Valetti, Rosa

M - 2 Disc Special Edition (Criterion Collection Spine #30)

Peter Lorre made film history with his startling performance as a psychotic murderer of children. Too elusive for the Berlin police, the killer is sought and marked by underworld criminals who are feeling the official fallout for his crimes. This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain. M is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of Lang's early German works, including Metropolis and Spies. (Lang eventually brought his influence directly to the American cinema in such films as Fury, They Clash by Night, and The Big Heat.) M shouldn't be missed. This original 111-minute version is a little different from what most people have seen in theaters. --Tom Keogh

Behind every great suspense thriller lurks the shadow of "M." In this Fritz Lang's first sound film Peter Lorre delivers a haunting performance as the cinema's first serial killer; a whistling pedophile hunted by the police and brought to trial by the forces of the Berlin underworld. Greig's "Peer Gynt Suite" will never sound the same.Special Features:Audio commentary by German film scholar Eric Rentschler author of The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife and Anton Kaes author of the BFI Film Classics volume on M; Conversation with Fritz Lang an interview film by William Friedkin; Claude Chabrol#s M le Maudit a short film inspired by M; Classroom tapes of M editor Paul Falkenberg discussing the film and its history; Interview with Harold Nebenzal the son of M producer Seymour Nebenzal; A physical history of M; Stills gallery with behind-the-scenes photos and production sketches by art director Emil Hasler; New and improved English subtitle translation; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Stanley Kauffmann a 1963 interview with Lang and the script for a missing scene.System Requirements: Running Time 110 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: NR UPC: 037429197820 Manufacturer No: MMM030DVD

The Blue Angel

For director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub. The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. And yet the moral confusion exhibited by Jannings is really due to his own torment. Dietrich is merely an instrument of his innermost desires, standing on stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs singing "Falling in Love Again." --Bill Desowitz

The crowning achievement of the Weimar cinema, The Blue Angel is an exquisite parable of one man's fall from respectability, presented in both the newly-restored German and English-language versions.
Emil Jannings, the quintessential German expressionist actor, stars as Professor Rath, the sexually-repressed instructor of a boys' prep school. After learning of the pupils' infatuation with French postcards depicting a local nightclub songstress, he decides to personally investigate the source of such indecency. But as soon as he enters the shadowy Blue Angel nightclub and steals one glimpse of the smoldering Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), commanding the stage in a top hat, stockings and bare thighs, Rath's self-righteous piety is crushed. He finds himself fatefully seduced by the throaty voice of the vulgar siren, singing, "Falling in Love Again." Consumed by desire and tormented by his rigid propriety, Professor Rath allows himself to be dragged down a path of personal degradation. Lola's unrestrained sexuality was a revelation to turn-of-the-decade moviegoers, thrusting Dietrich to the forefront of the sultry international leading ladies, such as Greta Garbor, who were challenging the limits of screen sexuality.

M - Criterion Collection

Peter Lorre made film history with his startling performance as a psychotic murderer of children. Too elusive for the Berlin police, the killer is sought and marked by underworld criminals who are feeling the official fallout for his crimes. This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain. M is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of Lang's early German works, including Metropolis and Spies. (Lang eventually brought his influence directly to the American cinema in such films as Fury, They Clash by Night, and The Big Heat.) M shouldn't be missed. This original 111-minute version is a little different from what most people have seen in theaters. --Tom Keogh

Behind every great suspense thriller lurks the shadow of M. In this, Fritz Lang's first sound film, Peter Lorre delivers a haunting performance as the cinema's first serial killer, a whistling pedophile hunted by the police and brought to trial by the forces of the Berlin underworld. Greig's "Peer Gynt Suite" will never sound the same. Criterion is proud to present Lang's seminal film in a new transfer.

Fritz Lang Epic Collection (Metropolis/Die Nibelungen/Woman in the Moon/Spies)

Asphalt

From its amazing opening sequence of human and vehicular traffic sweeping through a nighttime cityscape entirely created inside the Ufa film factory, Asphalt marks a late addition to the eye-catching, mind-bending artistry of the German Expressionist cinema of the '20s. Released in March 1929, when silents were on the way out, until recently it was just a title, and the source of a few grabby stills, in the film history books. In this most complete restoration yet, it stands as the ultimate "street film," a genre prized for bravura artifice and potent allegory. In such urban symphonies, the cinema was simultaneously defining and reimagining the essence of modernity in images both hypnotically dark and ablaze with shattered light.

The story is a simple one, but told with psychological subtlety and strikingly fluid camerawork and editing. A young cop (Gustav Fröhlich, the hero of Metropolis) with rectitude in his veins apprehends a sneak thief (Betty Amann) in the act of stealing a diamond, then fails to turn her in. There's a gratifying mutuality to their seduction; although the lady's tiger-like leap upon her captor is astonishingly feral, she's soon as vulnerable and perplexed in their relationship as he is. A subplot involving her longtime lover, a master criminal (Hans Adelbert von Schlettow), eventually intersects with their love affair. Up to the very end--which somewhat anticipates Robert Bresson's Pickpocket--we can't be sure who's going to be sacrificed to save whom.

Director Joe May was no auteur on the order of Fritz Lang or F.W. Murnau; it's hard to locate an artistic personality in his movie. But he and cinematographer Günther Rittau had a state-of-the-art camera dolly to play with, making the German ideal of "the unfettered camera" a freewheeling reality. Amann is beguiling as a Louise Brooks knockoff, an ambulatory white fur under a cloche hat who evolves into a dark, hieratic figure of Fate. --Richard T. Jameson

Spies/M

Spies

Tartuffe/The Way to Murnau

The Blue Angel

For director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub. The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. And yet the moral confusion exhibited by Jannings is really due to his own torment. Dietrich is merely an instrument of his innermost desires, standing on stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs singing "Falling in Love Again." --Bill Desowitz

Show 1
This film's direction from Joseph Von Sternberg is brilliant, visionary and haunting. The star turn by Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel" made her a screen icon. But perhaps Emil Jannings is the real treasure. His tough professor turned pathetic loser is absolutely devastating by the end of the film, with an unforgettable breakdown sequence and final scene. His performance is uncanny and is as much responsible for the longevity of this timeless film as is Dietrich's famous performance as Lola Lola. Approx. 100 Min.

Show 2
Marlene Dietrich At The Movies
Marlene Dietrich as a ruthless, seductive, throaty-voiced siren straddled a chair and crooned "Falling in Love Again" in top hat, stockings and bare thighs in "The Blue Angel." But her intensity and magic was captured on screen in an array of roles from the spell-binding gypsy in "Golden Earrings" who bewitched Ray Milland to the wife enthralled by Tyrone Power in "Witness for the Prosecution." Approx. 20 Min.

The Blue Angel

For director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub. The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. And yet the moral confusion exhibited by Jannings is really due to his own torment. Dietrich is merely an instrument of his innermost desires, standing on stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs singing "Falling in Love Again." --Bill Desowitz