Angel (1937)

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937)

Woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.

While in Paris, a lady named Mrs. Brown/Mrs. Barker/Angel (Marlene Dietrich) meets a man (Melvyn Douglas) with whom she falls in love. However, back in London she has a husband (Herbert Marshall) that is a diplomat and a workaholic. They barely see each other. But one day at a race track the two men meet and Sir Francis Barker, the husband, invites Anthony Dalton, the secret lover, to stay under his roof. A series of hide and seek events will lead Barker to discover the truth. And at the end, back in Paris, Angel will have to choose between her lover or her husband.

With Marlene Dietrich in the title role and Ernst Lubitsch directing one could expect to have a great and sophisticated entertainment in the kind of the “Lubitsch touch” and the Dietrich legendary presence. But it is mostly an average romantic comedy that doesn’t have the wit and quality of the two stars’ other pictures. Despite a promising opening act, the pairing suffers from a poorly written script and an average cast of supporting characters portrayed by excellent actors. When acquainted to quality films like To Be or Not To Be, The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka, and Design For Living from Lubitsch Angel is clearly a letdown and one of his lesser Hollywood films.  

Angel being my last Ernst Lubitsch film on my quest at tackling down the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time by They Shoot Pictures Don’t They, it reminds me how I recently got into his films and now I have seen most of his major work. The list of Pantheon Directors is getting shorter everyday and I still have some films from John Ford, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg, Max Ophüls, F.W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, and D.W. Griffith to watch before getting the job done and passing into another slice of the list. Still, so many great films to watch!

You Only Live Once

You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)

The public defender's secretary and an ex-convict get married and try to make a life together, but a series of disasters sends their lives spiraling out of control.

Fritz Lang’s second American feature, the first being Fury, continues on building the themes that will become the cornerstone of Film noir and Melodrama. Starring Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda as the Taylors, Eddie and Joan form a young couple of an ex-prisoner and the secretary of the public defender. This unique union of “good and bad” is linked by the fact that Lang exploits the Rousseau principle on the beliefs of Joan that she believes that every man is born good and that society brings him to do bad things. In fact, the plot of the film slowly evolves into proving that it is quite right.

Wrongly accused and judged of robbing a bank and killing six persons, Eddie goes back to prison to wait for his eventual execution. But before these things happen a strong depiction of how a person is marked for life and that forgiveness isn’t always a given when someone has sinned. Lang’s themes in You Only Live Once revolve around the Catholic themes of guilt, innocence, forgiveness, and unconditional love. The criminal life of Eddie follows him all along the film even if he did not commit a crime to get inside. However, Joan knows that he is good and knows that is feelings for her are pure. For that, she will get into deep trouble as a showing of her love and dedication. Even if someone is not acquainted to Catholic values, the moral dilemmas and observations exposed enriched the keen qualities of the script.

Shot in a crisp black and white, You Only Live Once marks the fact that Lang is establishing himself as one of the most talented storyteller of his time. His mise en scène is methodical and nothing is useless or superfluous. It is easy to take this Fonda movie and to compare it with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, also starring Fonda and based on a crime that he may or may not have done. While Hitchcock’s film was a pale attempt to direct a Neorealist film. On the other hand, Lang directs a genuine film that will reverberate itself for decades. There are many similarities between both directors but at some point, Lang is a better storyteller and he is more apt to direct actors and infuse believable characters.

Finally, since Fritz Lang was more of a hard tempered director he had some troubles to get the recognition amongst Hollywood and since he was German this never helped him to fully get the respect he deserved. In the upcoming weeks many Lang movies will be reviewed and have a full spot on them.

Make Way for Tomorrow

Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)


"It could make a rock cry" Orson Welles.

There are these directors that are completely forgotten for decades and after reissues or articles about their films they come back in fashion. In this moment this is the case for the films of Leo McCarey. Since the reissue of his masterpiece Make Way for Tomorrow by the tremendous folks of Criterion Collection, McCarey came back in the major directors of all time. His films, like An Affair to Remember, Duck Soup and The Awful Truth were already celebrated by movie buffs. But his more obscure films have the chance of being seen by more people with reissues like The Ruggles of Red Gap. Myself, I have only seen Duck Soup with the Marx brothers which made me laugh a lot by the creativity of the gags and the crazy story.

In Make Way for Tomorrow as said by Orson Welles, it's McCarey's skill to tell a wonderful little story about an aged couple that can't live in its house and that must live separated at their children's houses. The story is quite simple and did not take a bit of age. The subject is on topic, with all the economic disturbances of our time some aged people won't be able to afford to keep their homes and live on their own. The "propos" of the film feels like an American version of a Yasujiro Ozu film. But, it doesn't feel as a remake at all. It's the same sad light approach to life and the little moments of our lives.


Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi as the old couple are unforgettable; it's never often to see aged characters on the front of a story. The producers tend to think that the audience wouldn't be able to identify itself with these kinds of characters. Especially, because the audiences want to see young, beautiful and healthy people. In the case of Make Way for Tomorrow, the story is so well written and told that the age of the characters didn't bothered me at all. The sentimentality and nostalgia of the film is so well handled that it never feels tacky or too much. One of the best scenes is where Ma's talking to Pa on the phone in the living room filled with people playing cards. We become the "voyeur" who listens to a conversation that should have been private and that touches the viewer by its tenderness and honesty. I think this is one of the forces of the story, the feeling of truth, honesty and reality it has. The characters put away their dignity and have to face the facts and keep the faith they have in life to pass through it. There are some touching scenes that will stick with you for many days.

Without a doubt I think Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow is a masterpiece and deserves its place among the great films of the 1930's!

P.S.:I thought it was kinda cool to begin a review with an Orson Welles quote...

A Film Retrospective by Michaël Parent