Emil Jannings Movies

Adam (Emil Jannings) is the eternally inebriated magistrate of a small Dutch town. While carousing drunken around town late one night, Adam stumbles into the boudoir of Eve Rull (Angela Sallocker), whereupon he is soundly thrashed by Eve's lover. In the fracas, he loses his all-important judicial wig and also smashes a rare antique jug which has been in Eve's family for years. The next morning, Adam is forced to open court without his wig, though he manages to hide the fact that he was involved in the "battle royal" of the night before. And then Eve's mother storms into court, demanding that Adam ascertain the identity of the unknown intruder who broke her precious jug... And no, this isn't a comedy! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alte und Junge Kaiser is "blood-and-honor" Nazi propaganda travelling under the guise of historical pageantry. The great Emil Jannings chews the scenery as aging Prussian "warrior monarch" Friedrich Wilhelm I. Alas, the King is saddled with a pantywaist nephew, Crown Prince Frederic (Werner Hinz), who prefers reading books to marching off to battle. Subjected to all sorts of humiliations by the autocratic Wilhelm I, the Prince reaches the breaking point when his best friend is executed before his eyes. But instead of turning on the King and staging a coup, Prince Frederic finally realizes that he's been wrong all along, and toughens himself up to be Frederic the Great, a true leader of manly men. The moral: Nothing, but nothing, is as important as nationalistic pride and blind obedience. Sieg heil! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Also known as Tempest and Storm of Passion, Stuerme der Leidenschaft was the first of Robert Siodmak's two directorial efforts of 1932. Emil Jannings stars as a tough but basically gentle gangster who, while serving a prison term, is betrayed by his sweetheart Anna Sten. Released from prison, the disgruntled Jannings murders Sten's seducer, forcing him to hide out from the police. Meanwhile, Sten, who has sworn total fidelity to her fugitive lover, again betrays him at the first opportunity. Wearily, Jannings gives himself up to the authorities, declaring that he'd rather be in jail than at the mercy of a faithless woman. Siodmak also supervised the French-language version, Tumultes, which starred Yves Mirande. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marlene Dietrich became an immediate international star on the strength of her performance as the temptress Lola Frohlich in Josef von Sternberg's classic tale of love and obsession. Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is a strict and humorless schoolmaster who is shocked when he discovers the boys in his class have been spending their time at a sleazy cabaret called The Blue Angel, where an entertainer named Lola (Dietrich) keeps the men in thrall and sells suggestive postcards of herself. Rath goes to the club in hopes of catching his students and giving them a severe dressing-down, but he instead finds himself entranced by the carefree atmosphere of the club, and is struck by Lola's earthy, sensual beauty. Rath finds himself strongly attracted to Lola, and she later entertains him in her dressing room. When word of Rath's infatuation with Lola spreads to his students, he is taunted mercilessly, and eventually Rath is dismissed from the school. While Lola agrees to marry Rath, she shows little affection for him and delights in humiliating him, making him her servant and forcing him to play a clown in her stage show. The Blue Angel was shot in both German and English language versions; the German is preferable, as most of the cast were obviously more expert in that tongue. Dietrich introduced her theme song, "Falling In Love Again", in this picture. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Lewis Milestone presided over The Betrayal, a part-talkie which represented the only screen teaming of Hollywood's Gary Cooper and Germany's Emil Jannings. Second-billed Esther Ralston stars as Swiss peasant girl Vroni, who enjoys a blissful summertime romance with vacationing Viennese artist Andre Frey (Cooper). For diverse reasons, the young lovers decide to keep their affair a secret until Andre can return to Vroni. But when he does come back to Switzerland, Andre learns to his dismay that Vroni has been forced into a marriage with wealthy burgomeister Poldi Moser (Jannings). To justify Andre's presence, Vroni introduces him as a young man who has just lost his sweetheart (which, of course is true) -- whereupon Poldi sympathetically invites Andre to be a guest in his house. The situation is sheer hell for both hero and heroine, but they brave it out for the sake of the likable Poldi. Seven years later, Andre comes back to the village for another visit, prompting Poldi to again extend his hospitality to the increasingly morose artist. Unable to withhold his emotions any further, Andre begs Vroni to run off with him, threatening to kill himself if she doesn't. She refuses but agrees to one last rendezvous in the village. While speeding down a toboggan slide, an accident occurs, killing Vroni and seriously injuring Andre. At the funeral, Poldi discovers the truth about the relationship between Andre and Vroni. He swears revenge, only to discover that Andre has already died from his injuries. Left alone in his grief, Poldi philosophically vows to forgive and forget, preferring to harbor only good thoughts towards his late wife and their mutual "friend." Boasting a plotline dangerously close to Ethan Frome, Betrayal was co-produced by David O. Selznick. In later years, director Lewis Milestone tended to dismiss this film, recalling only that Emil Jannings was an extremely difficult man to work with. