This is one of Ernst Lubitsch's less conspicuous films, while the performance of Marlene Dietrich in it is the more outstanding. Herbert Marshall is all right, he played against her before in "Blonde Venus" four years earlier, he was a jealous husband even there, but that was Josef con Sternberg, while Ernst Lubitsch is a completely different thing, although both are Viennese, and Marlene Dietrich is German. Melvyn Douglas is the tricky thing here. He makes a perfectly abominable offensive character insisting on constantly importuning on her, and you can't understand how she can tolerate it, but Marlene is Marlene, always superior to any critical situation, and also here she finally provides a solution, but not without the clever psychological empathy with her on the part of Herbert Marshall. Both Melvyn and Herbert appear, however, as perfect dummies at her side, while she makes the entire film worth while and watching. It's very European, while poor Melvyn keeps blundering on without noticing anything of the subtleties going on. She enters as a mystery of an intrigue, but when she has solved the knot she is already gone.
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TheLittleSongbird13 April 2017Ernst Lubitsch was an incredibly talented director, who to me rarely made a dud, with his best films even being masterpieces. Even his lesser films are worth a look, even if just once, and better than a lot of directors at their worst.
'Angel' is not among his best films, being not in the same league as 'The Merry Widow', 'Ninotchka', Heaven Can Wait', 'The Shop Around the Corner' and especially 'Trouble in Paradise'. It is however, for all its imperfections, one of his more overlooked films. Some may say 'Angel' is a gem, others may say it's a rare dud. To me, it's neither but is much better than its reputation suggests.
By all means it could have been better. It does lag in places, not helped by a story being a bit thin for the running time, with some of the romantic melodrama laid on too thickly at times. Herbert Marshall, who is more capable of giving a good performance but has also given some dull ones, is rather somnolent in his role. A few of the secondary roles are underwritten, Edward Everett Horton while still being very funny in particular is under-utilised.
With those being said, while just lacking the famous "Lubitsch touch", being on subdued form and lacking the risqué edge, Lubitsch does direct with his customary class and subtlety. He also has some beautiful visual touches, in a lovingly photographed and designed film that clearly loves Marlene Dietrich, judging by now positively luminous she looks.
Music is appropriately whimsical in places while also sweeping without being overbearing. The script does have some sparkling humour in the supporting roles and typically sophisticated with a warm charm. The story is less than perfect but has some fun and charming moments.
Dietrich is as aforementioned luminous, has a class and elegance and gives her character good comic timing and pathos. In the supporting roles, Horton and Ernest Cossart are particularly entertaining with their back and forth standing out of the comedy.
In conclusion, could have been better but overlooked. 7/10 Bethany Cox -
bsmith555226 October 2018"Angel" was Marlene Dietrich's final film under her Paramount contract. It is the story of three rich and famous people who become involved with each other.
The film opens with Lady Maria Barker (Marlene) arriving in Paris under an assumed name. She goes to a high end brothel run by ex-Russian Grand Duchess Anna Dmitrievna (Laura Hope Crews) for some "entertainment". At the same time carefree bachelor Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas) is also there for the same purpose. They accidently meet when Tony mistakes Maria for the Grand Duchess and immediately is smitten with her.
After they discover the error, she agrees to go to dinner with him and they fall in love vowing not to reveal their true identities to each other. Tony the n dubs her "Angel". While buying her some flowers in a park, he turns to find her suddenly gone.
In London, we learn that Maria is indeed married to a stuffy career diplomat Sir Frederick Barker who is England's delegate to the League of Nations (remember them?) in peace talks with the world's nations to prevent another war. We all know how that turned out. In a chance meeting, Tony meets Sir Frederick and the two discover that they had "shared" the same young lady in Paris during WWI. Of course Sir Frederick invites Tony to his home.
At Sir Frederick's palatial estate, the inevitable meeting with Maria occurs. She at first tries to play dumb and convince Tony to forget their meeting. Of course Tony still is carrying a torch for her. Eventually, Sir Frederick becomes suspicious. On a planned trip to Geneva, foxy old Sir Frederick stays in Paris and goes to the Grand Duchess "house". Coincidentally Tony is there seeking out Maria. As luck would have it, Maria arrives. The three confront each other and Maria is forced to choose between the two and.........................................
