‘Morocco’ or — Desert Heat?
Cabaret singer Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) arrives in Morocco. We know she is going to start a new life here as a nightclub performer although we do not know why she left her old one. She performs before a hostile Moroccan crowd, soon winning them over with her act, and catches the eye of Legionnaire Private Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) who is here because of the Rif War although we do not know why he is in the Foreign Legion.
The two flirt with a possible romance although both have their guards up and are wary of love: Tom deals with his pain by shagging everything that moves whilst Amy sings about love dying. Yet Tom is willing to desert the Legion if she would come with him and start a new life away from Morocco. However, the cultured and wealthy La Bessiere (Adolphe Menjou) also has eyes for Amy, showering her with flowers and expensive jewellery. To complicate things Tom has been secretly humping (possibly up back alleys) the head of his Legion’s wife and this husband has discovered their tryst and is determined to make life difficult for Tom, possibly permanently.
Will Amy and Tom’s love win out? Can Tom escape the Legion? Should Amy resist a life of luxury for true love even if it means getting sand in her shoes? Will there be more lesbian kissing? Watch Josef von Sternberg’s latest cinematic sensation and find out!
‘Morocco’ (1930) is a very sexy and naughty movie. Indeed, with its North African exoticism and melting-pot nightclub it can seem a tiny bit like ‘Casablanca’ (1942) except if everyone gave up on the romantic stress of a war and decided to just start fucking instead. No wonder everyone is constantly cooling themselves off with fans in this film! It’s not just the desert heat. Private Tom Brown is already up to his neck in sex (is it his uniform?) yet when Amy arrives, performs in a man’s tux and starts kissing women, then libidos completely explode all over the place and in every direction (it is most certainly her “uniform” in this case).
The scene when Dietrich sings dressed in top-hat and tails is brilliantly handled as, at first, the crowd is not pleased, possibly because she is showing zero flesh, yet by the end they’ve cottoned onto the idea and everyone is a convert to Weimer pansexuality. Maybe there’s something in this cross-dressing malarkey after all. Either way, Africa is no longer the continent of dark, exotic, forbidden pleasures as Marlene has brought something even more potent from Berlin.
Yet there’s more to Sternberg’s film than unbridled eroticism in the sand because what’s even more thrilling is what the director is doing with the camera and how he fills the screen. Look at how much detail is crammed into every shot or the way the camera tracks Dietrich’s movements as she frantically pursues the mirage of love. And those cooling fans are always moving, giving life to every moment, although it doesn’t stop there as notice what people are doing with their bare hands — there is always a gesture, a touch a flourish which seems to be telling the story more than the dialogue.
Sternberg also demonstrates an extremely judicious use of sound to the point where it feels both extraordinarily naturalistic and heightened to the state of a dream. Sure, part of this could be down to the technical limitations of sound recording in 1930 but the overwhelming sensation of deliberate design here is undeniable. The effect focuses our attention. Music is called for only when absolutely needed and why bother with a sentence when a glance can do a better job?
Ultimately ‘Morocco’ feels like a film of wonderful contradictions: it feels both real and unreal; small in scale yet large in scope; tasteful yet decadent; expensive yet having every penny wrung out of what was available. It is a film, much like the Sahara itself, which could be easy to get lost in… especially if you’re wearing gorgeous high-heels.
