ANGEL (1937)
an ERNST LUBITSCH film
"Are you really a friend of Captain Buckler?"
(from the film's dialogue between Laura Hope Crews and Melvyn Douglas)
Marlene preferred Desire (directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Lubitsch) to Angel, released that same year but shot after. By the way, very few people at the time enjoyed Angel, certainly Lubitsch's biggest commercial flop in America. Those who knew the play blamed censorship: Lubitsch would have had to omit a lot of things in order not to explain who Marlene was (and, in a way, who she is), and to transform the many visits of Marlene to the Grand Duchess' brothel into a single (or double) event, a brothel also whose true nature was greatly whitewashed. Beyond that, many people were left wondering if Lubitsch was getting less funny (they complained that the movie aroused way less laughter than the play) or if he had let himself be carried away by Marlene's romantic side.
Nowadays, on the opposite, this view has changed a lot, and I am in good company when I tell you that Angel is one of Lubitsch's greatest works. I'm also in good company when I tell you that Angel (the first film Lubitsch made, that is, directed, since 1934's The Merry Widow) marks the beginning of late-Lubitsch, much more refined, much more interiorized, much darker, too. Nothing of his touch or of his satire was lost: but the rhythm was now more andante than allegro, as will be the case in his screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, Ninothcka and To Be or not to Be.
Maybe the best example to explain this is one of Lubitsch's most surprising ellipsis, which has all to do with his famous doors, but which in this film is used a contrario sensu. I refer to Melvyn Douglas' surprise apparition in the room where Marlene is, during the final visit to the Grand Duchess' brothel.
Up to this point, Angel seemed to raise the filmmaker's obsession with the game of doors up to its quintessence. Lubitsch even repeated some well-known effects, such as the couple changing rooms, in the scene where Marlene shows up by her husband's door, opening it to a bewildered Everett Horton and provoking Ernest Cossart's flight down the stairs. The former had indeed stated that he'd learned from his master that there are instances when a politician has to be unpopular, but he never thought he'd be so much so, repeating an ellipsis that had already been used in Trouble in Paradise.
In the final visit to the Grand Duchess, the traversal of doors (and that which hides behind doors) is savoured to the greatest finesse. Even more than that: the characters now deliberately draw each other's attention to the aforementioned doors. What is it that Marlene says to the husband in the scene when they are alone? If you don't open that door, you'll be forever a little uncertain. You'll never be quite so sure of yourself, or of me. "And that might be wonderful". But, if you do open that door, our marriage is over. Either you find Angel and everything remains the same, or you don't find her and you'll ask for the divorce.
Herbert Marshall listens to her and hesitates for a few seconds. We, like Marlene, hope that he won't open the door. There were even some who said it was a dramaturgical mistake of Lubitsch to have him open the door. But it is precisely because the character is so unsure that he opens the door. He cannot resist to knowing, even though he knows that what he'll come to know will hardly please him. Because of this, his movement towards the door is the slowest in any of Lubitsch's films. As he himself will say, these few seconds lasted longer than years.
He opens the door and enters the room where Angel obviously is not to be found. But there's also nobody else. What happened to Melvyn Douglas, who was just there? The answer is given to us in the sudden cut to this silent shot where Marshall clings to all his strength in order to handle the truth. Melvyn Douglas went to the room where Marlene is. But, for the first and only time in the film, and in a situation like this, for the first and only time in a Lubitsch film, we don't see him traversing the door. This traversal is omitted so that his impetuosity may be greater and the contrast between him and Marshall be more clearly established. And why impetuosity? Because his only doubt was to whether Marlene would come back. Now knowing that she's there, he has no doubts that she'll accompany him, that she has chosen him. And so, without saying a word, he begins to prepare her for their exit together, of which he is certain. But certainties were what Marlene was terrified of, but certainties were that which she wanted no more. Because of this this, afterwards, between the certain and the uncertain, the new uncertain wins, that is, Marshall. Notice how the husband's uncertainty goes so far as to suggest her a few hours of reflexion, alone with Douglas, and to arrange a meeting at the train station that night. Marlene no longer needs this wait. The last door shall be traversed by her and her husband (she leads him), without even a final glance at the presumedly shattered Douglas.
If I spent so much time detailing this sequence and this ellipsis a contrario sensu, it's precisely because it is the most revealing of a new "game" and a new attitude. He who no longer knocks on doors, fearless of what he shall find in the spaces he invades, shall have the opposite surprises of those who fear them. Deep down, deep down, he who counts on automatically open doors will always lose. Deep down, deep down, he who believes in open lives and open people will always lose. "No trespassing" is also one of Lubitsch's laws.
And only then we realize, after some thought, why is it that in this apparently romantic film, which begins with the romantic encounter between Marlene and Douglas, the spectator (whose intervention is more actively solicited in Angel than in any other Lubitsch film, incredible as it may seem) is always on the husband's side, and against the lover.