Marlene is as gorgeous as ever in those expensive gowns and jewelry. Marshall is totally career oriented as her stuffed shirt husband and Douglas just emerging as a major star, is excellent as the lover. Edward Everett Horton is along as Barker's valet, Ernest Cossart plays the butler Wilton and watch for Laurel and Hardy foil Jimmy Finlayson as one of the servants. -
gtzam31 May 2005The Lubitsch touch is omnipresent in this relatively unknown but extraordinary romantic comedy. The theme of a potential marital infidelity of a disaffected upper class wife (a gleaming Marlene Dietrich) is dealt with unusual sophistication and insight, building up slowly to a brilliant denouement, while the core dilemmas and the predicament of the main character are continuously and subtly underscored. The confrontations between the characters are a delight of restrained pathos, whereas Lubitsch, unsurprisingly, perfectly recreates a confined world of rigid social norms that suppresses any emotional profusion. All the performances are top notch, the secondary characters are equally memorable and the whole film is pervaded by the genius of one of cinemas most charismatic directors, Ernst Lubitsch. One wishes that modern romantic comedies had only maintained even a fraction of the wit and incisiveness that Lubitsch established as a norm in the 30s.
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blanche-224 October 2017"Angel" from 1937 is a Dietrich-Lubitsch collaboration that didn't come off - in fact, this was the last film Dietrich made for Paramount, after which she was labeled box-office poison. You can see why this film didn't help, though she is photographed like a dream and dressed divinely by Travis Banton.
Based on a play, this is a rather dull story. The neglected, bored wife, Maria (Dietrich) of a very busy diplomat (Herbert Marshall) flies to Paris and goes to a salon run by a countess (Laura Hope Crews) who is an old friend of hers. It's apparently a high-class brothel. While waiting to see her, she meets Tony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), looking for a delightful evening. She agrees to meet him for dinner. The affair isn't shown, but one assumes they consummated their relationship. She disappears without telling him her name or her knowing his.
Later on, he runs into an old friend, who is Maria's husband. Maria and Tony meet again - under awkward circumstances.
This isn't a comedy, and it really isn't much of a drama either, with dull spots enlivened by the supporting cast - Crews, Edward Everett Horton, and Ernest Cossart, who plays the butler. (He tells his fiancée over the phone, "If you don't tell me where you learned to rumba, we're through.")
Directed with the usual Lubitsch subtlety, this is just okay, lacking the bubbly champagne touch that made Lubitsch's work in films like "The Shop Around the Corner," "Ninotchka," "To Be or Not to Be" and so many other great films of his. -
danland26 October 2002Wonderful Lubitsch comedy about a distracted husband, a neglected wife and an ardent suitor that has all the magic, humor, romance of the directors previous work. Dazzling camera work by Charles Lang make Deitrich look positively luminous. All the cast are perfect. The audience I saw this with at the LACMA Museum screening were utterly entranced by this neglected masterwork. Kudos to UCLA for restoring this treasure to its original splendor and to LACMA programer Ian Birnie for giving us the opportunity to see this little gem in all its glory. A 10 out of 10.........
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CinemaSerf9 January 2023Ernst Lubitsch has managed not only to assemble three strong character actors here, but he also manages to get them to play well with/against each other without the whole thing descending into predicable melodrama. The lynch pin of the plot is the glamorous "Lady Maria" (Marlene Dietrich) who is married to her loyal, if maybe not the most lively, diplomat husband "Sir Frederick" (Herbert Marshall). Whilst feeling a bit neglected when he is away on one of his trips, she heads to Paris to visit her friend, the Russian Grand Duchess "Anna" (Laura Hope-Crews). As was customary for ladies of great social station, her function was largely that of a facilitator for the great and the good (or not so good) to meet at glittering soirées and it is at one such function that "Maria" encounters the rather rakish "Halton" (Melvyn Douglas) and the seeds for our developing love triangle are gradually sown. Now she has been using an alias ("Angel") in France, and when it turns out that her husband and her new beau have some wartime experiences in common - and they are all on the guest list to the same gathering - her wicket starts to look distinctly sticky! The plot is not especially remarkable, but there are four strong and engaging performances for us to enjoy here. Dietrich and Douglas gel well on screen together, Marshall always did manage that slightly aloof statesmanlike role well, and Crews cleverly plays her game to ensure that she, too, always gets what she needs from the various predicaments she encounters. It's also helped by a small cast, some quickly paced and sharp dialogue and it looks good to watch, too.
