Morocco (film)

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Morocco
Morocco1930.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJosef von Sternberg
Screenplay byJules Furthman (adapted by)
Based onAmy Jolly, die Frau aus Marrakesch
1927 novel
by Benno Vigny
Produced byHector Turnbull (uncredited)
Starring
CinematographyLee Garmes
Edited bySam Winston (uncredited)
Music byKarl Hajos (uncredited)
Production
company
Distributed byParamount Publix Corporation
Release date
  • November 14, 1930 (1930-11-14) (US)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesEnglish, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic

Morocco is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou.[1] Based on the novel Amy Jolly (the on-screen credits state: from the play 'Amy Jolly') by Benno Vigny and adapted by Jules Furthman, the film is about a cabaret singer and a Legionnaire who fall in love during the Rif War, and whose relationship is complicated by his womanizing and the appearance of a rich man who is also in love with her. The film is famous for a scene in which Dietrich performs a song dressed in a man's tailcoat and kisses another woman (to the embarrassment of the latter), both of which were rather scandalous for the period.[1]

Dietrich was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, von Sternberg for Best Director, Hans Dreier for Best Art Direction, and Lee Garmes for Best Cinematography.[1] In 1992, Morocco was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[2]

Plot[]

In Mogador, Morocco in the late 1920s, a unit of the French Foreign Legion returns from a campaign. Among the legionnaires is Private Tom Brown. Meanwhile, on a ship bound for Mogador is the disillusioned nightclub singer Amy Jolly. Wealthy La Bessière tries to make her acquaintance, but she rebuffs him.

Amy becomes the headliner at a nightclub. After a performance, she sells apples to members of the audience, including La Bessière and Brown. When Amy gives the latter his "change", she slips him her key.

On the way to Amy's house, Tom encounters Adjudant Caesar's wife. She clearly has a clandestine relationship with him, which she desires to maintain, but Tom rejects her. He enters Amy's house and he and Amy become acquainted. She is embittered with life and men after repeated betrayals, and asks if Tom can restore her faith in men. He answers that he is the wrong man for that. Unwilling to risk heartbreak yet again, she asks him to leave before anything serious happens.

Back in the street, Tom encounters Caesar's wife again, while her husband watches undetected from the shadows. Meanwhile, Amy changes her mind and comes after Tom, who heads back with her to her house. Madame Caesar hires two ruffians to attack Tom, but he manages to seriously wound both.

The next day, Tom is brought before Caesar, who is Tom's commanding officer, for injuring the two natives. Amy helps Tom's case by testifying that he was attacked, but Caesar makes Tom aware that he knows about Tom's involvement with his wife. La Bessière, whose affections for Amy continue unabated, knows of her feelings for Tom and offers to use his influence to lighten Tom's punishment. Instead of a court-martial, Tom is reassigned to a detachment commanded by Caesar that is leaving soon for Amalfi Pass. Suspecting that Caesar intends to rid himself of his romantic rival while they are gone, Tom decides to desert and run away with Amy.

Tom goes to Amy's nightclub dressing room. He overhears La Bessière offer to marry Amy, and her politely reject the proposal, before knocking on the door. La Bessière leaves Amy alone with Tom, who tells her that, if she will join him, he will desert and board a freighter to Europe. She agrees to go along and asks Tom to wait while she performs. Once he is alone, he notices a lavish bracelet that La Bessière has given to Amy. Though he has fallen in love with her, Tom decides Amy would be better off with a rich man than with a poor Legionnaire. He writes on the mirror, "I changed my mind. Good luck!" and leaves.

In the morning, Amy arrives in the town square with La Bessière so she can bid Tom farewell. She asks La Bessière about some women following the company, remarking that the women must be mad. La Bessière responds, "I don't know. You see, they love their men."

On the way to Amalfi Pass, Tom's detachment runs into a machine-gun nest. Caesar orders Tom to deal with it, and Tom suspects it is a suicide mission. To his surprise, Caesar decides to accompany him. After drawing his pistol (apparently to kill Tom), Caesar is shot and killed by the enemy.

Back in Mogador, Amy accepts La Bessière's marriage proposal and tries to make herself love him, but she still pines for Tom. At an engagement party, she hears the return of what is left of Tom's detachment. She leaves the party and is told Tom was wounded and left behind to recuperate in a hospital. She informs La Bessière that she must go to Tom, and, wanting only her happiness, he drives her to the hospital. It turns out Tom had been faking an injury to avoid combat and, when this was discovered, he was assigned to a new unit in the Legion.