Why? Because Melvyn Douglas knows nothing of Marlene's past, which for him is divided between the angel that appeared before him in Paris and the Lady that appeared before him in London. But we know (and Herbert Marshall also knows) that that woman wasn't born a Lady. She announces herself to the Grand Duchess with the line: "all I want is a cup of tea and a sandwich", which lets us presume her past poverty. She was about to marry a so-called Savoldi in Rome, but broke up with him before the ceremony and no longer even remembers why. The Grand Duchess, then, has her reasons when later she swears to Douglas (and she probably wasn't lying) that no lady had ever been in that room. Lady is what Marshall made of her, as he says in the amazing sequence at the opera when, referring to the spectator, he notices that "everybody seems to be looking at us... at you, rather". At this moment, he mistakes her for her appearance, without even noticing (or knowing) that the only person by whom she wants to be seen is not at the opera. But with time, he remembers it: Maria is not an angel. And, unlike Douglas, he desires Maria, and not the angel. Douglas is lost in the illusion of perpetual appearance. Marshall wins when he stops having this illusion, in the brilliant ellipsis where through a telephone he hears the music Douglas plays on the piano, and that makes him realize what happened that night in Paris. Deep down, it's all in the dialogue about lamps and lights that takes place at the London luncheon, this luncheon of which we are informed through the kitchen, in one of the most famous and talked about examples of the Lubitsch touch in the filmmaker's oeuvre.
Also because of that, and because vision or concealment must imply everything, this is the film of Lubitsch where the spectator is led for the longest time through a false track, trusting in the false leads which he's already aware of, while the characters aren't yet. Because we saw what happened during the night in Paris (and we clearly didn't see everything, as is suggested by the ellipsis which leads us from the restaurant with music and servants to the private dining room), we think we'll surprise Marlene, Douglas and Marshall. We're too sure of ourselves and of our complicity with the director.
But, what is it that actually happens? Just as we think we'll surprise Marlene, she's already seen Douglas in the horse race, and it's her own husband who gives her the clues that allow her to put two and two together. When she accepts to have Douglas for lunch, she already knows who she'll be having lunch with, and she has time (all the time in the world) to prepare for her fabulous descent. But she doesn't know everything. She's sure she's about to surprise Douglas, not knowing (as we do) that Douglas has already seen her picture and also had time to prepare himself. Both of them think the other is about to have the surprise of a lifetime. And none of them do, because, as only we know, both of them already knew it before. Except that we didn't see the moment when they found out about it. When Douglas gets up to go take a look at Marlene's portrait (a portrait we don't see), we leave the living room and go into Marlene's bedroom. When Marlene is sure the husband is meeting Douglas, we hear the overture of Tristan and Isolde ("we don't want to miss the overture"). When Marlene suffers the most (this very night), we only find out that she did not sleep through the smoked cigarettes and the lit-up lamp. When Marshall, in his turn, puts two and two together, we stay on the close-up of the telephone, and not on his face. If our voyeurism attracts us, as spectators, to the moments when appearances melt away (Douglas' reaction in seeing the portrait, Marlene crying during the night, Marshall's reaction to hearing the Hungarian tune), then we are always frustrated. These characters never melt before us. If our vision is panoptical (as in the dazzling pan that, through the windows of the Grand Duchess, allows us to see everything that takes place in her house), it is also a vision that can only resort to signs. We never see nor hear everything at the same time.
We always know more, or less, than. We never know just as much.
Besides, nobody knows nothing, and it is to this radical uncertainty (ours, and of all the characters) that Lubitsch's camera invites us, in the deepest meaning of ellipsis in his work. There are those who think they know, like the Grand Duchess and maybe that Captain Buckler, whose friendship is enough of a guarantee to open the doors of the Parisian brothel. But, contrary to what the Grand Duchess thinks, none of the three characters is a friend or related to the family of such Captain. And it is because that which all of them wish for only superficially coincides with the wishes of the Captain's friends that they all fail during their Parisian night. And they are left alone, with an incomplete melody that all of them assume to know, but which no one plays from beginning to end.
Many years later, in a film very similar to this one (Max Ophüls' Madame De...), a character will tell us that the only trivial attitude is to consider triviality itself as trivial. The moral of Angel isn't different. Maybe because of that, after having smiled so much with servants and lords, mistaken chases and illusory appearances, this film makes us feel so secretly hurt. Or, if you prefer, so lightly disquieted. Perhaps, that night, on a train to Vienna, other servants will gossip on the reasons for Marlene cutting the steak into tiny little pieces without having a single bite, or on why did Herbert Marshall return his dish untouched. And if someone shows up and asks "Anything wrong?", as Marlene asked the hotel manager in Paris, then we can only answer like him, in the same vaguely absorbed tone: "No, nothing wrong. Nothing wrong at all, Mrs. Brown".
– JOÃO BÉNARD DA COSTA