Cortechba Overrated

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

amb0613 Curt Jurgens is magnificent! I don't even remember watching Mai Britt as LOLA-LOLA as I was so enthralled with Jurgens' performance. He was absolutely marvelous! Catch Curt in the movie he stars with Ingrid Bergman, as a Chinese warlord. And also in "Mephisto's Waltz" with Alan Alda. Curt is an all consuming and ultimo actor.And the fact Curt Jurgens was in a Nazi prison camp for one year at the end of WWII and survived is amazing. What a story he has lived. What he could have told of his life. There is also a website where Curt tells of his near-death heart attack in which he was experiencing the "out and in" of death, whilst demons were grabbing at him to take him away from the living. Fantastic!BOYD

MARIO GAUCI During the 1950s, it became fashionable in Hollywood to revisit film classics of the 1930s that, however, all turned out to be vastly inferior to the originals and are now quite hard to come by. The film under review is one of them and, amusingly enough, the copy I landed – sourced from a pan-and-scanned Fox Movie Channel TV screening – is preceded by a snippet from the opening credits of John Huston's THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN (1958)! Coming almost 30 years after the film that had turned Marlene Dietrich into an international sensation, the color remake updates the setting to a more contemporary one but then follows its prototype in a disheartening scene-by-scene fashion for most of its running time! The pointlessness of the venture is doubly exposed by the fact that director Josef von Sternberg had already filmed the movie in English at the same time that he made the superior German one (which had also been the nation's first Talkie).Although May Britt and Curd Jurgens are decent enough as the central couple, they are no match for Dietrich and Emil Jannings in the original and, indeed, I kept wondering how much better the film would have played had it been shot a decade later with Max Von Sydow and iconic chanteuse Nico (of "The Velvet Underground & Nico" fame) in the lead! Jurgens was an international star who had been brought to Hollywood two years previously for Nicholas Ray's BITTER VICTORY and remained in demand for the rest of his life (he died of a heart-attack in 1982). Britt (who is still alive today and turns 78 today!) had started out in Italy – her most notable film there being Raffaello Matarazzo's THE SHIP OF CONDEMNED WOMEN (1954) – but she subsequently came to Hollywood and appeared in the likes of WAR AND PEACE (1956) and THE YOUNG LIONS (1958; also for Fox and Dmytryk) before landing the role of Lola-Lola; afterwards, she made little of consequence – except for her penultimate film, HAUNTS (1977) – and is now chiefly remembered for the stir her 1960 marriage to Sammy Davis Jr. had created in those less tolerant times. Frankly, Jurgens' students are a rather uninteresting lot here, and it is left for character actors like Theodor Bikel (as Lola-Lola's employer) and John Banner (as Jurgens' empathizing principal) to come off best among the supporting cast members.Although the director had this to say on the movie in his autobiography, "It was a film none of us had to be ashamed of, but the rule still holds – never remake a classic, even a minor one", the truth is that his handling (exacerbated by the strict adherence to the original and the addition of a couple of musical numbers) is mostly an indifferent one. Screenwriter Nigel Balchin – who would soon be penning the underrated and ambiguous semi-Western THE SINGER NOT THE SONG (1961) – takes care to portray Jurgens' sterile, ordered life (by repeatedly showing him strategically meeting his Headmaster on their way to school) before his unheralded meeting with Lola-Lola but then proceeds to alter the main characters in such a way that we are led to a lame upbeat ending far removed from the powerfully poignant one depicted by Jannings and Sternberg in 1930. In fact, here Britt pities Jurgens' final degradation (parading as a clown in front of his townspeople) and purposefully kisses her young former flame in front of him – an act which precipitates his quitting the sleazy milieu and march onward, accompanied by Jurgen's ex-boss, towards the prospect of regaining his old position as schoolteacher! Ultimately, it is in Leon Shamroy's garish cinematography (with blue understandably dominating the color scheme) that the film's major asset is to be found…but whether that relative advantage over the Sternberg version is enough to compensate for its many shortcomings is another matter entirely!