The next morning, Amy and La Bessière watch Tom's new unit march away. She catches Tom's eye and the two wave goodbye. When Amy sees the handful of women following the legionnaires they love, she leaves La Bessière, kicks off her high-heeled shoes, and follows Tom into the desert.

Cast[]

L to R: La Bessière (Adolphe Menjou) & Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich)
Uncredited (in order of appearance)

Background[]

Even before Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel was released to international acclaim in spring of 1930, Paramount Pictures took a keen interest in its new star, Marlene Dietrich. When the Berlin production was completed in January, Sternberg departed Germany before its premiere on April 1, confident his work would be a success. Legend has it that Dietrich included a copy of author Benno Vigny's story Amy Jolly in a going-away gift package to Sternberg when he sailed for America. He and screenwriter Jules Furthman would write a script for Morocco based on the Vigny story.[4]

On the basis of test footage Sternberg provided from the yet unreleased The Blue Angel, producer B. P. Schulberg agreed to bring Dietrich to Hollywood in February 1930 under a two-picture contract.[5][6] When she arrived in the United States, Sternberg welcomed her with gifts, including a green Rolls-Royce Phantom II, which featured in some scenes of Morocco.

Dietrich "was subjected to the full power of Paramount's public relations machine", launching her into "international stardom" before American moviegoers had seen her as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel, which appeared in U.S. theaters in 1931.[7][8][9]

Production[]

Sternberg's depiction of "picturesque" Morocco elicited a favorable response from the Moroccan government, which ran announcements in The New York Times inviting American tourists to enjoy the country "just as Gary Cooper [was seduced by the] unforgettable landscapes and engaging people."[10] However, the movie was filmed entirely in southern California, and Sternberg felt compelled to personally reassure the Pasha of Marrakesh that Morocco had not been shot in his domain.[11]

Cinematographer Lee Garmes and Sternberg (himself a skilled camera technician) developed the distinctive lighting methods that served to enhance Dietrich's best facial features, while obscuring her slightly bulbous nose.[12]

According to Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies, Cooper and Sternberg did not get along. Sternberg filmed so as to make Cooper look up at Dietrich, emphasizing her at his expense. Cooper complained to his studio bosses and got it stopped.

Shooting for Morocco was completed in August 1930.[13]

The final scene of Morocco is recreated in the 1946 Mexican film Enamorada, directed by Emilio Fernández.

Reception[]

Premiering in New York City on December 6, 1930, Morocco's success at the box office was "immediate and impressive".[14][15]

Accolades for the film were issued by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood, and filmmaker Charles Chaplin, who said of the film, "yes, [Sternberg] is an artist ... it is his best film [to date]."[16]

The film garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Director (Sternberg), Best Actress (Dietrich), Best Art Direction (Hans Dreier), and Best Cinematography (Lee Garmes), though it did not win any awards.[14][17]

Critical response[]

Charles Silver, curator at the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film, offers this assessment of Morocco:

"Sternberg was the first director to attain full mastery and control over what was essentially a new medium by restoring the fluidity and beauty of the late silent period. One of the key elements in this was his understanding of the value of silence itself. Morocco contains long sections sustained only by its stunning visual beauty, augmented with appropriate music and aural effects. Sternberg was the first artist to make an authentic virtue of the arrival of sound.[10][18]

Theme[]

"The purveyor of pansexuality and the supreme lover, male or female."[19]

With Morocco, Sternberg examines the "interchange of masculine and feminine characteristics" in a "genuine interplay between male and female."[20]

"When Love Dies": Dietrich's male impersonation[]

Dietrich's "butch performance" dressed in "top hat, white tie and tails" includes a "mock seduction" of a pretty female cabaret patron, whom Dietrich "outrages with a kiss."[20][21] Dietrich's costume simultaneously mocks the pretensions of one lover (Menjou's La Bessière) and serves as an invitation to a handsome soldier-of-fortune (Cooper's Tom Brown), the two men being presented by Sternberg as contrasting conceptions of masculinity."[22][21]

This famous sequence provides an insight into Dietrich's character, Amy Jolly, as well as the director himself: "Dietrich's impersonation is an adventure, an act of bravado that subtly alters her conception of herself as a woman, and what begins as self-expression ends in self-sacrifice, perhaps the path also of Sternberg as an artist."[19]

La Bessière's humiliation[]

Dietrich's devoted suitor, Menjou's La Bessière, "part stoic, part sybarite, part satanist", is destined to lose the object of his desire. Menjou's response to Dietrich's desertion reveals the nature of the man and presents a key thematic element of the film:

"In Menjou's pained politeness of expression is engraved the age-old tension between Apollonian and Dionysian demands of art, between pride in restraint and passion in excess ... when Dietrich kisses him goodbye, Menjou clutches her wrist in one last spasmodic reflex of passion, but the other hand retains its poise at his side, the gestures of form and feeling thus conflicting to the very end of the drama."[11]

The La Bessière character has autobiographical overtones for Sternberg, as Menjou has looks and mannerisms that resemble the director.[23] Critic Andrew Sarris observes: "Sternberg has never been as close to any character as he is to this elegant expatriate."

Dietrich's high-heeled march into the dunes[]

The "absurdity" of the closing sequence, in which Dietrich, "sets out into the desert sands on spike heels in search of Gary Cooper", was noted by critics at the time of the film's release.[24] The image, however odd, is part of the "dream décor" that abandoned "documentary certification" to create "a world of illusions." As Sarris points out, "The complaint that a woman in high heels would not walk off into the desert is nonetheless meaningless. A dream does not require endurance, only the will to act."[25]

Film historian Charles Silver considers the final scene as one that "no artist today would dare attempt":

"The film's unforgettable ending works dramatically because it comes at a moment of panic, one in a series of such moments that have brought Dietrich to the brink. Sternberg says, 'The average human being lives behind an impenetrable veil and will disclose his deep emotions only in a crisis which robs him of control.' Amy Jolly had hidden behind her veil for many years and many men, and her emergence, the sublimation of her fear and pride to her desire, is one of the most supremely romantic gestures in film."[10]

Awards, nominations and honors[]

Award Category Nominee Outcome
1930 National Board of Review Awards Top Ten Films Morocco Won
4th Academy Awards
(Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)[26]		 Best Director Josef von Sternberg
Winner was Norman Taurog – Skippy		 Nominated
Best Actress Marlene Dietrich
Winner was Marie Dressler – Min and Bill		 Nominated
Best Art Direction Hans Dreier
Winner was Max Rée – Cimarron		 Nominated
Best Cinematography Lee Garmes
Winner was Floyd Crosby – Tabu		 Nominated
1932 Kinema Junpo Awards Best Foreign Language Film Josef von Sternberg Won
National Film Registry, 1992
(National Film Preservation Board)[27]		 Narrative feature Morocco Won

The film was ranked 83rd on the American Film Institute's 2002 list AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions.

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c Hal Erickson (2011). "Morocco (1930)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Baseline & All Movie Guide. Archived from the original on December 5, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
  2. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  3. ^ "Catalog of Feature Films: Morocco". AFI. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  4. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 55: "It was Dietrich who suggested to Sternberg an obscure novel, Amy Jolly (subtitled The Woman of Marrakesh) ... which was to serve as inspiration for their first American film together."
  5. ^ Baxter 1971 pp. 75–76
  6. ^ Silver,2010
  7. ^ Baxter, 1993. p. 32
  8. ^ Sarris, 1998. P. 210: "... Marlene Dietrich did not appear on American screens until after the release of Morocco ([December] 1930), actually her second stint with Sternberg."
  9. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 55: "She scored a personal triumph unmatched by any actress on the screen since the [debut] of Garbo."
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b c Silver, 2010
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Sarris, 1966. P. 30
  12. ^ Baxter, 1971. P. 80: "... the lumpy Dietrich nose ..."
  13. ^ Baxter, 1971. P. 81
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b Baxter, 1971. P. 80
  15. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 56: "... swept the world, as did The Blue Angel."
  16. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 58
  17. ^ Ross, 2009. Pp. 1—2
  18. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 56-57: Morocco "effaced the last vestiges of the demarcation between the silent and the sound film ..."
  19. ^ Jump up to: a b Sarris, 1966. p. 29
  20. ^ Jump up to: a b Sarris, 1966. P. 29-30
  21. ^ Jump up to: a b Baxter, 1971. P. 79
  22. ^ Sarris, 1966. P. 29-30, p. 15
  23. ^ Baxter, 1971. P. 79: "... no doubt [Sternberg's] motive for casting Menjou ..."
  24. ^ Sarris, 1966. P. 29: "C.A. Lejeune of The London Observer"
  25. ^ Sarris, 1966. P.29-30
  26. ^ "The 4th Academy Awards (1931) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  27. ^ "25 Films Added to National Registry". The New York Times. November 15, 1994. Retrieved July 22, 2009.

Sources[]

External links[]

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