Devastating - Marlena Deitrich, the essential femme fatale, seduces a professor whose life crumbles away into disgrace. Emil Jannings yet again performs misery brilliantly. Much as in The Last Laugh, his character begins as a pompous man and is transformed by the cruelties and unsympathetic nature of humans into a humiliated and degraded madman. And then he dies. There is no pitiful reprieve as in The Last Laugh.
Directed by Joseph Von Sternberg, in 1930 German Expressionism was fading in films, after the financial crisis at UFA because of the lavish production of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The town appears dark and aged.
I felt as if I could hear the creaking of the medieval staircase leading to his attic room at the school. And the club for which the film is named is a dark hole of drunken sailors jeering equally drunken dames in their drawers. The star is Deitrich. She struts around, hands on hips, shoulders hard, glowing with sexuality. (Spoiler - skip to next paragraph if you like surprises)
At first one might imagine that she could benefit this professor who gives up his job to marry this fallen women. But no. I don't even know why she'd marry him except that perhaps she believed no one would ever ask her and she'd like a man-servant.
Shortly after their marriage he has decayed into an unshaven shlub peddling nudie photos of his wife. And four years later he is forced to return to his home town to perform in his wife's show as a clown assistant to a magician. The magician cracks eggs on his head and the audience of his former pupils laughs him into total insanity. His wife is making out with a useless strong man performer who is super hot for her. The sight of this drives him to attack her while clucking like a chicken. It's so frickin crazy amazing. I actually believe that this simple man might totally lose it and freak out in this extraordinary way. It's wonderful. And the closing shot of the film is marvelous.It starts slowly, but be patient. The climax and Dietrich are worth it. It's totally depressing but also amazing.
