Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

1. Casablanca (1942) - Michael Curtiz

2. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) - Michael Curtiz

3. Roman Holiday (1953) - William Wyler

4. The Blue Angel/Der Blaue Engel (1930) - Joseph von Sternberg

5. The Big Sleep (1946) - Howard Hawks

6. Dead Man (1995) - Jim Jarmusch

7. Down by Law (1986) - Jim Jarmusch

8. 8½/Otto e Mezzo (1963) - Federico Fellini

9. The Battle of Algiers/La Battaglia di Algeri (1966) - Gillo Pontecorvo

10. Carnival of Souls (1962) - Herk Harvey

Other B/W masterpiece reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Artist (2011) 

Other great B/W movies and a short reviewed by Film Excess to date (in alphabetical order) 

A Star Is Born (1937) 
Cape Fear (1962) 
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) 
The Dark Corner (1946) 
Frances Ha (2012) 
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Ida (2013) 
Nebraska (2013) 
Two Men and a Wardrobe/Dwaj Ludzie z Szafą (1958, short) 


Other good B/W movies, a documentary and a short reviewed by Film Excess to date (in alphabetical order)


The 39 Steps (1935) 
Antoine et Colette (1962, short) 
Captain Kidd (1945) 
Celebrity (1998)
Citizen Kane (1941) 
Cul-de-Sac (1966) 
Danmark (1935, documentary)
Doomed to Die (1940) 
Double Indemnity (1944) 
Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report (1955) 
The Mummy (1932) 
The Mysterious X/Det Hemmelighedsfulde X/Orders Under Seal/Sealed Orders (1914) 

Mediocre or poor B/W movies and a documentary reviewed by Film Excess to date (in alphabetical order)


Alexander Nevsky (1938)
The Ape (1940) 
Atom Age Vampire/Seddok, l'Erede di Satana (1960) 
The Birth of a Nation/The Clansman (1915) 
Black Dragons (1942) 
Bloodlust (1961) 
The Bridge/The Spy (1929, short) 
Child Bride/Child Brides/Child Bride of the Ozarks/Dust to Dust (1938) 
City Lights (1931) 
The Corpse Vanishes/The Case of the Missing Brides (1942) 
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) 
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) 
Man with a Movie Camera/Человек с киноаппаратом (1929, documentary) 
Nights of Cabiria/Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) 
The Turin Horse/A Torinói Ló (2011) 

[48 titles in all]

Previous Top 10 lists:

The best action movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  
The best adapted movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

What do you think of the list?
What B/W movies would be on yours?

The Blue Angel/Der Blaue Engel (1930) or, A Man's Downfall

♥♥♥♥♥

Marlene Dietrich was made a star by the film, and Emil Jannings ended his time as a star after Joseph von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel

QUICK REVIEW:

We are in a German provincial town, where we follow a high-school teacher, who, - in an attempt to correct his students, - strays into the men's club Der Blaue Engel, where the beautiful Lola Lola sings and dances. The quaint, bespectacled man's downfall from then on is one of film history's hardest, most profoundly sad tragedies. The current IMDb-review's caption for the film is, 'Humiliation, Degradation, Despair', and it seems a fitting one. Engel is a truly bleak film.
The teacher is grippingly portrayed by the great, German actor Emil Jannings, who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1929 for his performances in The Last Command (1928) and The Way of All Flesh (1927), but later did Nazi-propaganda and was an active Nazi himself.
Marlene Dietrich (Touch of Evil (1958)) achieved international stardom with her part as the depraved whore Lola Lola, whom she plays and sings with great feeling and authenticity.
The film is reportedly the first, major German sound picture, and it was shot simultaneously in German and English for commercial purposes. The English version is the least viewed of the two, and I'm glad that I didn't see the wonderful actors struggle with the foreign tongue, when I saw it.
Visually, with photography by Günther Rittau (Metropolis (1927)), Engel is underplayed, unsensational in often sneakily long shots, ending in the SPOILER almost traumatizing clown performance and the clown's final return to his empty classroom. Alas and alack, by that time the film has pierced your heart through and through seven ways from Friday.
Austrian-Hungarian director Joseph von Sternberg (Dishonored (1931)) left Germany permanently, as so many of his other great colleagues at the time, after Der Blaue Engel, because of the hostile climate there. He carried on a long affair with Dietrich, cast her in 6 of his films in all and got divorced from his wife because of her.
The film was remade in Hollywood in 1959 by Edward Dmytryk, but there seems to be little reason to look up this version.

Related posts:

Top 10: Best German movies
Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

The inimitable Emil Jannings towards the tragic end of Der Blaue Engel

Watch the lengthy, original trailer for the must-watch here, (unfortunately in unsubtitled German)

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of Der Blaue Engel?
Any other similarly harsh tragedies from the era that you can recommend?