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bhairava11-119 January 2007Lubitsch 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. -
davidmvining28 April 2023Having his last film, The Merry Widow, cut down heavily in the middle of the release process by the Hays Office, Ernst Lubitsch toned things way down with Angel, a Marlene Dietrich vehicle that still involves a former prostitute and a brothel. It's just way toned down and much more oblique than the ribaldry on display in the previous film, not that that helped the film at the box office, cementing Dietrich's reputation as box office poison. It's a departure for Lubitsch, moving away from his extravagant musicals into a quieter dramatic form that he shows himself capable of managing as well. It's not one of Lubitsch's best films, but he brings the package together capably and ending with a certain emotional resonance that comes as a fair surprise.
An unnamed woman (Dietrich) shows up at the house of a Russian exile, the Grand Duchess Anna (Laura Hope Crews), a thinly veiled brothel. The Grand Duchess is surprised to see this woman she refuses to call by name after several years since they've last seen each other. A man, Tony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), arrives with an introduction from another guest of the Grand Duchess', expecting a good time. He meets the unnamed woman and is instantly smitten with her, taking her on a night on the town where she refuses to exchange names, and there's implied sex. With a promise to meet again a week later at the Grand Duchess', the woman disappears, making her way to England where she walks into the large mansion of Sir Frederick Barker (Herbert Marshall), a prominent English diplomat who returns a few hours later to find his wife, the unnamed woman now named Maria.
And that is the basic situation of the film: a happily married bourgeois woman ran to the continent for a night of anonymous sex with a complete stranger, retouching the life she knew before she met her husband, and the two men steadily finding out the other sides of the woman they both love in their own ways. The problem for Maria is that while Frederick loves her and provides handsomely for her, he's so dedicated to his work that "neglect" is an accurate way to describe their relationship. He's a good man, perhaps even a great man in terms of the world's efforts to avert war in the years leading up to WWII (showing that even Ernst Lubitsch, maker of silly movies about sexual politics, couldn't escape the realities of the world around him in his films). However, she is still a woman who can't just be ignored every day and most nights by her husband.
The irony is that Tony and Frederick had crossed paths in Paris during The Great War in a way that impressed them both. They were both attached to the same French girl, and they knew of each others' existence but not each other personally. When Tony shows up on London, he decides to stop Frederick at a horse race and introduce himself. In a similar way to two soldiers in the same battle meeting for the first time years later. There's an immediate camaraderie, and Frederick invites Tony over to his house for a meal.
This is where the characters come together, of course. Maria tries to deny that she's Angel at all in the few moments she's alone with Tony. Tony figures out that Angel is Maria before she shows up in the room because Frederick, of course, has a picture of her on his desk. There's not melodramatic moment where Tony and Maria discover each other. They are both in complete control of themselves as they do this knowing dance around Frederick with him never catching on. There perhaps should be a more palpable sense of tension, but the scenes are more interested in drama. However, since everyone is very prim and proper, there isn't that much drama around these scenes either.
However, it's when Maria and Tony are alone that we get that kind of dramatic sense with Maria needing to balance her more passionate desires with her dedication to her husband, and it's the heart of the film. Maria even has a line later when she says that women shouldn't be understood that embraces the certain opacity around her that perhaps holds the film back a bit. "Don't try to understand your main character" is a weird thing to say, to be honest.
Anyway, Tony's presence really does seem to awaken something within Maria that she thought she had buried, even after the week before when she had left him for the first time, supposedly forever, and, when she discovers that Frederick must go to Geneva again, including a quick stopover in Paris on a chartered flight, she talks him into letting her tag along to France. He, of course, has to figure out what's going on somehow, and it happens through a phone call from the airline who suggests he uses the same charter plane that his wife used to go to Paris the week before, a trip he had no idea she took.
