Darlings, I Believe This Moment To Be The Male Equivalent Of "Rose's Turn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                       I've had "Rose's Turn" on my mind a lot, lately.  I've been studying it, and working on it, because I plan to do it at my 60th birthday party.  I have eight months to get ready, so things should be pretty worked out, by then!

                         I know how Rose feels.  I feel like background in some scrapbook, certainly not at home, which is paradise, but at work, which is not!  So, like Rose, I am ready to EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                            "The Blue Angel," the 1930 German film, directed by Josef Von Sternberg, that made Marlene Dietrich a star, but is matched by a brilliant, heartbreaking performance by Emil Jannings. is technically not a musical, but it is structured edited, and runs like one.  The "Rose's Turn" moment at its climax is not sung, but there is a kind of musical spontaneity to the Professor's breakdown on that stage.

                                 Make no mistake, in "Gypsy," and "The Blue Angel," both characters are emotionally disintegrating on stage.  Rose, because she is coming to terms with what she really wanted to be, and never became herself, and the Professor, almost the reverse--what he had once been, and what he has now so tragically become.

                                    What he had been was a promising, if lovably eccentric, academic, at a German boys school.  To see what his boys are up to, he visits the Blue Angel cabaret, where the sultry siren known as "Lola Lola," (Dietirch) performs. Seeing her, he recognizes in himself lust, loneliness, and the companionable fulfillment he actually wants, which Lola brings out of him. His mistake is to think he can get these from her. Better if he learned his romantic lessons here, then found reality elsewhere.

                                      Alas, he is hopelessly obsessed, and cannot let go of Lola. She does marry him, but the whole thing is bogus, as this loveless siren goes sleeping all over the place.  Throughout the film, in the cabaret sequences, from early on, wanders an actor in a clown costume, sadly looking on.  This is dramatic foreshadowing.  He, too fell for Lola, and this is what he has become. He is broken, but not insane.

                                        By the time the Professor's clown act is perfected, he is appearing in his town of origin, where the film started.  The renowned academic is now mocked openly by students and faculty who once respected him. Though some are appalled and shocked.  The moment, where an egg is cracked over his head, symbolizes the cracking of his sanity.  And when he goes off, it is heartbreaking and chilling.  According to Hollywood lore, Jannings so resented the star buildup and attention Dietrich was getting from Von Sternberg (and maybe this was fueled on the director's part, to generate tension in the on screen relationship!) that, when the Professor tries to choke Lola--whom I think he should have killed!!!!!!!--Dietrich claimed Jannings really was choking her, and had to be pried lose after the director yelled "Cut!"
Who knows? But it looks real enough, on screen.

                                            The ending is one of the most heartbreaking.  Jannings almost crawls back to the school, for a glimpse of his old life  A colleague follows him, the figure clock ticks, and everything culminates, when, on the stroke of midnight, Jannings is found at his old classroom desk, clutching it fervently--dead.  He died both happy and sad--happy in a place he had once been happy in, sad because he did not realize it at the time, and paid such a terrible price.  Perhaps this is the lesson of the film.

                                                So, the climax of "The Blue Angel" is a kind of "Rose's Turn."   Both are powerful in their own way; one ends on hope, the other tragedy.

                                                  May we all retain the Mama Rose spirit---

                                                   "Hold your hats, and hallelujah! Mama's gonna show it to you!"