Morocco

The fascinating teaming of Marlene Dietrich and Director Josef von Sternberg - as near as you can get to a Svengali and Trilby - had already produced The Blue Angel in Germany - a stunning film, but hardly suited to contemporary American tastes. So Von Stemberg delayed the U.S. release of The Blue Angel and chose to unleash Dietrich on the unsuspecting American public with Morocco, made at Paramount Studios.

The story involves a magnificently alluring cabaret entertainer Amy Jolly arriving in Morocco and causing havoc amongst the resident French Legion. The particular soldier she has in mind is the shy loner Tom Brown (Gary Cooper, fitting the role perfectly) who is not really that interested. It seems Tom's retiring demeanour is a facade, for he is having an affair with the wife of his superior officer. His intrigue is exposed, and his commander dispatches him on a dangerous mission into the Sahara, in the hope that he will not return. His acceptance of his fate rather than flee with Amy leads her to seek revenge in the form of an affair with the suave Monsieur La Bessiere - but you see how the story goes...

The interest of the film is not in the plot however, though this facilitates it, but in the smouldering charisma of Dietrich in her early years. She sizzles enticingly through the picture, making more of a heat haze than the desert, an thankfully initial fears about early movie sound technology making her German accent seem laughable to U.S. audience were unfounded; her voice is as much an asset to her magnetic presence as are her gently sceptical eyes and swaying hips. It's good too, to see Gary Cooper who, like Dietrich, was on the verge of several decades of stardom. He subtly underplays his role, remaining calmly unintimidated by Dietrich. Cooper expresses himself with small movements, especially of his eyes; but perhaps his character is a bit too obviously mysterious.

It was the intriguing enigmas of Dietrich and Cooper that made this film such a success - Paramount was not doing well at the end of the 20's - but one is aware of the unseen presence of the legendary Josef von Sternberg, without whose touch Dietrich could never have been so fascinating.

Review by Martin Hunt
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94