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Street of Sin was the final American film of Scandinavian director Mauritz Stiller, whose inability to adapt to Hollywood (and vice versa) forced him to return to Sweden where he died, dispirited and disillusioned, not long after the release of this film. The story is set in the seamy Soho section of London, where burglar Basher Bill (Emil Jannings) shares bed and board with his sluttish girlfriend Annie (Olga Baclanova). As wicked as they come, Bill softens when he meets virtuous Salvation Army lass Elizabeth (Fay Wray). He helps her take care of a group of orphans, abandoned in the Army's care. The jealous Annie, assuming (correctly) that her boyfriend's interest in Elizabeth goes far beyond sympathy, betrays Bill to the cops. Mortally wounded in the climactic gun battle, Bill holds no grudge against Annie: in fact, as he breathes his last, he advises her to save her soul by joining the Salvation Army -- which she does! Since the film no longer exists, it is hard to tell whether Street of Sin was truly worthy of Stiller's talents; chances are, however, that Paramount heavily tampered with the film before its release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Josef vonSternberg's The Last Command was inspired by the true story of General Lodijenski, a Russian aristocrat who arrived penniless in the US after the 1917 Revolution and who supported himself by playing movie bit parts and managing a Russian restaurant. Emil Jannings stars as the Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, who in the last days of the Romanoff regime must decide the fate of two revolutionist actors, Leo Andreyev (William Powell) and the gorgeous Natacha (Evelyn Brent). Andreyev is carted off to prison, while Natacha becomes the Duke's mistress. She fully intends to kill him, but when the chance arises, she hesitates, having come to realize that the Duke is an essentially decent man who loves Russia as much as she does. Comes the revolution, and Natacha helps the Grand Duke escape the Bolsheviks, losing her own life in the process. The death of Natacha sends Sergius Alexander into a nervous shock, from which he never fully recovers. Years later, a shabby Sergius is eking out an existence as a Hollywood extra. Hired to play a Russian general in a crowd scene, Sergius discovers that his director is none other than former Russian revolutionary Leo Andreyev. The meaning of the title is clarified in the film's emotional climax. Plot inconsistencies aside, The Last Command is a stunning cinematic achievement, combining the harsh realities of Russia and Hollywood with vonSternberg's unerring sense of visual beauty. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The European mentality of this German silent was a bit racy for mainstream American tastes of the era; nevertheless, the images created by director Paul Czinner told this story well. A wife (Elizabeth Bergner) is bored by her overweight slob of a husband (Emil Jannings). She gives in to the temptation of a slickly seductive poet (Conrad Veidt). The cuckolded husband (a common role for Jannings) tries to convince the pair to stop the philandering, but the wife runs off with her lover anyway. The lover shortly grows tired of her (just as the husband predicted he would) and dumps her. Without either her lover or her husband, the desperate woman throws herself off a cliff. Although Husbands or Lovers was not released in the U.S. until 1927, it was filmed in 1924, before Jannings came to America to make his mark on films there. In European release it was called Nju, which was the Bergner character's name. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This was Emil Jannings' first American-made picture, and his portrayal is reminiscent of his characters in his previous films, The Last Laugh and Variety, and would later be echoed in The Blue Angel. Jannings' powerful performance, along with his acting in The Last Command, would win him the first Academy Award for Best Actor. August Schiller (Jannings) is a content husband and father of six children who works as a cashier for the Germania Bank. He is sent to Chicago with some of the bank's securities and during the train ride he is thoroughly vamped by Mayme, a cheap little crook (Phyllis Haver). Mayme takes Schiller on a wild debauch and when he wakes up in a sordid transient hotel, he realizes that she has made off with the securities. He goes in search of her and is attacked by a thug (Fred Kohler) who steals his valuables. As the two men struggle, the thug falls in front of a train and is killed. A few days later, Schiller reads in the paper that the thug was identified as him, so instead of disgracing his family he decides to remain living in secret. Years later, when he is completely down and out, he hears that his son (Donald Keith) is now a famous violinist. On Christmas, he makes his way to his old home and watches the holiday feast through a window. He is driven away and crawls back into obscurity. Ironically, Belle Bennett, who played Schiller's wife, was the star of the 1925 version of Stella Dallas, a tale which ends in a similar fashion. The Way of All Flesh was based on a story by Perley Poore Sheehan. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide