Morocco (1930) Director: Josef von Sternberg
“Every time a man has helped me, there has been a price. What’s yours?”
★★★★★
Based on a German novel called Amy Jolly by writer Benno Vigny and adapted for the screen by Jules Furthman, Morocco is a brilliant and alluring picture. It was to be the first of six collaborations between Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in Hollywood (1930-1935) not including the German The Blue Angel which was also released in 1930 but didn’t appear in American theaters until 1931. Morocco was Dietrich’s introduction to the American screen and for it, Josef von Sternberg would go on to secure a nomination for Best Director from the Academy Awards. Along with Dietrich, Morocco also features the “The Tall Glass of Water” of early Hollywood, Gary Cooper.
Morocco tells the story of the French Foreign Legion in Morocco during the Rif War (1920-1927), a war between tribal North Africa and the colonial powers of Spain and later France. Gary Cooper plays a disillusioned legionnaire who is openly disobedient named Tom Brown (Gary Cooper). Marlene Dietrich plays Amy Jolly, a jaded night club cabaret singer who arrives in Morocco and is offered help by a wealthier gentleman named La Bessière, but she refuses. She completes an evening performance dressed in a top hat, coat, and tails; and she controversially kisses a woman in the audience on the mouth. Later, she delivers a more traditionally feminine/seductive performance and she slips Tom Brown her room key. That night, Tom encounters the Adjudant Caesar’s wife, or the wife of his head commanding officer (she and Tom have had a past relationship) but he decides to go to Jolly instead. Quickly, Tom and Jolly develop a mutual affection, until Tom is later caught out at night and his commanding officer Caesar discovers of the past liaison with his wife. Meanwhile, La Bessière (the wealthy man from the beginning of the film) returns to Jolly to offer a proposal of marriage but she is ambivalent. Tom leaves with his company, followed by a trail of women who fawn over the departing men. Shortly thereafter on the field of battle, commanding officer Caesar is killed by machine gunfire. Jolly seeks out Tom and discovers him drinking in a bar. He has carved her name with a heart into the table. She decides to follow him in the end, trudging in high heels over the sand, and in doing so, she becomes one of the many women following the men they love who serve in the French Foreign Legion.
In spite of its locale, Morocco was shot entirely in Southern California, however that didn’t stop the Moroccan government from issuing an invitation for tourists to come visit their “pristine” beaches as a vacation destination –just like Gary Cooper in the movies. Apparently, during filming Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper developed an off-screen romance as a result of the film, but when they parted ways she later characterized Cooper as unintelligent and un-cultured, a great actor primarily for his all-American physique but nothing else. Meanwhile, Josef von Sternberg was reportedly obsessed over Dietrich while filming –her accent, lighting, angles, pronunciation of English words and so on. He even went so far as to monitor the plucking of her own eyebrows in order to to orchestrate the lighting just right. At the time, Dietrich was an ordinary German girl born “Maria Magdalena von Losch” whom Josef von Sternberg had effectively plucked out of obscurity (she previously appeared in small unknown German films), and she was then quickly transformed into the world’s most mysterious, exotic, and sexual star of the early 1930s.
In my view, Morocco is another tremendous movie from Josef von Sternberg –it unfolds as if in a hazy dream filled with von Sternberg’s trademark smoke-filled sense of the ornate. Needless to say, Marlene Dietrich’s screen presence permeates the film. However, Gary Cooper is somewhat forgettable in the film in my view (apparently, he and von Sternberg were arch enemies during filming). As with other Dietrich-von Sternberg collaborations, Morocco portrays a unique and exotic location in the Middle East, reminding me of Casablanca, another hazy noir-esque film about two jaded yet star-crossed lovers in Morocco.
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Credits:
- Director: Josef von Sternberg
- Screenplay by: Jules Furthman (adaptation)
- Based on: Amy Jolly, die Frau aus Marrakesch by Benno Vigny
- Produced by: Hector Turnbull (uncredited)
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper…..Légionnaire Tom Brown
- Marlene Dietrich…..Mademoiselle Amy Jolly
- Adolphe Menjou…..Monsieur La Bessière
- Cinematography: Lee Garmes
- Production Company: Paramount Pictures