Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou, Ullrich Haupt, Sr., Julie Compton, Eve Southern
Release Year: 1930
Country: US
Run Time: 92 minutes
Plot
Like so many campaigners before him, Gary Cooper joins the Foreign Legion to "forget." At a smoky cabaret in Morocco, Cooper meets café entertainer Marlene Dietrich (making her American film debut). A woman with a very checkered past, Dietrich toys with the callow Cooper, but eventually falls hopelessly in love with him, even to the extent of throwing over wealthy Adolphe Menjou. The now-famous final image of Morocco finds la Dietrich, decked out in her cabaret finery and wearing high heels, heading after Cooper's regiment across the desert with the rest of the "camp followers." There is considerably more to the story than that, but these bare-bones details should be enough to entice anyone familiar with the exotic eroticism of the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich vehicles. Should you need more enticement, let us inform you that Morocco is the film in which Marlene Dietrich, dressed in a man's tuxedo for her nightclub act, kisses a female patron squarely on the lips. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Director Josef von Sternberg transfers Marlene Dietrich's siren singer persona to northern Africa in their first American collaboration, pairing her with Foreign Legionnaire Gary Cooper. Dietrich's Amy Jolly is an sensuous figure of desire and mystery amid von Sternberg's signature mise-en-scene of lushly exotic surroundings, layered shadows, and gauzy fabrics. Her first nightclub performance exudes an androgynous eroticism that would define her star persona: although she eventually sacrifices everything to follow Cooper's Tom Brown across the visually arresting desert sands, the tuxedo-clad Amy accepts a flower from a female admirer and nonchalantly kisses her on the lips before tossing the flower to an equally smitten (and beautified) Cooper. Along with the stunning imagery, von Sternberg inventively used sound to enhance the atmosphere, particularly when Amy makes her final decision between a rich man and the Legionnaire she loves. A box office success, Morocco earned Oscar nominations for von Sternberg, Hollywood newcomer Dietrich, Lee Garmes's alluring cinematography, and Hans Dreier's interior decoration, and helped keep Paramount Pictures afloat as the Great Depression hit Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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".
