Der Blaue Engel

The German language version of Josef Von Sternberg's photography of Marlene Dietrich, 1930
This film is very much in the realist tradtion. Long takes and shots are throughout, for all the fame of the close-up. Long takes and shots of complex interiors, deatiled, busy, realist contingency. Indeed, Jannings, I would bet, gets more close-ups to Dietrich. This film is really wonderfully constrained. There is the silence at the start, the long long takes, and a reticence, noticeable early and continues, to actually take us up to Dietrich, to focus on here. She is rarely centred on the screen, her presence is rather an orb around others, throwing us here and there. The viewer desires to see her, the close-up that never really comes. The film is the circling of the impossible desire.
Balance is interesting here. Dietrich is beautiful partly because she is placed among ugly people, and she unabalances the frames as we focus on her. Von Sternberg, if one wants to call it balance (it is beaitful, it doesn't feel uncomfortable, but it is not symmetrical) somehow manages to balance non-matching black and white shapes. Black on one side balances white on the other. This shouldn't make sense, but it does. Outside of Dietrich, beaity isn't really the world here; more a kind of spidery, but quite sharp, complexity.
Dietrich's whole body is here, out of the corner of the eye, but yet always central. Lines of shadow are almost erased, she is not lit always majorly, but nearly always softly. The low contrast again means nothing is overdone. Genuinely a panaopoly of lights, always one behind, on the hair. Great dappled lighting also works on the wonderful shades and gauzes. There is adeliberate reticence in emphasising her gace at times, by also surrounding it in white clothes, sets etc (though as the only white object, all of her is often emphasized at the expense of others). This move adds extra weight to the tipped black hat she wears in the final, throaty, song, quite remarkable.
The long takes adds a great power to what is essentially a morally true, but pretty repugnant, morality tale. The light turning harsh on the tragic clown, in unbearably long takes, and the wonderful gauzes, achieves an exquisite horror. On these occassions near the end, Sternerg is at once gritty and unflinching, but not willing to sentimentalise.
This film is fetishism, but also pretty much social realism. How is this possible? By not being soft or fluffy in its fetish, not extravagant lighting here. It is more the plot, and very subtle gradations in who is higher, who holds attention. A great picture.