The finale of the film resolves in the Grand Duchess' salon, and it's the exact right kind of baring of souls that a drama should end with. All three main characters reunite one last time with Maria needing to make the choice about who she is while Frederick learns the truth about who she was. The emotional denouement is a mature form of what Lubitsch failed at in the ending of One Hour With You. In that, the married couple simply laughed off the infidelity that was plaguing the wife for most of the film like it was nothing, creating this disconnect between the wife from the rest of the film and the wife in the ending. Here, using a similar situation (with the sexes reversed), the characters actually deal with the situation seriously in a way that makes sense for what came before, and the resolution is surprisingly edifying.
Is it a great Lubitsch film? I wouldn't go that far. It's ending sticks the landing, but the build up to it feels a bit flabby for the story being told and there's a surprising lack of tension through most of it, even as people having affairs are in the room with the man being betrayed. However, it's handsome, well-acted (especially from Marshall), and contains the necessary pieces to make that ending work. It's a solidly good drama from a man who hadn't made a drama in a few years. -
hotangen27 March 2017This is a Dietrich film, her last starring role at her home studio, Paramount. She is supported by 2 of the top Hollywood leading men - Douglas and Marshall - and dressed sumptuously by Travis Banton. The film should have been a money-maker for its studio, but apparently it was too sophisticated for the small-town public and she became 'Box Office Poison' after its release. Variety, in its disparaging but humorous review, said that you could hang coats from Dietrich's eyelashes. I attentively kept an eye on those eyelashes and have to admit that they ARE long, but not long enough to hang a coat on.
I liked this film. I especially liked Dietrich's aristocrat diplomat husband - Marshall - devoted to duty to fend off WW2. And I liked Dietrich. She has servants who attend to all personal and household tasks and therefore she has nothing to do. She is bored. She flies to Paris and has a romantic evening with a stranger - Douglas - a piano playing playboy who is infatuated with her. In the end she chooses the man who is the only one who can give her the happiness she craves. Females can learn a trick or 2 or more re how to attract and keep a man from closely observing Dietrich in this film. In what was once common terminology, she is a "man's woman." How times and the culture have changed.
BTW, 'Angel', although it has bits of comedy supplied by the servants, is not a comedy, but is instead a light-hearted, sophisticated marital drama. -
st-shot22 January 2020Lady Barker (Marlene Dietrich) benignly ignored by her British diplomat (Herbert Marshall) sneaks off to Paris to visit an old friend running a fashionable salon where discretion is highly valued. There she meets a brash American Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas) and has a whirlwind affair with him before disappearing. Circumstance brings the two men together however and once revealed as rivals Barker is left with no option other than to decide who she will walk with.
One of Lubitsch's minor efforts from his Paramount period Angel is a well mannered romantic comedy that never raises its voice as adults behave like adults. Marshall and Douglas display charming civility with each other while the usually ice like beauty Dietrich supplies the right amount of hopeless romantic, strong woman to balance the trio. The usual stalwart Paramount supporting cast is in evidence with Edward Everett Horton, Edward Cossart, Herbert Mundin and Laura Hope Crews adding wit and humor to the proceedings while Lubitsch applies his famous touch of deft incidentals and open doors. The arrested passions and lack of high comedy however allows Angel to fly no higher than a mildly pleasant entertainment ably assisted by the grace and charm of its stars. -
Immediate promise of romance and flourishes of drama to flavor light humor and amusement: it's very easy to simplify 'Angel' to the most basic description - but also foolish. This is a wonderfully enchanting and entertaining picture, rich with detail in so many ways. The costume design of Travis Banton is exquisite and fetching, as well as the set design and decoration. Much credit to Charles Lang's vibrant cinematography that, in combination with fine lighting, only serves to further amplify star Marlene Dietrich's already irrepressibly radiant beauty and natural charm (as well as make every scene, generally, very pleasing to the eyes). And even these only just match the brilliant wit and intelligence of the adapted screenplay concocted between Samson Raphaelson and Frederick Lonsdale. 'Angel' distinctly declines the sort of robust comedy and absurdism that we recognize in many of director Ernst Lubitsch's other pictures, but in its stead we're treated to sharp cleverness in the craft of every word of dialogue, every character, and every scene. It's marvelously absorbing and immediately rewarding as a viewer, and just as fully engaging as any more outrageous romp or dire drama.
