Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/121
2011
443
Be/Ruf: Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel
121
2011
cg4430259
Be/ Ruf: Sound Control and Vocal Training in ff Der blaue Engel KATA GELLEN D UKE U NIVERSITY What is the relationship between an actor’s voice and a character’s voice? How does a sound film translate dialect, accent, and degraded forms of speech for a foreign audience? Must it translate silence and noise, or are these universal acoustic signs? How does the voice in particular, which can be trained and manipulated in various ways, play into the experience of film sound? More specifically, is there a relationship between vocal refinement (of actors/ characters) and auditory attunement (of listeners)? This essay will address these broad questions about early sound film by examining the practice of vocal training and techniques of sound control in and for Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1930). This involves a close analysis of Rath’s and Lola-Lola’s voices in their aesthetic, social, and professional dimensions, the influence they exert over the voices of others, as well as issues of acting, staging, and sound editing. The essay will argue that the film advances an idea of vocal determinism in modernity: individuals are defined by their speech, their silence, and their noise - in short, by how they use their voices and manipulate the voices of others. In Der blaue Engel, a modern form of and forum for entertainment - the sordid cultural institution of the Tingeltangel 1 - is intimately tied to the practice of vocal training, and yet all acts of vocalization within this context, whether or not they appear successful, lead to stagnation and death: this is the tragic dimension of vocal determinism in modernity. In his scathing review of Der blaue Engel, Siegfried Kracauer notes the film’s impressive treatment of sound, noise, and silence, only to dismiss it as histrionic and pointless. He saves his sharpest criticism for the film’s dramatic ending, in which the humiliated Professor Rath (Emil Jannings) descends into uncontrolled animalistic crowing before expiring in his former classroom, where he had once taught proper diction and pronunciation, and thus represented the apex of refinement and Bildung. «While in truth Professor Unrat should disintegrate noiselessly, in the film he perishes with a great flourish,» Kracauer opines, further pointing out that «the screeching and the clattering; the sadism and the battle cries at the end: what a hopeless comparison 260 Kata Gellen between hullabaloo and meaning is set up here. But the hullabaloo is required to conceal the lack of meaning» («The Blue Angel» 631). The reason this is pointless, according to Kracauer, is that the film is utterly unconnected to contemporary reality. It fails to examine individual fates as a product of social and economic conditions. Rath’s destiny, for example, is not conditioned by external circumstances and it is not one instance of a general phenomenon; for Kracauer, this lack of representativeness strips the film of depth and relevance. «[The film] suppresses the social environment that would force itself upon the native spectator of Unrat’s catastrophe, it tears the performers out of any social context in which they would have gained contemporary significance and places them in a vacuum» («The Blue Angel» 631). It is possible to argue against Kracauer without rejecting the requirement of representativeness and contemporaneity. One can claim, for instance, that far from «suppress[ing] the social environment» responsible for characters’ fates (631), Der blaue Engel centers on an exploration of a crucial aspect of l modern socio-aesthetic existence: the training of the voice. Moreover, it does so in a decidedly modern setting, the Tingeltangel, a site of entertainment, sociability, and a certain kind of professional/ vocational instruction. 2 Kracauer is right to note the remarkable use of sound and silence in the film and to hint at its dramatic, perhaps excessive displays of vocal virtuosity. However, he describes the film’s impressive acoustic effects without recognizing that vocal training and sound control are central features of Der blaue Engel that link up l with contemporary socio-aesthetic norms and practices. Silence and noise, singing and speech: these are not decorative and empty acoustic gestures, but instead lie at the heart of the tragic modernity the film represents and enacts. Drawn to Tingeltangel for different reasons, the main characters discover that l this world places certain demands on them, especially on their voices. Despite their efforts at vocal adaptation - they submit to vocal training and subject others to it - their voices are precisely what cause (and figure) their downfall: in Der blaue Engel, tragic fates are «performed» through the voice and in the modern context of the Tingeltangel. I thus wish to argue against Kracauer by demonstrating that an aesthetic feature of the film can constitute its social realism and hence its contemporary relevance. 3 Der blaue Engel engages with a moment of Weimar history and one of l Weimar film history, both of which relate to the issue of vocal refinement. Rath and Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich) come from opposite ends of the social spectrum to do the same thing, namely to make a living by training their own voices and the voices of others. Rath’s demise can be described as a fall from a tradition of education and cultivation, from a code of proper behav- Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 261 ior, and above all from professional conventions and practices. Indeed, Rath goes from practicing a profession (Beruf) to merely carrying out an occuff pation, if his work as a varieté performer can even be called that. This fall takes place in and through his reconfigured relationship to the voice: from a teacher of diction and recitation to a crowing clown, from Shakespearean English to noise, from Rat(h) (advice, counsel) to Unrat (garbage, waste, or refuse). Lola-Lola seems to rise through her command of the voice - her seductive song is crucial to her success and appeal - as well as by luring Rath away from a vocal practice that promotes education and high culture and re-functionalizing his voice for the purpose of crude amusement. Indeed, Rath, who in Lola-Lola’s presence is generally silent or produces senseless sound, is undone by her: hence he becomes «Unrat,» and his voice becomes a non-voice. By chipping away insidiously at the foundation of culture and refinement that Rath’s voice embodies, Lola-Lola seems to gain some upward mobility. She increasingly commands more respect, assumes greater authority, and wears nicer clothes as the film progresses. But this is nothing more than the illusion of rising in the ranks of society. Here again voice and name are the best index of social stature, and both suggest an endless repetition of the same. As if the doubleness of Lola-Lola’s name were not a clear enough indication of her self-duplication, the film literally invites us to see the writing on the wall (see Fig. 1). In addition to the ceaseless repetition of her name, Lola-Lola’s final song is also an echo, not of the first song she sings in the film, but of what is certainly her most famous number, «Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt.» This closing tune, which constitutes the last time we hear Lola-Lola’s voice in the film, indicates that her vocal practice is also stuck in an endless repetition of the same. Her voice can and will only ever prolong the status quo and never raise her out of the lowbrow world of Tingeltangel. She finds her end on the same stage where she started, singing her signature song with an air of familiarity and resignation, while Rath/ Unrat finds his end at his schoolteacher’s desk, silent and expired, in every sense of the word. Just as the shift from «Rath» to «Unrat» is brought about by a degraded vocal practice that corresponds to an irreversible