Blue Angel Film

Professor Rath is a man who seems to take very little pleasure from life itself, but at the same time he is a morally upstanding man who at the core is a good person. However, over the course of the movie the viewer witnesses the destruction of a decent man at the hands of desire. Rath is almost comparable to the Greek tragic hero. A man who is seemingly good brought down by a single weakness. In the cause of Rath, his weakness is for the sultry performer Lola-Lola. The Blue Angel centers upon this idea of man's destruction through desire.

The Blue Angel is an adaptation of Mann's novel "Professor Unrat," which wasn't an uncommon occurrence in Germany at the time as "from the very start of its film history, Germany has known a particularly intimate relation between literature and film, a closeness marked equally by cooperation and tension." (((((137) West German Film)))) However, Sternberg uses his own artistic vision to alter the story. So while ""In Mann's novel we tend to celebrate when Professor Rath is brought low by the furry of the townspeople; in Sternberg's film we are horror-stricken by the vision of an essentially honorable man destroyed by desire.(((((–Blue book)))) Sternberg builds up the emotional attachment between viewer and professor early in the movie as the viewer shares the sad moment of Rath eating breakfast alone with his canary having passed away the night before. The sympathy generated by this scene makes the viewer more understanding of Rath's harsh ways later on in the movie.