ldavis-2 Just caught this on Fox Movie Channel, and can only wonder what the execs were smoking! Bad enough this turkey is stuffed with unnecessary exposition, but the ending destroys the whole point of the story! Folks, it doesn't get any sillier than Sgt. Schultz coming to the rescue!In the original, Lola Lola was a heartless bitch, but Dietrich made her utterly captivating. Britt, OTOH, was dull and annoying. And she was tone-deaf! How this got past Dmytryk and his music director is beyond me! It was Rath's vanity as much as his lust that caused his downfall, but Jürgens is too busy trying to look pathetic. How else can I put it? Everything about this Angel is wrong, all wrong!

sol ***Some Spoilers*** Tragic story of a proud and principled man's fall from grace and right into the sleazy world of the towns red-light district and just what love, misguided as it was, had to do with it.Uptight and very Victorian about sex Landsburg biology professor Immanuel Rath, Curt Jurgens, is shocked to find out that a number of his students have been going down to the docks to get a look at Lola, May Britt, who's preforming as a cabaret dancer at the Blue Angel nightclub. Imannuel determined to stop his students from corrupting themselves by seeing semi-naked women dancing on stage goes down to the Blue Angel himself and instead of getting them, his students, to change their minds and go straight Imanneul himself gets hooked and falls madly in love with the sexy Lola.You have to say this for Lola which is that she told the love-sick, when he asked for her hand in marriage, Imannuel that it, their marriage, won't be a bed of roses and in no way took advantage of the foolish old man since she, not him, became the breadwinner of the family with Imannuel resigning from his job as a professor at the city's Northern High school. Being a marriage made in hell, for Imannuel, the former professor slowly lost all his pride as a man of distinction. Ending up as a gofer for Lola and living off her income had Imannuel not being able, or wanting, to get a job teaching since with Lola going from town to town to do her act he could never get to plant his feet in one place long enough to get one.We get to see poor Imannuel hit rock bottom when after sponging off both Lola and her boss, the manager of the troupe that she works with, Kelpert (Theodore Bikel) he's forced to finally get a real job. Instead of doing odd jobs like sweeping up the place Iannuel finally lands a decent job, at the cabaret, when the shows clown Dono, Wolfe Barzell, suddenly passes away. Told by Kelpert to make a fool of himself in front of the people of Landsburg, who knew him all his of his life, was a bitter pill to swallow for Imannuel but now with no pride or dignity left he reluctantly agreed to do it.At the opening night show Imannuel was resigned to play the straight-man, or clown, to Kelpert who sticks pins in him and cracks eggs over his head. When Imannuel sees his wife Lola, who up until then was so understanding of what he was going through, off-stage making out with her former but what seems like now new lover Rolf, Fabrizio Mioni, the poor guy just couldn't take it anymore. Breaking down and chirping like a chicken, as Kelpert cracked eggs over his head, in front of a shocked sell out crowd Imannuel had a complete and total emotional breakdown .I couldn't understand Lola's actions that lead her husband Imannuel to completely break down and make a fool of himself in front of the whole town of Landsburg. She knew what he was going through inside by being humiliated on the stage so why rub salt into his wounds by making out with Rolf right in front of him? Imannuel now a total wash-out and unable to even tie his own shoelaces is rescued from this hell that he, and no one else, imposed on himself by his good friend the administrator of the school, Northern High School, where he used to work principle Harter, John Bannor. We get to see as the movie ends Hater taking Emannuel back home to the school that he taught at for some 24 years.Sad story that in real life is very common among men, and women, who suppress their deepest and most personal sexual urges, by trying to be holier then thou then everyone else, only to have them explode in their face when their finally confronted with them. Like the very prudish and proper Immanuel Rath was to sadly find out in the movie "The Blue Angel".