decline in social stature - a literal undoing of the name accompanied by the alternatively silent and noisy performance of a voice undone - the name «Lola-Lola» captures an ineluctable vocal sameness that guarantees social stasis. In both cases, the voice is an index of tragic modern fates. It is thus clear that the film engages intensively and consistently with the use and abuse of the voice, and that it portrays vocal refinement and vocal 262 Kata Gellen Fig. 1 coarsening as socially inflected. More than just a central theme in Der blaue Engel, these processes also represent a crucial dimension of the film’s production history and historical status. Der blaue Engel was one of the first sound l films to be made in Germany, which meant that its actors needed to learn how to speak for the camera (which was different from acting in silent film, and also different from theatrical performance). Since social class is an essential feature of the film’s plot, and since Sternberg wanted to give some sense of «local flavor» (Lola-Lola speaks Berlinerisch), the actors also needed to be able to mimic certain dialects and accents. Finally, Der blaue Engel was simull taneously filmed in multiple language versions (MLVs) - German and English - which meant not only that the film’s stars Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich needed to be able to speak their parts in English as well as their native German, but that the English-language version had to «translate» linguistic difference (the use of foreign languages, dialects, and accents) for an Englishspeaking audience. Such an adaptation is in itself a challenging endeavor, and one that was further troubled by Dietrich’s non-native but excellent English and Jannings’s rather poor English. 4 Consider one example of the confusion and complication that arose in the production of a film that both thematizes the voice and requires extensive vo- Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 263 cal modulation in more than one language. In the German version, there is an early scene in which Jannings, as Professor Rath, recites a line in English from Shakespeare. The fact that he is insisting on correct pronunciation adds complexity and irony to the scene. Though Jannings has a thick accent in English, this is plausible within the context of a German-language film set in Germany. In the English-language version, however, Jannings’s thick German accent and distinctly German intonation, together with the generous peppering of his speech with German words, serve as a sign - one based more in a semiotics of association and mimicry than mimeticism - of his Germanness: his English spoken with a German accent comes to signify the German language for an English-speaking audience. The tactic with Dietrich/ Lola-Lola is different: since her English was significantly better than Jannings’s and since the songs were re-written with English lyrics, her entire character was transformed. She became an American actress speaking and singing English in Germany, rather than a German speaking «German» (i.e., English with a German accent, intonation, and select vocabulary) in Germany. This too is an imperfect solution: for all of Dietrich’s talents and efforts at vocal refinement, her English is not accent-free. This makes for somewhat comic and strained scenarios, for example, when despite her German accent Lola-Lola must ask what people have said when they speak to her in German. If with Jannings we must take English with a thick German accent as «German,» with Dietrich we must take English with a slight German accent as «native English.» As Amy Lawrence puts it, «Dietrich’s German accent when speaking in the English Blue Angel is presented l as ‹not-to-be-read›» (84). Both characters, in any event, require the Englishspeaking listener to suspend disbelief. These examples illustrate how vocal training is both a central theme that infuses the film (in both versions) and a practical concern for their production. In addition to expanding and specifying this argument in the following sections of this essay, I would like to suggest that there is a history to Der blaue Engel’s exploration of the link between professional viability and vocal mastery. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912) introduces this particular nexus of vocal refinement, social ascendancy, and professional success in the context of theater and pedagogy, and offers a model for thinking about the fate of the voice in Der blaue Engel. These works reflect various aspects of acoustical modernity, specifically in relation to professions and occupations, as they revolve around the work of teachers, singers, speech coaches, theater and movie actors, and sound technicians. Either these jobs are linked to a specifically modern form of art or entertainment (cabaret, film), or they reflect a modern idea about the malleability of social and professional status. In both 264 Kata Gellen cases, however, they must be performed through acts of vocalization, articulation, and elocution. And yet in these works successful training of the voice generally fails to bring about the desired or anticipated consequence - this is where the fate of the voice in modernity can appear tragic, comic, or ironic, depending on the tone of the work. Pygmalion and Der blaue Engel demonl strate that the cultivation and perfection of vocal effects does not in fact correlate to social and professional ascendancy in any direct or predictable way. These works reinsert the notion of voice into vocation, or Ruf into f Beruf, ff in unexpected and complex ways. They capture the vocal dimension of these professional endeavors, at the same time as they depict a falling away from professionalism (Rath, for instance, goes from respectable professing to raunchy performing) or social and professional stagnation and immobility (Lola- Lola’s singing - and, I argue, Eliza Doolittle’s speech - do not open professional horizons). In these works, personal fate is determined by the voice, but voice is itself controlled and manipulated by external forces, specifically by the demands that modern forms of art, entertainment, and sociability place on it. The characters in these works are thus increasingly beholden to their voices, a crucial aspect of social and professional life, as well as an intimate dimension of bodily existence. The voice appears to be eminently trainable and manipulable - this is the promise of the voice in modernity - and yet these characters are shown to exert decreasing influence and control over it. One could say that their voices run away with them, or that in modernity vocal training is both required for and denied any direct relationship to d professional advancement or success. Thus the interplay of voice and profession in Pygmalion and Der blaue Engel can be tragic, comic, or ironic by l turns. 