The Blue Angel was shot simultaneously in German and English-language versions; Paramount released the English version in 1931, the year after the German original made Marlene Dietrich an international star, and after she had been introduced to American audiences in Morocco. With its imaginative use of sound and music, and little dialogue to begin with, the film loses nothing in the translation; we know what Dietrich could do with English, and Emil Jannings always spoke with his face and his hulking, brooding body anyway. (Just to be on the safe side, the English version cleverly established legitimate excuses for the use of a foreign language in a German setting: Jannings played the role of an English professor who demanded that his pupils speak English, and Dietrich's Lola-Lola was meant to be British.) In any language, The Blue Angel remains von Sternberg's most studied, controlled work, an almost clinical depiction of an old man's obsession for a voluptuous dance hall girl, half-naked in black-net stockings and top-hat, a lowly being empowered by her lover's degradation. Claustrophobic decor and sensuous compositions are here not an end in themselves, but project the reality of dark obsession unto death.