Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Ploydsge just watch it!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

krocheav The usually sparkling directorial touches of Ernst Lubitsch are missing from this somewhat flat, superficial love triangle. It's best summed up as trite sophistication - with an overly made up Marlene Dietrich playing off between a rather wasted Herbert Marshall and Melvin Douglas. It all looks stylish and the players are up to form but the silly script leaves these classy players high and dry. The remastered DVD is superb but, let's hope we may see more interesting titles come out of the vaults of MCA from their Paramount holdings. After all, this title was one of those that killed Dietrich at the Box-Office and led to Paramount letting her contract go. It may look polished but lacks real substance - for fans and film study only.

harveyvincent-38279 I've seen all of Lubitsch's films and I rate Angel as his worst. The faults are in a bland repetitive script and the strangely ambiguous, wooden performance of Marlene Dietrich. There are times she appears more masculine than her costars Melvyn Douglas and Herbert Marshall.The sexual playfulness and subtle daring - so delightfully evident in Lubitsch's other films - here often fall flat. Made a few years before Angel, one of Ernst Lubitsch's best films, also based on a play (Noël Coward's Design for Living), has a woman at the center of a love triangle. The shock, particularly for a 30s Hollywood movie, is that the three live together in a bohemian Paris flat. In his directing, as well as the performances of Frederic March and Gary Cooper, there is never a hint of homo-eroticism. Ironically in Angel the best scene, a climactic one between Douglas and Marshall, is full of sexual energy.Subtle sophistication was always an Ernst Lubitsch trademark. There is little evidence of sparkling wit and originality in Angel.

richard-1787 Imagine a movie set in Paris directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the masterful director of such Parisian sexual innuendo comedies as Ninotchka, The Love Parade, The Merry Widow (1934 version), One Hour with You, and Design for Living. Imagine as the male lead Melvyn Douglas, who was so great in Ninotchka. Imagine as the female lead one of the great European stars of the cinema, a magnificent beauty like Garbo or Dietrich. Imagine that it concerns a Russian countess living in exile in Paris.But don't imagine that it's another Ninotchka. Far from it. It's Angel, in which all those ingredients that two years later would go to make one of the great Hollywood comedies, with Garbo and Douglas directed by Lubitsch, instead made for one very dull semi-comedy.Where to put the blame? The script, certainly, which isn't funny and never seems to know where it's going. Are we supposed to sympathize with Dietrich's character because she's abandoned by her husband, or condemn her for considering infidelity? The men at Paramount who approved it, and who should have spotted a bomb in the making. It is seldom funny. We seldom care about the characters. (Why did Paramount keep starring Herbert Marshall in pictures? He is just not interesting.) One or two scenes are mildly clever, which was probably Lubitch's doing. The rest verges on stale melodrama. The end isn't convincing.Taken all together, I'd say forget it. This is one Angel that never takes flight.

Christopher Wallis Lubitsch is recognized as one of the great directors of the 30s, and yet this wonderful film is not on any of the usual critical lists of notable films. Perhaps it was too modern for its time. It is perhaps Dietrich's best English performance (though even here she could be a bit more subtle), but the real star is the director, shining in the shots he composes and performances he coaxes from his actors. Lubitsch is a master of subtlety, and when he places important moments off-screen, it is in such a way as to heighten their impact. Since the censorship code is in effect, the sexual elements are cleverly concealed. For example, Halton and Barker discover that in Paris they both visited the same... seamstress. The naive Hays Office must have thought that was the joke, but the real joke is on them for it is clear--at least today--that the two did not visit her to get their sewing done. The sophistication of the film is unusual for its time.Pages could be written about this film. Suffice it to say that if you like 30s film at all, see this. In certain moments, it feels perfect. Probably one of the top 25 of the decade.