5 Der blaue Engel is an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s 1904 novel l Der Untertan, and critics have frequently analyzed the similarities and differences between the works, particularly with respect to the shift from Wilhelmine to Weimar Germany (e.g., Firda; Koch). In tracing an alternate genealogy, I do not wish to assert direct influence or inspiration, but to suggest, instead, that a set of concerns - centered on voice, class, and profession in modernity - that do not appear in Mann’s novel becomes relevant in the film. Indeed, as I explain below, Dietrich thought of herself and specifically of the process of vocal training that she underwent to prepare to film Der blaue Engel and l The Blue Angel in terms of l Pygmalion. The two main characters in Shaw’s play, the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle and the professor of phonetics Henry Higgins, are firmly entrenched in a world in which social and professional fates are determined by Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 265 the voice. Eliza wants to learn how to speak proper English so that she can work in a real flower shop instead of selling flowers by the road - this, for her, is professional advancement. Higgins, in turn, wants nothing more than to prove that his mastery of phonetics knows no bounds, which is why he takes on the seemingly impossible task of turning Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady, which is to say, a speaker of impeccable English. Higgins succeeds only too well. In the final moments of the play, while she continues to be derided and degraded by Higgins (who has taught her to speak well, but will never learn to think well of her), Eliza Doolittle makes a threat that strikes Higgins at his core. «I’ll go and be a teacher,» she declares. «What’ll you teach, in heaven’s name? » Higgins asks. Eliza’s reply? «What you taught me. I’ll teach phonetics» (131). This throws Higgins into a jealous rage, whereupon Eliza realizes that she can win Higgins’s respect and esteem not by being a good subject (a perfect English speaker), but by doing what she does even better than he can (becoming a perfect English teacher): Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can’t take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! […] I’ll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she’ll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself. (131-32) Eliza realizes that anyone can learn to speak well - as Higgins’s experiment has proven - but this means neither that proper speech equals proper behavior (in the sense of being kind and civil), nor that anyone can rise in social stature. To do this one’s voice must go from being manipulable to manipulating others, from being controlled to controlling others, from being trained to training others. In other words, vocal mastery is not about mastering one’s own voice, but about mastering the voices of others. Pygmalion comes down to a contest of speech, and, more specifically, of professional mastery of speech. While it is true that following her vocal training Eliza Doolittle will no longer be a flower girl, her professional horizons have hardly expanded. Once she has learned to speak properly, all she can do is continue to speak properly and train others to do the same: having become a proper lady, there is rather little that Eliza Doolittle can actually do. 6 Devoting oneself to matters of the voice seems to overtake other professional commitments. Voice swallows and consumes vocation, reducing professional existence to issues of pronunciation, elocution, and diction. This would explain the proliferation of people in Henry Higgins’s milieu - including the 266 Kata Gellen characters Pickering and Neppomuck - whose professions involve the cultivation of the voice. In the end, Pygmalion suggests, hyperbolically and ironically, that all professional development is a matter of vocal refinement. This conclusion reveals the senseless and self-perpetuating quality of the modern motor of vocal training. I have characterized Pygmalion as a work about the professionalization of speech practices not because I want to prove that Der blaue Engel is an adapl tation, deliberate or unwitting, of Shaw’s play, but rather because I would like to suggest that Pygmalion anticipates the fate of the voice in modernity, as exhibited in Sternberg’s film. Shaw’s attention to the pedagogical and performative aspects of the voice and his insistence on the centrality of vocal training for professional and social «ascendancy» - in Eliza’s case, as I have argued, her new speech closes as many doors as it opens - prove highly relevant for the practice and depiction of vocal training in Der blaue Engel. There are obvious ways that this film presents the centrality of voice in professional life, some of which have already been touched upon. Professor Rath and Lola-Lola are both masters of the voice. Rath commands a great deal of authority among his students, and he needs only to utter a single word («Setzen! ») in a deliberate, forceful, and controlled way to exert influence over them. Indeed, he is deliberate, forceful, and controlled in all the sounds he makes - this turns l comical when we witness his nose-blowing ritual (twice over), executed with tremendous precision and care. Rath’s use of the voice should serve as a model for his students, both in the general sense that he seeks to teach them restraint and self-possession and in his more specific pedagogical task of training their voices. The most striking instance of this, which was invoked earlier, comes during a lesson in English pronunciation, a demonstration of the utmost vocal precision that Rath demands. Displeased with a student’s recitation of the first line of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy - «To be or not to be, that is the…» - Rath stops him at the word «the»: «Halt. Falsch,» he says sharply. He approaches the student, whereupon the lesson in English pronunciation reaches a level of comic and absurd intensity: he forces the student to repeat the word «the,» modeling the proper pronunciation for him and demanding precise mimicry. The humor comes not only from what Marc Caplan has called the «parodic deformation» of «a purposefully clichéd reference to high culture» (186), but also from the increasing physicality of the vocal encounter. Standing face-toface, Rath and the student exchange increasingly loud and deliberate «the’s,» each alternatively wiping the spittle that has landed on his nose from the other’s exaggerated vocal efforts. Finally, Rath inserts the pencil he is holding between the student’s teeth (Fig. 2), attempting to force the proper pronun- Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 267 ciation of the English article though an articulatory phonetics intensified by physical contact. Fig. 2 This literally close encounter is marked by a mood of seriousness, even terror (on the part of the student), which contrasts starkly with the insignificance of the vocal task. The irony is intensified by the fact that Rath is aiming for a kind of regularization of the voice, but that his mechanical intervention fails: he cannot get the student to pronounce the word correctly, and he certainly cannot strip away that which makes the student’s voice truly individual: accent, intonation, cadence, etc. (see Dolar 20-23). Training the voice involves approximation, not absolute standardization. There is a further layer of comedy and irony in this scene, one probably lost on contemporary (and possibly later) German-speaking audiences: for all his lessons in «extreme pronunciation,» Rath/ Jannings cannot reproduce the initial voiced dental fricative in the word the. One does not need to compare the English and the German versions of the film in order to explore the problems that English and German voices present in the age of sound film, for there are productive slippages within the German version itself. These slippages expose the hidden problematic of vocal training and professional advancement for sound film, and hint at their complex relationship in modernity in general. 