IMDb RATING
7.2/10
3.3K
YOUR RATING
A woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.A woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.A woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.
Ivan Lebedeff
- Prince Vladimir Gregorovitch
- (scenes deleted)
Leonard Carey
- Barker's Footman
- (uncredited)
Louise Carter
- Flower Woman
- (uncredited)
Phyllis Coghlan
- Maria's Maid
- (uncredited)
Gino Corrado
- Assistant Hotel Manager
- (uncredited)
George Davis
- First Taxi Driver
- (uncredited)
Duci De Kerekjarto
- Violinist
- (uncredited)
Herbert Evans
- Lord Davington's Butler
- (uncredited)
James Finlayson
- Barker's Second Butler
- (uncredited)
Bobbie Hale
- News Vendor
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe last film for Marlene Dietrich at Paramount under her seven-year contract with the studio. It was not renewed due to a series of recent flops for her films at the box office.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Le cinéma passe à table (2005)
- SoundtracksAngel
(1937) (uncredited)
Music by Friedrich Hollaender
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Played during the opening and end credits
Played on violin by Duci De Kerekjarto (as Duci Kerekjarto)
Played on piano by Marlene Dietrich and by Melvyn Douglas
Played as background music often
Featured review
Lubitsch elegance under the Hays Code
Having 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.
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.
helpful•10
- davidmvining
- Apr 27, 2023
- How long is Angel?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 31 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content