was being flooded with VWs, Blaupunkts, and Zeiss cameras. Germany was rebuilding itself and the air was scented with mint.
Mueller-Stahl sits on top of construction and he's a stern and precise man. He arrives at eight in the morning and expects his slightly dizzy secretary to be in the office one minute before he gets there. So far, so good. Then he meets accidentally Lola, Barbara Sukova, a beautiful, well-dressed woman half his age. Improbably, he is possessed by her and her perfume. He has no idea that she's a night club singer and hooker in a local dive. Every time he dates her, she's properly dressed, perceptive, and a little prim.
Then he finds out her nether identity. He gets drunk and I get lost. The original ended with the professor imitating a rooster in the night club act. I followed that just fine. But this one has Mueller-Stahl marrying Sukova, evidently allowing the corruption to continue, if there actually IS any corruption, while Sukova runs off in her wedding gown to jump into bed with her pimp. In the final shot, somebody asks Mueller-Stahl if he's happy now, and when he replies, with a satisfied smile, "Yes -- I am happy," it reminded me of Shylock's exit line in "The Merchant of Venice." Shylock has just been stripped of everything he believes in, including his religion, and he says, "I am content." Well, I'm not.
Muller-Stahl went on to make a number of films in America and he was always distinctive in a nice, likable way, as he is here. Sukova makes no particular impression. She's just another pretty girl, in a role in which Marlene Dietrich was a presence. Mario Adorf is a bulky greaseball who stands to profit most from the new construction. He smokes cigars and looks villainous. Hugh O'Brien beat hell out of him in a remake of "Ten Little Indians" -- and I'm glad. The colors are lurid and we don't really get much of a sense of place.
I understand that Fassbinder is a highly respected director who died young, and I've always enjoyed Armin Mueller-Stahl, but this effort strikes me as only a bit more than routine.