268 Kata Gellen In addition to his role as a trainer of voices, Rath is a master of silence, and here too his execution is skillful and authoritative. Before he enters the classroom, the students are boisterous and noisy; the moment the door opens and Rath walks in, a deafening silence spreads across the room. But the power of Rath’s silence is already apparent in the scene that precedes this one, the remarkable breakfast sequence, in which Rath does not utter a single word and communicates only with whistles and gestures. His silence and non-verbal expressions transmit the solemnity of the occasion: the death of the non-singing songbird, the passing of Rath’s companion. Much like Rath/ Unrat, this creature embodies the act of vocal expiration. It is of course highly symbolic that the film starts with the death of the bird and ends with the death of the vocally degraded Professor Rath, who has gone from speaking and teaching English pronunciation to increasingly desperate and noisy crowing and finally to silence. His silence at the end of the film is not, however, equal to the sovereign and controlled silence of the breakfast scene: in the first sequence silence is a demonstration of vocal restraint and control, whereas in the final scene silence is the inevitable consequence of Rath’s debasement and dehumanization - it is the quiet that precedes death. Silence is not always grave, but it does operate consistently within an economy of control and mastery. For example, Rath is silent when he visits Lola-Lola in her dressing room for the first time, though he does not create or command the absence of sound. Here he seems stunned into silence by Lola- Lola’s forwardness and self-confidence; his reticence is a sign of his subjection. Rath’s silence thus differs from what he displayed in the breakfast scene, for it is neither deliberate nor controlled, but the necessary consequence of his bedazzlement. Rath is silent because he is not the master of this situation, or really any situation that involves Lola-Lola. At the end of the film, when the variety show returns to Rath’s hometown and he is forced to appear onstage at the «Blaue Engel» nightclub, Rath remains silent in the face of the impresario’s commands, passively submitting to his increasingly aggressive and agitated shouts without uttering a sound. This should not, however, be seen as an act of resistance; it is not silence as a last-ditch effort to avoid humiliation and defeat. At this point in the film Rath is not capable of any such willed action, and certainly none that depends on an exercise of vocal control. Instead, Rath is more like his students at the start of the film in that he is stunned and terrified, but unlike them he is too weakened, emasculated, and dehumanized even to obey the commanding voice of authority. All he can do is cower onstage, make a feeble attempt to retreat, and eventually, tragically and excruciatingly, release a horrifying, monstrous crow. However, much as his silence is not an act of willful defiance, his final Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 269 act of vocalization does not constitute an act of obedience: Rath is beyond commands, beyond subverting them and beyond submitting to them (note that he tries not to run off the stage, but simply to hide behind the curtain). The sound he lets out is a dramatic deformation of the one he has been ordered to make - «kikirikiiii,» the rooster’s crow - desperate and unmodulated, approaching a kind of indeterminate noise. Judging from Rath’s facial expression, the act of vocalization is straining and even painful, and judging from its sound, perceptible to both the members of the film audience and the guests at the Tingeltangel, its effect is jarring, dissonant, and even frightening. This is a reminder that sound film can convey not only the process of vocal refinement and variously inflected forms of silence with remarkable depth and subtlety, but that it is uniquely poised to transmit the unrepresentable, untranslatable effects of noise. Rath’s descent into babble, the garbled «kikirikiiii,» comes close to «the most salient inarticulate presymbolic manifestation of the voice, […] the scream» (Dolar 27). The film thus depicts Rath’s decline from the height of vocal mastery - training students, commanding silence - into the mire of human noise, as manifested in uncontrolled and barely articulate speech, at the same time that it required the actor Emil Jannings to cultivate this vocal role. After all, Rath’s crowing is not actually babble or noise, but a carefully executed act of vocalization recorded and preserved for past, present, and future audiences. Der blaue Engel reveals with remarkable insight l how sound film, a medium that both transmits sound and requires the cultivation and manipulation of the voice, both enacts and displays the tragedy and irony of vocal practice in modernity. Rath’s demise, as figured through his initial command of silence and speech and his eventual loss of vocal control, is not the only fate that Der blaue Engel reflects through sound. Lola-Lola is also a master of the voice - that is, of her own voice and of the voices of others. While it is not her task to teach others to speak or sing, Lola-Lola clearly exerts significant influence over other people’s voices, most notably Rath’s. When Rath first comes to her dressing room Lola-Lola exudes confidence and competence - in the way she speaks, moves, and adorns herself. It is clear from the first moment that Rath has nothing to teach her, especially not about how to use her voice. In fact, from this point on it is Lola-Lola who exerts control over Rath’s voice. Upon entering the dressing room he introduces himself and voices his complaint - that she is corrupting his students - and she responds by informing him that she is not running a nursery school and undressing in front him in a way that is at once provocative and matter-of-fact. Lola-Lola moves about freely and comfortably while Rath is stunned into silence and stillness: she is a master of this space and of her body. The exchange of gazes makes it obvious that her actions and move- 270 Kata Gellen ments are a deliberate expression of power. Here, being watched is far from passive; it is instead an intentional and forceful exertion of authority that Lola-Lola achieves by making an enticing spectacle of herself and the space she occupies. «Na, nun sagen Sie gar nichts mehr,» she proclaims, somewhat triumphantly. Ostensibly a description of the circumstance, her comment also functions as an imperative. The transfer of power, signified already by the shift from Rath’s classroom to Lola-Lola’s dressing room, is completed and confirmed in this act of silencing: from here on, Rath will/ may say no more. It is not only Rath’s silence, but also his voice that is either controlled outright by Lola-Lola or at the very least correlated directly with her desires and intentions. It is telling that Kracauer, in his seminal work From Caligari to Hitler, is so attuned to the role of sound in the film that his plot description treats Rath’s cockcrowing as a metonymy for his demise. During his wedding party, having fallen into a state of euphoria, he succeeds in impressing the artists with a wonderful imitation of cockcrowing. But this high point of his career as a free man is also the beginning of his downfall. While the troupe travels from town to town, Lola Lola not only makes him drudge for her, but agrees to the manager’s suggestion that her husband produce his funny cockcrowing on the stage. His humiliation reaches its climax when the artists return to The Blue Angel in the hope of stirring up a sensation with the ex-professor. Their hope proves justified: the whole town rushes in, eager to listen to their fellow citizen’s cock-adoodle-doo. Asked to perform, he launches into a terrific crowing, walks off the stage and, incessantly roaring, begins to strangle Lola Lola. (216) Whereas Kracauer sees the cockcrowing as emblematic or metonymic of his downfall, I argue that the two are inextricable: Rath’s vocal degradation is not an external sign of his general fate, but integral to it. In my reading, then, the uses and abuses of the voice do not merely stand for greater truths about mor dernity - the commercialization of culture, the eroticization of everyday life, the loss of tradition, the changing balance of power between old and young, and so on - but are part and parcel of them. As in his review of the film, Kracauer’s impulse to highlight the role of sound is logical, but he does not explore its far-reaching implications. Rath’s demise, on the professional level, is tied closely to his vocal practice: as a teacher in a Gymnasium, he trains the voices of the new generation; as Lola-Lola’s husband and stooge, he uses his voice first for cheap if good-humored fun, then for low-brow but profitable entertainment, and finally for nothing at all, for during his final performance it becomes clear that Rath no longer commands his own voice and that the sounds that issue from him are uncontrolled expressions of his madness. Rath’s tragic fate, in other words, is a function of the unhinging of his voice, a process for which Lola-Lola is directly responsible. Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 271 A similar point could be made about the end of Kracauer’s account of the film in From Caligari to Hitler: A running motif in the film is the old church-clock which chimes a popular German tune devoted to the praise of loyalty and honesty (Üb’ immer Treu und Redlichkeit …) - a tune expressive of Jannings’ inherited beliefs. In the concluding passage, immediately after Lola Lola’s song has faded away, this tune is heard for the last time as the camera shows the dead Jannings. Lola Lola has killed him, and in addition her song has defeated the chimes. (217-18) The fact that one sound pushes out and replaces another is not merely a sign that one order is replacing another. It is, instead, a performance of the kinds of noise, voice, and silence that characterize modernity - specifically, ones with crude entertainment value. The last line of this account suggests that there is some level on which Kracauer wants to make this point, given how closely he ties shifts in sound (her song defeats the chimes) to shifts in agency and power (she kills him). Though he does not state it explicitly, Kracauer’s descriptions of Rath’s fate as a function of sound convey an intuition, if not a conscious declaration of vocal determinism in modernity - the idea, expressed so powerfully in Der blaue Engel, that individual fates are governed by vocal practice, but that vocal practice eludes individual control. In addition to the direct influence that Lola-Lola exerts over Rath’s voice, the film makes clear that her own status among the performers and the audience depends not only on her legs and bust (as many have pointed out), but also on her clear, powerful, and controlled voice. Lola brings the same kind of deliberateness and self-assurance to her singing as she does to her gestures, movement, and facial expressions. Even if her voice is not particularly beautiful, it is incontrovertibly strong and clear: whether singing or speaking, when Dietrich plays Lola-Lola she projects her voice, articulates her words, maintains volume, and is always comprehensible. Lawrence describes the effect of her voice as «the vocal equivalent of an acting style characterized by emotional distance, limited range, discipline, and a marked lack of sentimentality» (79). 7 It is significant in this context that Lola-Lola’s most famous song contains an explanation of her professional status: Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt Denn das ist meine Welt Und sonst gar nichts Das ist, was soll ich machen Meine Natur Ich kann halt lieben nur Und sonst gar nichts. 272 Kata Gellen Loving and singing about love are, in fact, one and the same: together they constitute Lola-Lola’s occupation, her livelihood, her only chance for making it in the modern world. Lola-Lola declares her professional identity through vocal performance not only because Der blaue Engel is a musical of sorts, but l because her social and professional identities are inextricable from the use of her voice - her song, her speech, and the power she exerts over the voices of others. Lola-Lola’s «Beruf» demands that she speak and sing in a certain way (authoritatively and clearly) and about certain things (love, desire, sex), which means that her professional life, like Rath’s, is thoroughly contingent on the use of her voice. For both characters, however, the link between «Ruf» and «Beruf» must be understood ironically. Rath may have had a calling, and it d certainly involved vocal training, but he has been lured away from it, called away from it, even, by the siren’s song. In Lola’s case, her status as a singer (or call girl) only qualifies as a «calling» in the most literal sense: she is being (cat) called and she makes calls on others, but this is a far cry from what is traditionally identified as a «vocation.» As in the case of Eliza Doolittle, Lola-Lola’s vocal practice is a professional dead-end: it allows her to earn a living, but only by inscribing her in a stifling, unchanging cycle of work and relationships. Lola seems to draw men in with her voice, body, and gestures, to make them subservient to her and eventually destroy them, and then to discard them and return literally to the exact same performance. Though it appears that she is holding the cards - controlling others’ voices, destroying others’ lives - she is as much a victim in all this as they are, only instead of simply expiring she dies the death of infinite sameness. Lola has elevated this song-and-dance routine to a way of life, one that insures some degree of financial stability at the same time as it signifies a kind of spiritual suicide. It is in this sense that her voice signals a fate as tragic as the songbird’s and Rath’s. The question of voice and profession in the film is related in close and complex ways to the question of voice and profession around the film. Simply d stated, the newest vocal profession in 1930s Berlin was that of talking actor, or Sprechschauspieler (in addition to related jobs such as diction coaches for r sound film actors, sound film technicians, and sound film editors), and like other sound films from the period Der blaue Engel was being judged accordl ing to its successful use of sound (Kosta 115-16). Having internalized this standard, the film focuses intently on the role of vocal training and manipulation. Was this not precisely the task the new medium needed to confront: to train and manipulate the voice for modern media and modern audiences? Considered in this light, Der blaue Engel can be understood as a sound film l Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 273 that reflects the advent of sound film and thus serves as a key document of and about Weimar film history. 8 One can identify three levels of complexity with regard to the issue of filming voices for Der blaue Engel: the difficulties arising from the new medium itself; the difficulties related to the film’s own thematization of language and voice; and the difficulties that emerged from producing the film in multiple language versions. At any given moment in the film, one or more of these strands informs and complicates the status and meaning of sound and voice. In this section, I will therefore consider their interplay in two aspects of the film: preparing Dietrich for her role as Lola-Lola and the techniques of film sound control. Though she had made a few films before Der blaue Engel, Marlene Dietrich had mostly been a stage actress. It was therefore necessary for her to undergo a process of vocal training for this film, because neither silent film nor the theater required the same use of the voice as sound film. 9 It was Sternberg, Dietrich claims in her autobiography, who assisted her transition from the theater to film: «[he] had only one idea in his head: to take me away from the stage and make a movie actress out of me, to ‹Pygmalionize› me» (qtd. in Baxter 171; Dietrich, My Life 45). 