The very arrangement of each moment, on paper and on film, is bursting with such barely restrained anticipated tension, but is also so tremendously perfect, resonant, fluid, and organic that the picture could only be described as mellifluous in its presentation. And that quality is a fine reflection, of course, of the performances given by the cast. This goes for everyone, even Edward Everett Horton and Ernest Cossart in smaller supporting parts as Graham and Mr. Wilton, but nonetheless exhibiting outstanding and gratifying presence, poise, and delivery. Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas equally command terrific nuance and precise personality as Frederick Barker and Anthony Halton respectively, splendidly calming and electrifying at the same time as the two men both build the unspoken pressure and keep it under control with their charisma. Above all, Dietrich demonstrates stupendous range tempered with fabulous, very deliberate subtlety, and is marked with an irresistible gracefulness and allure that heightens all these facets of her acting. Well and truly, every portrayal here is spotless, pristine as any comparison our imagination may conjure for the word.
The most lofty of descriptors can only do so much to begin to convey the great elegance and refined artistry of this movie. Why, I haven't even touched on the story here, though suffice to say that it handily stays in step with every other piece of praise I've proffered. I began watching with no foreknowledge save for the names involved, and perhaps I already had high expectations based certainly on Lubitsch's direction, but also Douglas and Dietrich's attachment. And still any presumptions I may have had before watching were far exceeded - this is an impeccable, striking feature, an exemplar of the sublime skillfulness and aesthetic techniques of film-making that can be applied even to more common narratives that eschew experimental or avant-garde ambitions. I have watched many lovely, captivating pictures, but can recount very few that have been so readily, completely bewitching. Viewers should know the genres the title plays with before committing to it, but otherwise I'd have a hard time believing this couldn't be enjoyed by all, nor thinking of anyone I wouldn't recommend it to. 'Angel' is a phenomenal slice of 30s cinema that stands tall with the very best of both previous years and subsequent decades, and is well worth seeking out wherever one may find it. -
buystuffrnh25 October 2021With the very notable exception of the supporting cast, which proves to be the only comedic aspect, the film is a dull, downbeat slog. I had great hopes and I was quite disappointed.
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lugonian23 October 2010ANGEL (Paramount, 1937), produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, returns Marlene Dietrich to sophisticated comedy following her amusing role in DESIRE (1936) as a continental jewel thief. As much as this production could very well have been a cute romantic fantasy of an angel assigned from Heaven out to guide a troubled individual on Earth, what resulted was a domestic story about a bored wife who acquires the pet name of "Angel" from a complete stranger while her husband is away. While Dietrich's DESIRE proved favorable, ANGEL did not.
The story begins on an airplane bound for France where Lady Maria Barker (Marlene Dietrich) registers at the Hotel Imperial. Coming to the Club De La Russia, 314 Rue De La Tour, to visit with an old friend, The Grand Duchess Anna Dmitrievna (Laura Hope Crews), the club's owner steps away to take care of matters, leaving Maria to step into a private sitting room where she encounters Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), an American looking to meet someone for an amusing time in Paris. Mistaken for the Duchess, Maria agrees to show the gentleman around. After dinner, the couple rest on a park bench where Maria, refusing to give her name, finds herself embraced and kissed by a man who not only expresses his true love for her after only a short time, but dubs her "Angel." As breaking away to buy her a bouquet of violets, Halton returns to find his "Angel" gone. Sir Frederick Barker (Herbert Marshall), a British nobleman and delegate to the League of Nations, returns from Geneva to his British home and his wife, Maria. Unaware of her unhappiness and their dull existence together, things begin to change upon the visitation of her husband's wartime friend, a man wanting to meet his "Angel."
Taken from the play by Melchor Lengyel, ANGEL contains some variations lifted from Lubitsch's own 1932 musical, ONE HOUR WITH YOU, where a doctor (Maurice Chevalier) innocently encounters a flirtatious married woman (Genevieve Tobin), who turns out to be the best friend of his wife (Jeanette MacDonald) whom she invited to their home. As with the husband and guest pretending to not to lead on their previous encounter to his spouse, Dietrich's Maria and Douglas' Halton do the same, but on more on a serious nature. Containing less wit than Lubitsch's previous efforts, the supporting cast contains some of the best known "comedy relief" types on screen, ranging from Edward Everett Horton and Ernest Cossart as the household servants, to the daffy Dennie Moore playing Cossart's fiancée, Emma McGillicutty. Interestingly all their roles, which might have given the story some life during some dull stretches, are sadly limited. For one of the film's better assets, there's that fine "Angel" theme score composed by Frederick Hollander.
