Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary Critical Perspectives by Sean Matthews

Author:Sean Matthews
Language: ita
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Unconsoled and Der Blaue Engel

Names are not exclusively drawn from World Cup footballers. There is, for example, another subset taken from the film Der Blaue Engel. It is as though half the cast and crew of that film appear in disguise in The Unconsoled: director Josef von Sternberg ('Sternberg Garden'; Ishiguro 1995: 146); Erwin Jannings, the male lead ('Horst Jannings, the city's most senior actor'; Ishiguro 1995: 381); Karl Vollmoller, a playwright and screenwriter ('Mr Vollmoller, a very fine composer'; Ishiguro 1995: 98); Wilhelm Diegelmann, in the cast and also an actor in Lubitsch films ('Professor Diegelmann's children'; Ishiguro 1995: 71); Robert Liebmann, co-writer ('Liebmann Park'; Ishiguro 1995: 101); Eduard von Winterstein, actor (the often mentioned mayor, Mr von Winterstein; Ishiguro 1995: 60); and Friedrich Hollander, who composed the music ('I agree with Mr Hollander'; Ishiguro 1995: 143).

Der Blaue Engel, based upon Heinrich Mann's pre-war novel Professor Unrat, was released in 1930, towards the end of the golden era of Weimar and German Expressionist cinema. The film is well-known for bringing international attention to Marlene Dietrich, and the song known in English as 'Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)'. A buttonedup, strict schoolteacher, Professor Rath (played by Emil Jannings), learns his pupils have been attending a disreputable nightclub. Determined to confront the source of this immorality, Rath visits the Blaue Engel and is immediately enchanted by the singer Lola Lola (played by Dietrich). He proposes to her and joins her troupe, but is subsequently degraded and humiliated. The climax of the film involves Jannings performing a routine back at the Blaue Engel in front of an expectant home-town audience, in which he imitates the crowing of a cock. Driven mad, he continues his crowing off-stage and tries to strangle the unfaithful Lola; he crawls back to his old schoolroom to die.

An intertextual interpretation of the film and The Unconsoled may be constructed as follows. Both plots include the combination of artistic performance and anxiety about public humiliation. Siegfried Kracauer (1947) emphasizes the cruelty of the petit bourgeois audience in Der Blaue Engel, 'the masses [who] are irresistibly attracted by the spectacle of torture and humilation' (Kracauer 1947: 217). Rath performs his schoolmasterly role in front of an unsympathetic classroom of boys; eventually, a baying audience sees eggs cracked over his head while his crowing grows ever wilder.

Ryder, the artist, perceives the awaiting audience as a painfully dependent organism capable of rapture or contempt. The perfectionist imagines the disaster of critical opprobrium being heaped upon him, only to be relieved and then nonchalant when everything works out well, as it always seems to. Those who have to put up with this cycle, like Sophie, recognize the pattern all too clearly:

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