10 The Pygmalion reference is significant, since the training to which Dietrich is referring was largely vocal. Like Eliza Doolittle, Dietrich needed to learn how to speak properly - though in this case what was proper was not necessarily upper-class - in order to keep up the with the demands of her profession. Speaking properly meant, first and foremost, learning how to speak and sing for the camera. This involved internal modulations of the voice (volume, tone, rhythm) as well as adjustments to external factors, such as microphones and sound recording equipment. To make Der blaue Engel, two damping systems were employed alternately so that sounds and silence could be recorded on the set: either the noisy cameras were encased so as to insulate against their noise (Baxter 181) - the blimped or «verpackte» camera - or both the cameras and cameramen were contained in larger, insulated glass booths (Kosta 116). Moreover, in this early stage of sound-film production when the recording devices were not yet very sophisticated and directors and sound film technicians were still learning how best to capture and present sound for a film audience, actors needed to adjust their vocal performances (louder or softer, higher or lower, projecting in particular directions, and so on) to accommodate these changed circumstances. The fact that Der blaue Engel was filmed in German and English meant l that Dietrich also had to learn to speak and perform in English in front of the camera. Sternberg, who was born in Vienna but had grown up largely in the United States and returned to Germany from Hollywood to make this film, 274 Kata Gellen personally took charge of Dietrich’s English lessons, for she needed to speak a particular kind of English. As she explains in her autobiography: Von Sternberg drehte die englische Version des Blauen Engels auf völlig logische Weise. Er machte mich, die Lola, zu einem amerikanischen Flittchen, das ein vulgäres Amerikanisch sprechen mußte; alle anderen sprachen Englisch. Da keiner der Schauspieler Englisch konnte, übte er jeden Satz Wort für Wort mit ihnen ein. Die Geduld, die er mit uns allen hatte! ! (73) Though some critics assert otherwise, Dietrich’s claim that she is meant to be playing an American is convincing. 11 Not only was Sternberg coming from America, but his American editor, Sam Winston, was Dietrich’s other English coach (Baxter 175). Nevertheless, the fact that there is disagreement on this point illustrates the problem with Dietrich’s English: regardless of what Sternberg intended for the English-language Lola-Lola, details such as nad tionality and social class cannot be discerned from her speech and song. Dietrich’s English is clear, comfortable, and articulate, 12 but it is not so refined, natural, or subtle that one could distinguish her as American or British, or as a member of a particular social class. (After all, it is less American or British English than German-accented English.) The status of her spoken English notwithstanding, it is interesting that Sternberg had conceived of this play with accents for the English-speaking Lola. 13 He wanted to use the new technology of sound film, combined with intense vocal training, not simply to communicate the content of speech (which could of course be done with intertitles), but to convey precisely those aspects of speech that silent film cannot, such as pronunciation, intonation, and accent. In this way, he hoped to be able to represent national and class differences as well as physical and emotional dimensions of speech and silence by means of vocal adjustments. It was not only the English version of the film that required vocal manipulation and refinement. Lola-Lola was meant to speak a particular kind of German, as were other characters in her milieu, and it was Dietrich - as she claims in her autobiography - who served as the resident expert for this type of speech: Von Sternberg wollte meine Stimme im typischen Berliner Dialekt, hoch und näselnd, ähnlich dem Londoner «Cockney,» als die Stimme, die zu Lola, dem Mädchen aus dem blauen Engel, paßte. Mit meiner auf der Reinhardt-Schule erlernten Stimmtechnik war da nicht viel anzufangen. Sternberg benutzte mich auch als Expertin für den Berliner Dialekt; als Österreicher kannte er sich da nicht aus. Vielleicht wundert man sich, wieso ich, ein Mädchen aus gutem Hause, Expertin für den Berliner Straßenjargon sein konnte. (72-73) Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 275 According to this admittedly self-mythologizing report, Dietrich’s voice was too cultivated for the part, but she was nevertheless able not only to achieve the proper lower-class Berlin dialect (which, interestingly, she can only describe by comparing it to Cockney, making it another instance of vocal translation), but also to train others to speak it. She takes distinct pride in this exchange of voice lessons, but she is clearly also disturbed, on some level, that what is being taught and learned is not vocal refinement, but vocal coarsening. Dietrich thus insists on her cultivation and expertise - hence the reference to her training at Berlin’s most elite acting school - in the same breath that she claims native knowledge and sensibility in order to prove her qualifications as a speaker and teacher of Berlinerisch. She thereby describes a reversal of the conventional scenario of vocal instruction, as depicted in Pygmalion and in the scene in Rath’s classroom. Instead of training others how to speak upper-class or Shakespearean English, Dietrich uses her expertise to teach actors how to speak lower-class German, Berliner Straßenjargon. This is the irony of the new medium of sound film - it demands rigorous training and practice, but not necessarily in order to become more polished, distinguished, or cultured - as well as one of its democratizing effects: one no longer has to speak with an upper-class accent in order to be heard. In any event, professional success gets uncoupled from vocal «improvement»; or, stated somewhat differently, the voice is now being trained for various ends. Dietrich’s comments help track a move from classical academic vocal training to a modern media-grounded training that complicates, even upends the social hierarchies that interlink with classical training. It is clear, then, that Der blaue Engel not only depicts the training of the l voice, but also participates in this process: it is engaged in a critical advancement and analysis of its own vocal operations. 14 This claim is supported by the ways the film transformed sound-film acting into a modern acoustical profession - which is to say, by adapting and refunctionalizing the techniques of older, more traditional acoustical professions so as to make them serve modern media and audiences. But the manipulation and refinement of voices for the cinema is not only a matter of factors linked to acting and performance such as «Stimmtechnik,» accent, dialect, pronunciation, and projection. It is also a function of sound recording and editing. In other words, voices are trained by actors, directors, and voice coaches, but they can be controlled and manipulated by the medium itself. The single most compelling, forceful, and frequently used technique of sound control is the stark and sudden onset and termination of sound. The film presents many enclosed spaces - Rath’s room, the classroom, Lola-Lola’s 276 Kata Gellen dressing room, and so on - and it frequently depicts the boundedness of these spaces by the physical barriers that separate them from other spaces, such as windows, doors, and walls. These borders are not only, or even primarily, visual; the film viewer-listener becomes acutely aware of their presence as they block and permit the flow of sound. The first instance of this comes in the initial classroom scene, as the students are given a writing assignment and silence falls over the room as they begin to work. It is almost completely quiet for twenty seconds as the students begin to write and Rath walks over to the window. The instant he opens it, a chorus of angelic and remarkably clear singing voices enters the room and the auditory space of the film; approximately one minute and twenty seconds later, having discovered a student examining a postcard of Lola-Lola, Rath returns to the window and closes it, putting an abrupt end to the music. The ability to turn sound on and off at will reflects the power and authority that Rath wields at this moment and in this location: he controls not only the students’ voices, but also the sounds that occupy the space of the classroom. His control, however, is contingent on cinematic techniques (e.g., editing, sound recording, audio mixing), which point to the film’s own command of sound and silence. The scene trains the viewer-listener to perceive a similar effect in the first scene in Lola-Lola’s dressing room, though now it is more complex. In the classroom scene, sound gains entry only one time, long enough to get a sense of the beautiful song, and then it is shut out once and for all: even if the sound