Join our Email List Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford

Browse All Books
Willing Seduction: <I>The Blue Angel</I>, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture

View Table of Contents


Series
Volume 8

Film Europa

Email Newsletters

Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.

Click here to select your preferences

Willing Seduction

The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture

Barbara Kosta

208 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-84545-572-9 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (May 2009)

ISBN  978-0-85745-619-9 $34.95/£27.95 / Pb / Published (February 2012)

eISBN 978-1-84545-914-7 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781845455729


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

Kosta’s book not only adds new material…, but performs the invaluable tasks of synthesizing and building on the massive amounts of writing that has accrued around the film, its director, and stars. This makes the book ideal not only for the collections of German Studies and Film Studies scholars, but also as a text for undergraduate and graduate courses. Kosta writes with sophistication and with a secure grasp of a variety of theoretical registers.”  ·  German Quarterly

This interdisciplinary study will appeal to German and film studies scholars as well as readers interested in question s of gender, visuality, and the history of film.  ·  Monatshefte

By setting the Blue Angel in its broader cultural context, Kosta captivates the reader and provides important insights into cultural debates during the Weimar Republic.  ·  European History Quarterly

Description

Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 film The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel) is among the best known films of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). A significant landmark as one of Germany’s first major sound films, it is known primarily for launching Marlene Dietrich into Hollywood stardom and for initiating the mythic pairing of the Austrian-born American director von Sternberg with the star performer Dietrich.

This fascinating cultural history of The Blue Angel provides a new interpretive framework with which to approach this classic Weimar film and suggests that discourses on mass and high culture are integral to the film’s thematic and narrative structure. These discourses surface above all in the relationship between the two main characters, the cabaret entertainer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) and the high school teacher Immanuel Rath (one-time Oscar winner Emil Jannings). In addition to offering insight into some of the major debates that informed the Weimar Republic, this book demonstrates that similar issues continue to shape the contemporary cultural landscape of Germany. Barbara Kosta thus also looks at Dietrich as a contemporary cultural icon and at her symbolic value since German unification and at Lola Lola’s various “incarnations.”

Barbara Kosta is Professor in the Department of German Studies and an affiliated faculty member of Women’s Studies and Media Arts at the University of Arizona, where she teaches courses on twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and film. She is the author of Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (1994), co-author of the first-year German textbook auf deutsch! (1990), and co-editor of Writing Against Boundaries: Gender, Ethnicity and Nationality in the German-speaking Context (2003).

Subject: Film and Television Studies
Area: Germany


Contents

Back to Top



Library Recommendation Form

Dear Librarian,

I would like to recommend Willing Seduction The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture for the library. Please include it in your next purchasing review with my strong recommendation. The RRP is: $135.00

I recommend this title for the following reasons:

BENEFIT FOR THE LIBRARY: This book will be a valuable addition to the library's collection.

REFERENCE: I will refer to this book for my research/teaching work.

STUDENT REFERRAL: I will regularly refer my students to the book to assist their studies.

OWN AFFILIATION: I am an editor/contributor to this book or another book in the Series (where applicable) and/or on the Editorial Board of the Series, of which this volume is part.