According to Robert Osborne, host on Turner Classic Movies where ANGEL premiered in January 17, 2002, during its tribute to Marlene Dietrich, Lubitsch and Dietrich both had high expectations for this film. In spite of Samson Raphaelson's promising screenplay, the film's box office failure lead to Dietrich's termination from her home studio. Fortunately the label of Dietrich as "box office poison" didn't last long with her reinvention screen persona in the hit western of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (Universal, 1939) opposite James Stewart.
Virtually unknown and/or forgotten among the film credits of either Dietrich or Lubitsch, ANGEL did get some exposure through its 1990s distribution on home video through MCA/Universal. Possibly viewing ANGEL more as a drama than a comedy might help accept the film for what it is rather than what it's expected to be. (**1/2) -
Falkner197622 July 2023Lubitsch focuses on the English aristocracy, with all the clichés we expect: immense mansions, artful refinement of the lords, butlers proud of the social position of their lords...
Marlene as Lady Barker, now the respectable wife of an English diplomat too busy in European politics, but with a possibly less respectable past, meets Melvyn Douglas, an American passing through the city of lights wanting to have a good time, in a Parisian brothel for high society.
During an afternoon together that pretends to have an adventure without consequences, they fall in love without revealing their identities, although when things get serious Lady Barker disappears leaving the American with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, and without the slightest idea of how to meet the lady again.
Back with her husband Lady Barker resume her boring and lonely life in the country manor. Everything seems to be back to normal, but it turns out that the husband and lover know each other, having shared a young French girl while on leave in Paris during the first war.
The plot has possibilities, we have fun with how Lubitsch circumvents and makes fun of the thematic restrictions imposed by the code, and the story is always treated with a bright and original tone, and at the same time adult and reflective, with plenty of those Lubitsch touches (witty twist, committed innuendos, ellipses...); but compared to other Lubitsch comedies of the time, it lacks sparkle, is drowned out by its sophistication, and too parsimonious. The scenes work better explained than seen.
That calm, dramatic tone would require us to really believe the story and the characters, and that's where it fails. We see it more as an ultra-sophisticated fantasy of three impossible characters having relationships in a shop window or fashion magazine. Especially problematic is the role of Dietrich, just as problematic as the one she played in Blonde Venus.
Marshall, as the husband, is once again the irritating Hollywood image of the typical English aristocrat and diplomat, but with few exceptions and despite being a very good actor, I have almost always found him excessively smug and monotonous.
Overall, an interesting comedy, with all the sophistication and elegance of Lubitsch, Dietrich and classic Hollywood, about the dangers faced by a marriage that is not a marriage, with an adult approach and an understanding and conciliatory vision, but we would have preferred something more spontaneous and down to earth. -
sb-47-60873720 February 2020The initial synopsis of says "Bored wife falls in love..." Which probably is wrong description, The neglected wife of a workaholic politician looks for some diversion from boredom by visiting a notorious salon of a nobility - seems to be frequented by the persons-on-pay of both genders. Though, the secrecy is maintained a la belle de jour. She meets a stranger and is attracted, but she despite the utter neglect, is in love with her spouse, and the neglecting husband too adores her, though continues to neglect - taking her for granted syndrome, which she spelt out almost towards the end. With that equation, naturally she has put a line which she won't cross, and backs out at the last moment and disappears. the man has been infatuated with her and per chance comes across - and that too as the wife of an old close acquaintance. She rebuffs his advances quite firmly and even tells in plain words that she isn't ready to sacrifice her home. But he persists and invites her to another soiree in Paris. When her romantic getaway is cancelled by her insensitive husband, she takes a plunge and decides to have the rendezvous. The husband had got clear signals that the mysterious lady of his friend was his wife and he too lands up there and the choice is left to the lady to make - which of the two men she wants. One would sympathise with the woman in this case and find fault with both the men. One due to his utter insensitivity, and the second, irrespective of her wish, to be left alone, is bent on seducing her, and that too his friend's wife - one really can't call him anything other than cad.