starts and stops suddenly, the overall impression is pleasing and congruous. The film uses essentially the same technique in multiple scenes in Lola-Lola’s dressing room, but there the sounds come from multiple directions and they are not harmonious. Situated between the noisy stage and another equally raucous dressing room, this space is constantly being broken into from right and left - by characters moving through, but also, very distinctly, by a cacophony of voices that rushes in whenever a door opens. This has the effect of framing the space of the dressing room not only visually, but also acoustically. For example, when the mute clown intrudes on Lola-Lola and Rath during their first conversation, his sudden presence and equally sudden absence are each announced not only by the opening and closing of a door, but, in a rather unruly manner, with loud chatter coming from one side and cabaret music coming from the other. Both his muteness and the lull in Rath and Lola-Lola’s conversation - two forms of silence - are framed and highlighted by these noisy bookends. It is the same technique used in the classroom scene, but instead of heavenly voices that frame Rath’s authoritative silence, the sounds of modern lowbrow entertainment frame the silence that the singer-seductress Lola-Lola imposes on her male victims (Rath is at this point her future lover/ Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 277 cuckold, and the clown is her past one). As in the earlier scene, Lola-Lola’s own vocal control is complemented and confirmed by a cinematic technique of acoustic control. These sudden shifts between noise (the sound of multiple, sometimes uncoordinated, and frequently incomprehensible voices) and silence (the complete absence of sound) thus produce the illusion of total acoustic control. In reality, simply closing a door or window would not successfully block out all exterior sound, especially in the case of a noisy cabaret. As material barriers, these architectural features are simply not that effective; certain sounds, especially loud ones, would seep through, even if muffled or partially muted. And yet the film presents sound and silence as entirely manipulable and controllable, concealing the actual difficulties of regulating noise, voice, and silence in early sound films. In reality, cameramen Günther Rittau and Hans Schneeberger were continually confronted with bothersome background noise. The use of blimped cameras and insulated booths helped, but these were imperfect solutions. The film goes to great lengths to present a carefully constructed illusion of perfect sound control and makes it seem as effortless as opening a window or closing a door. This can be understood as a future or imagined sound-film fantasy that emerges out of an imperfect sound-film reality. The extensive engagement with the question of vocal training both in and for the film can be read in the context of cinema discovering and relishing its newfound ability to capture and manipulate sound. The film draws our attention to voice and urges us to think of it as something that can be trained through human effort and practice, and it reveals the voice in cinema to be a product of technical manipulation. Der blaue Engel does not pit traditional l practices of vocal refinement against cinematic techniques of sound control; we are not asked to choose between «Stimmtechnik» and «Filmtechnik.» Instead, these practices are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Training the voice through painstaking human effort and manipulating it through d technical means are both part of the new filmic reality. Der blaue Engel paints l such a vivid picture of the acoustical professions neither to mourn nor to celebrate their demise, but because they take on new relevance and changed forms in the age of acoustic technology. The new sound film is not about rejecting old forms of cultivation and refinement, but about recalibrating voices, reattuning listeners, and learning how to record and edit sound effectively. Throughout this essay I have tried to describe the ways that Der blaue Engel is a film about vocal determinism - it depicts the contingency of individual fates on the command of speech, song, silence, and noise - as well as one of the first German films whose production depended crucially on acts of vocal 278 Kata Gellen training and new sound film technology. The centrality of the voice emerges with particular clarity because it was filmed simultaneously in English and German, but the range of associations and anxieties surrounding the manipulation and control of voice, noise, and silence is present in each version of the film independently of the other. The links to Shaw’s Pygmalion, I have suggested, draw out the social and professional dimensions of vocal training in the film, and provide a model for recognizing that vocal refinement, even when successfully achieved, does not necessarily promise advancement. Eliza Doolittle’s vocal fate can be understood as a kind of professional tragedy: she goes in for speech lessons in order to broaden her horizons, but she becomes yet another person who can do nothing but teach others to speak properly; vocal training is an abyss. I have tried to demonstrate a related but more complex and far-reaching relationship to vocal training in Der blaue Engel, specifically with reference to Rath and Lola-Lola, both of whom suffer tragic fates as a function of voice. For them, vocal training seems to be what allows them to participate in modernity - constituted by the Tingeltangel and the world it creates around itself - but it l also causes and reflects their downfall: in other words, their voices «perform» their fates. Rath’s voice cracks, becomes noise, indicating that he never really was part of this modern world and that there is no way back into the old one in which he was a master of the voice; the only possible end for him is death. Lola-Lola suffers an equally tragic fate, not because her voice does not belong to this world, but because it belongs to it so completely and irrevocably that she is destined to remain in it forever; she is imprisoned in the Tingeltangel. However, the idea of vocal determinism extends beyond the characters depicted in the film and even beyond the historical and biographical situations of the actors playing them. Not only individuals, but sound film itself, a newly emerging modern art form - indeed, a parallel world to the Tingeltangel - is judged by its power to manipulate voices and control sound. Thus l Der blaue Engel is keen to demonstrate its mastery over noise and silence, despite l the actual difficulties it faced in this regard, and loathe to puncture this illusion. Everyone and everything, in a word, is trying to prove itself in a modern world governed by vocal control: Rath and Lola-Lola, Jannings and Dietrich, and Der blaue Engel itself. l Notes I would like to thank Johannes von Moltke, whose insightful response to the GSA panel where I first presented this paper helped me refine and develop my argument consider- Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 279 ably, and Marc Caplan, for his thoughtful and stimulating engagement with this essay at various stages of its production. 1 As Jelavich notes at the outset of his study of Berlin cabaret, even though Der blaue Engel is a crucial part of today’s conception of Weimar cabaret culture, the club in which l Lola-Lola performs was actually a «‹Tingeltangel,› a third-rate variety show that was a direct precursor of the cabaret» (1). He calls it a «dive,» and compares it to the «sleazy nightclubs» of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories (1). Cabaret not only took place in a more dignified setting, its essential aim was political satire and social critique (1-2). I will therefore refer to the setting and show depicted in Der blaue Engel as l Tingeltangel throughout. 