GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

MartinHafer "Angel" is an Ernst Lubitsch film with three top actors, Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas. Yet, despite this, the story is amazingly flat and unappealing. It's not a bad film...more one that leaves you expecting so much more. After all, Lubitsch is practically legendary as are his movies.When the story begins, Anthony (Melvyn Douglas) meets Lady Barker (Marlene Dietrich) in Paris and arranges to meet her for dinner. During the dinner, Anthony is totally smitten by her and the night seems magical. However, the woman never tells him who she is and he gives her the nickname 'Angel'. When the evening is over, he has no idea who she was nor how to get in touch with her.Sometime later, Anthony meets an old friend, Sir Barker (Herbert Marshall). The evening goes fine...until Sir Barker's wife arrives and Anthony sees that it's Angel. What next? See the film.Making a romantic film that involves adultery is a major uphill battle. Adultery isn't a romantic thing and despite the Lubitsch touch, it all seems a tad tawdry. Tawdrier still, if you read between the lines you realize that the place Anthony and Angel met is essentially a high-priced brothel...though it's certainly NOT obvious when you watch the film. In addition to this big problem, the film simply is too talky and too flat....which is so surprising. I can see clearly why this is not among Lubitsch's more famous films.

harveyvincent-38279 I've seen all of Lubitsch's films and I rate Angel as his worst. The faults are in a bland repetitive script and the strangely ambiguous, wooden performance of Marlene Dietrich. There are times she appears more masculine than her costars Melvyn Douglas and Herbert Marshall.The sexual playfulness and subtle daring - so delightfully evident in Lubitsch's other films - here often fall flat. Made a few years before Angel, one of Ernst Lubitsch's best films, also based on a play (Noël Coward's Design for Living), has a woman at the center of a love triangle. The shock, particularly for a 30s Hollywood movie, is that the three live together in a bohemian Paris flat. In his directing, as well as the performances of Frederic March and Gary Cooper, there is never a hint of homo-eroticism. Ironically in Angel the best scene, a climactic one between Douglas and Marshall, is full of sexual energy.Subtle sophistication was always an Ernst Lubitsch trademark. There is little evidence of sparkling wit and originality in Angel.

blanche-2 "Angel" from 1937 is a Dietrich-Lubitsch collaboration that didn't come off - in fact, this was the last film Dietrich made for Paramount, after which she was labeled box-office poison. You can see why this film didn't help, though she is photographed like a dream and dressed divinely by Travis Banton.Based on a play, this is a rather dull story. The neglected, bored wife, Maria (Dietrich) of a very busy diplomat (Herbert Marshall) flies to Paris and goes to a salon run by a countess (Laura Hope Crews) who is an old friend of hers. It's apparently a high-class brothel. While waiting to see her, she meets Tony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), looking for a delightful evening. She agrees to meet him for dinner. The affair isn't shown, but one assumes they consummated their relationship. She disappears without telling him her name or her knowing his.Later on, he runs into an old friend, who is Maria's husband. Maria and Tony meet again - under awkward circumstances.This isn't a comedy, and it really isn't much of a drama either, with dull spots enlivened by the supporting cast - Crews, Edward Everett Horton, and Ernest Cossart, who plays the butler. (He tells his fiancée over the phone, "If you don't tell me where you learned to rumba, we're through.")Directed with the usual Lubitsch subtlety, this is just okay, lacking the bubbly champagne touch that made Lubitsch's work in films like "The Shop Around the Corner," "Ninotchka," "To Be or Not to Be" and so many other great films of his.

Christopher Wallis Lubitsch is recognized as one of the great directors of the 30s, and yet this wonderful film is not on any of the usual critical lists of notable films. Perhaps it was too modern for its time. It is perhaps Dietrich's best English performance (though even here she could be a bit more subtle), but the real star is the director, shining in the shots he composes and performances he coaxes from his actors. Lubitsch is a master of subtlety, and when he places important moments off-screen, it is in such a way as to heighten their impact. Since the censorship code is in effect, the sexual elements are cleverly concealed. For example, Halton and Barker discover that in Paris they both visited the same... seamstress. The naive Hays Office must have thought that was the joke, but the real joke is on them for it is clear--at least today--that the two did not visit her to get their sewing done. The sophistication of the film is unusual for its time.Pages could be written about this film. Suffice it to say that if you like 30s film at all, see this. In certain moments, it feels perfect. Probably one of the top 25 of the decade.