The mindset of the two men are brought out in few seconds - one (the husband) measures the time spend with his beloved (wife) in years and the other (the lover) in seconds... one lives for present, and the moment and the other for the future accumulating bits and pieces and adding up as total experience. Naturally both were wrong and the ideal long-term lover (I mean beloved) falls in between. And on that aspect, the lady made the right choice even if the scales were not so unbalanced in her heart. Another interesting thing was the husband going to the other room, despite all the forbiddings and forebodings. Anyway by then he should have been more than sure of Maria being Angel - too many circumstantial evidences, acquaintance with the Grand Duchess, being in Paris on the day and then, the icing, tune on Piano on telephone background - which incidentally he had promised to her that he won't play again. Though the director, I don't know meant it to be, but the act of the husband was right. - not to show to the wife that he believed or didn't believe her, or as she said, to keep that iota in mind permanently. He was by then sure, but the step was necessary to tell her, that the suspicions and lies shouldn't be there for the relation to succeed and thrive. He knows, he tells her that he knows, and then he still doesn't forgive her, but tells her to make choice, not really blaming her, but indirectly accepting his responsibility for the episode that took place - making her task more complex. had he maintained the insensitivity, it would have been easy for her to chose. But still it wasn't difficult or needed time for her to make up her mind. -
ilprofessore-18 January 2023Fans of Lubitsch have always been disappointed in this 1937 film, the last one Marlene made under her Paramount contract and a failure at the box office. Perhaps because it is not one of the director's champagne comedies, although it has its occasional comic moments. It is, unlike most of the director's later works, a serious drama about a neglected woman, dutiful wife of a workaholic English diplomat, who has a brief fling in Paris with an attractive American playboy and chooses to forget about it until... Marlene is absolutely superb in this demanding psychological role, radiantly beautiful and flirtatious at times, glacially cold at others. The men, Herbert Marshall as the stiff upper class Brit, and Melvyn Douglas as the frivolous Yank out for pleasure, are exactly right as men of the world without the slightest notion of what a woman might be. Films like this about adultery were rarely made after the Pre-Code era and, as to be expected, Lubitsch displays his genius for erotic suggestion. He never shows us what he knows we can imagine. Filmed entirely on the Paramount Hollywood lot in the golden age, it is filled with gorgeous sets and furniture, Dietrich in Travis Banton gowns, underscoring by Fredrick Hollander, and glamorous back-lighting by Charles Lang-all dedicated to creating a world of sophistication that never existed other than in Hollywood. This is a major Lubitsch film, among his most complex efforts.
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I'm starting to watch old Hollywood movies and Marlene Dietrich was on my list of needing to watch. Angel came up on tv so I watched it. I absolutely love how they make her calm and non phased about anything that goes wrong. She doesn't seem to phase if she gets caught. It was a classy facade/charade she gave off here. Never acting like a teen who was worried. She seems so sophisticated here. I enjoy love affairs where they don't even have to DO IT that makes it stem off of "cheating". Or unless I missed something. It's an interesting ending though. Her telling her man if he were to look in the room, better get a lawyer and divorce papers ready which would indicate her saying "if you don't trust me, I want a divorce" which is a clever way of hiding the "woman" in that room. Yet he still says he can learn to move on if she's willing to, and they walk out. She learned even before that it was only a fling and it meant absolutely nothing because nothing really did happen. She was willing to walk away from her "other guy" to have her husband. That form of behavior today wouldn't fly by today nor would her demeanor. I liked this movie based on her mannerisms on how she dealt with everything so grown up.....some of you might not agree.
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planktonrules9 July 2018"Angel" is an Ernst Lubitsch film with three top actors, Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas. Yet, despite this, the story is amazingly flat and unappealing. It's not a bad film...more one that leaves you expecting so much more. After all, Lubitsch is practically legendary as are his movies.
When the story begins, Anthony (Melvyn Douglas) meets Lady Barker (Marlene Dietrich) in Paris and arranges to meet her for dinner. During the dinner, Anthony is totally smitten by her and the night seems magical. However, the woman never tells him who she is and he gives her the nickname 'Angel'. When the evening is over, he has no idea who she was nor how to get in touch with her.