2 For example, Kosta’s recent study teases out various aspects of the film’s embeddedness in contemporary cultural, social, and economic practices. She emphasizes its treatment of cabaret culture, the role of the new woman, and the phenomenon of sex and bodies for sale. Clearly Lola-Lola’s cool eroticism aligns neatly with the experience of the female artist/ performer in late-Weimar culture. 3 In his article on Der blaue Engel and the Yiddish writer Der Nister, whose 1929 story l «Behind a Fence: A Revue» is also an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s Professor Unrat (1905), Marc Caplan convincingly demonstrates how the film continually juxtaposes nationalities, languages, temporalities, musical traditions, and high and low culture (187-89). Neither Kracauer’s «vacuum» (which would suggest an absence of context) nor John Baxter’s claim that the film’s setting is outdated and dislocated is entirely justified. As Caplan argues, «the collision of a seemingly nineteenth-century small-town ambience with the calendar, the ‹jazz› music, and the ‹urban› social disorder of the cabaret indicates the ways in which the film’s setting contributes to the deterritorialization of its narrative: presenting a male protagonist and his female love-interest as embodiments of two different eras in cohabitation and confrontation with one another represents the essential temporal condition of Weimar culture as ‹between› epochs» (188). The film belongs to its moment - late Weimar Berlin - and gains social relevance through its aesthetic practices. 4 Multiple language versions were the most common way of adapting films for foreign countries from about 1929 to 1933, at which point dubbing and subtitles replaced these time-consuming and expensive endeavors. On MLVs in Weimar Germany, see Wahl. For an analysis of Dietrich’s voice in the English version, see Lawrence 83-85. Though her main thesis in comparing the German and English versions of the film relates to the divergent presentations of Lola-Lola’s eroticism and the varying degrees of sympathy that Rath’s character inspires, Patrice Petro offers astute observations about language and speech in her analysis of the film’s English and German versions (264-65). She also points out that there is more than one version of the film in each language (262-63). It is worth noting that the German version is generally assumed to be «authentic» or «original,» though the English version enjoyed a wide release and great popularity in the 1930s in the United States, and was filmed simultaneously (Lawrence 83). 5 The role of vocal training in modernity is worth noting, encompassing as it does spelling bees (which were preceded at one point by pronunciation bees), the teaching of declamation (like penmanship) in schools, the rise of sound recording as such, etc. There is a whole curriculum of obsolete modernization associated with the value of vocal training that Friedrich Kittler would certainly associate with the discourse network of 1900. 6 There is a gender element in all this - becoming a lady, becoming gendered, means being immobilized as an economic subject - about which Shaw’s play finds no resolution. 280 Kata Gellen For Eliza Doolittle the cultivation of the voice is a dead end because it makes her into a lady. 7 For a detailed and astute analysis of the way that Lola-Lola exerts vocal authority at the same time as she practices vocal deception through her song, in the manner of a Homeric siren, see Kosta 126-30. 8 Recent scholarship has highlighted this dimension of the film. See especially chapter 4 («The Seductions of Sound») of Kosta, Willing Seduction. 9 Technically Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (1929) was not entirely silent, since it contained a sound sequence, but Dietrich herself did not do any singing or talking in that film. 10 A comparison of the German text and English translation reveals that the Pygmalion reference does not appear in the original. There Dietrich’s account of Sternberg’s transformation of her is more understated: «Dort sah mich Sternberg zum ersten Mal und traf die Entscheidung, mich aus der Theaterwelt wegzunehmen und mich in die Filmwelt zu verpflanzen, entsprechend seiner Vorstellung und seiner Phantasie» (Nehmt nur 62). r 11 Lawrence (83) and Petro (265) both claim that she is supposed to be British, though Petro curiously cites evidence to the contrary: «American vernacular is […] added to the English-language versions, most always in connection with Lola, who is made to speak such lines as: ‹Hold your horses! › ‹Fold up Your Tent› (for shut up), ‹Patriotic Hokum› (in response to the words of a German song), and ‹Shake a Leg›» (265). 12 The screen test for Der blaue Engel shows Dietrich growing increasingly impatient with l and irritated by the prolonged assessment of her English language skills, which seems justified considering how well she spoke and sang in English. The screen test can be viewed on the KINO-International 2-disc set from 2001. 13 Bronfen aligns Jannings’s performance with the age of silent film and Dietrich’s with the dawn of sound film (10). This is a nice way of pointing out the importance of gesture and expression in Jannings’s acting technique, and yet it overlooks the fact that Jannings’s pedagogy is so centered on speech and voice. 14 Kosta describes The Blue Angel as a «litmus test» for the two main actors’ ability to tranl sition into sound film. Both Jannings and Dietrich were considered to have passed with flying colors, proving not only that their voices were good enough for sound film, but that they could adjust to the challenges of acoustical performance (115-16). Works Cited Baxter, John. «Berlin Year Zero: The Making of The Blue Angel.» Framework 51.1 (2010): 164-89. blaue Engel, Der. Dir. Josef von Sternberg. Perf. Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich. UFA, 1930. Blue Angel, The. Dir. Josef von Sternberg. Perf. Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich. UFA, 1930. Bronfen, Elisabeth. «Seductive Departures of Marlene Dietrich: Exile and Stardom in The Blue Angel.» New German Critique 89 (2003): 9-31. Caplan, Marc. «The Hermit at the Circus: Der Nister, Yiddish Literature, and German Culture in the Weimar Period.» Studia Rosenthaliana 41 (2008): 173-96. Dietrich, Marlene. My Life. Trans. Salvator Attanasio. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987. Sound Control and Vocal Training in Der blaue Engel 281 -. Nehmt nur mein Leben… Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1979. Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Firda, Richard Arthur. «Literary Origins: Sternberg’s Film The Blue Angel.» Literature/ Film Quarterly 7 (1979): 126-36. Jelavich, Peter. Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Kittler, Friedrich. Discourse Networks 1800/ 1900. Trans. Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Koch, Gertrud. «Between Two Worlds: Von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930).» l German Film and Literature: Adaptations and Transformations. Ed. Eric Rentschler. New York: Methuen, 1986. 60-72. Kosta, Barbara. Willing Seduction: The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture. New York: Berghahn, 2012. Kracauer, Siegfried. «The Blue Angel.» Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 630-31. -. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Ed. Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Lawrence, Amy. «Marlene Dietrich: The Voice as Mask.» Dietrich Icon. Ed. Gerd Gemünden and Mary R. Desjardins. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. 79-99. Petro, Patrice. «National Cinemas/ International Film Cultures: The Blue Angel (1930) in Multiple Language Versions.» Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era. Ed. Noah Isenberg. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. 255- 70. Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. London: Penguin, 2000. Wahl, Chris. «Babel’s Business - On Ufa’s Multiple Language Film Versions, 1929- 1933.» The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema: Rediscovering Germany’s Filmic Legacy. Ed. Christian Rogowski. Rochester: Camden House, 2010. 235-48.
