Blue Angel Syndrome

Der blaue Engel ('The Blue Angel') is a classic movie (1930) starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings.

Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is a respected teacher at the local Gymnasium, in the waning days of the Weimar Republic, the name given to the German government between the end of the Imperial period (1918) and the beginning of Nazi Germany (1933). Demanding of his students, and filled with a sense of responsibility for their well-being, Rath is scandalized to learn that they have been secretly passing around pictures of Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), a performer at the nearby cabaret, called 'Der blaue Engel'.

Rath visits the nightclub in the hope of catching his pupils, but also to confront Lola Lola for corrupting them. Instead, Rath instead falls prey to the singer. Charmed and intoxicated by her sultry act, symbolized by her song, 'Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt', Lola Lola becomes his all-consuming passion, and Rath tries to have an illicit romance with her. When he succeeds, he experiences a fleeting sense of liberation, but soon he realizes the dire consequences of his actions.

His students and employer discover the affair, making his position as a teacher and moral instructor untenable, and he is forced to resign. But that is only the beginning of his miseries. While Lola agrees to marry Rath, she shows little affection for him and takes delight in humiliating him with menial tasks while expressing interest in other men.

Rath’s progressive realization of what is happening to him leads, inexorably, to the film’s tragic ending. He begins to wallow in his predicament, until the psychic pain overwhelms him, and he turns insane.

This type of pathological infatuation has been termed the Blue Angel Syndrome[1].

It is described as a form of psychological masochism. Masochism itself can be defined as any behavior that is repetitively self-destructive. Thus, there is a clear difference between a normal pattern of falling in love normally and a masochistic pattern.

[1] Camille Bruno: Pathological infatuation or the Blue Angel syndrome in Archives of Psychiatric Nursing – 1992. See here.