Sometime later, Anthony meets an old friend, Sir Barker (Herbert Marshall). The evening goes fine...until Sir Barker's wife arrives and Anthony sees that it's Angel. What next? See the film.
Making a romantic film that involves adultery is a major uphill battle. Adultery isn't a romantic thing and despite the Lubitsch touch, it all seems a tad tawdry. Tawdrier still, if you read between the lines you realize that the place Anthony and Angel met is essentially a high-priced brothel...though it's certainly NOT obvious when you watch the film. In addition to this big problem, the film simply is too talky and too flat....which is so surprising. I can see clearly why this is not among Lubitsch's more famous films. -
sandy-3221 October 1998Given the talent involved -- Dietrich at the height of her allure, Melvyn Douglas (who proved such a wonderful foil to Garbo just two years later in "Ninotchka"), support from such able troupers as Edward Everett Horton and Laura Hope Crews, and above all the famed "touch" of Lubitsch -- "Angel" should be a sparkling romp, a melancholy romance of renunuciation, a worldly social comedy, or better yet, all three.
Instead it's a mostly tiresome slog through familiar territory, as if all involved were inspired not by Dietrich or Lubitsch but by the stolid Herbert Marshall as Marlene's aristo-Brit husband.
While several recent writers on both Dietrich and Lubitsch have tried to tout this as an undeservingly overlooked film, it's really most worth watching for Crew's pre-Pittypat turn as a Russian emigre-turned-nightclub-hostess, and her few brief scenes can hardly save the picture.
Dietrich fans are better off hunting up stills -- she does look terrific in the wardrobe of English Gentlewoman tweeds and furs, and her legendary collection of emeralds were rarely shown to better advantage. -
richard-178714 July 2012Imagine 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. -
bkoganbing13 November 2009Looking at the criticisms so far voiced about Angel, the majority seems to feel it's a neglected Lubitsch masterpiece. Yet this was the film that caused Paramount and Marlene Dietrich to come to a parting of the ways. Marlene would not be back on the screen until she signed a new contract with Universal and made a comeback of sorts in something that would have been unthinkable for her in 1937. That film was a western, but the western was Destry Rides Again.
Ernest Lubitsch and Marlene Dietrich hit a double dry spell in Angel. The sum and substance of it is that up and coming young British diplomat Melvyn Douglas meets a mysterious and alluring woman at Laura Hope Crews's palace in Paris who he falls hopelessly for. But the alluring as ever Marlene is merely the very bored wife of a senior diplomat who is a member of the nobility, Herbert Marshall. It also turns out that Douglas and Marshall are old army buddies.
Somehow Lubitsch could not work his usual magic with Marlene. Her scenes with the two men seem to have no spark to them. In fact the ending is a bit of a shock, personally I think she made the wrong choice.
Where Lubitsch did well in Angel was with the supporting players. Laura Hope Crews is quite a bit different as the worldly countess than as that pillar of southern society Aunt Pittypat Hamilton from Gone With The Wind. Some of the back and forth commentary between Marshall's butler Ernest Cossart and his valet Edward Everett Horton are also quite droll. What snobs those servants can be, much worse than the people who employ them.
Sad to say Angel is a film with a lot of gloss, but no real substance behind it. -
krocheav26 June 2018The 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.
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harveyvincent-382791 December 2017I'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. -
gbill-748772 April 2019There are very few signs that this is an Ernst Lubitsch film, and that's definitely a bad thing (and an unfortunate surprise). The dry script lacks lightness and bounce, the love triangle a married woman finds herself seems forced, and the casting is all wrong. Marlene Dietrich (who I otherwise adore) brings a heaviness to the part, the wooden Melvyn Douglas has zero chemistry with her, and even Herbert Marshall (another fantastic presence ordinarily) is lacking in energy and sharpness. It's as if everyone involved (including Lubitsch) were there because they were forced to be, and just going through the motions. There are a few attempts at humor with the servants, but they're weak and seem like filler. The trouble is in going for something downbeat and somber with no background music, the emotions really need to come through, and here they lack authenticity. The ending scene, with first Dietrich giving Marshall a choice and then later him giving her one, was the strongest for me, but it's not enough.