Morocco is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou. Based on the 1927 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 considered scandalous for the period.
Plot
thumb|thumbtime=15|Morocco (1930)|left
In Mogador, Morocco in the late 1920s, a unit of the French Foreign Legion returns from a campaign, among them 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 audience members, 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 Adjutant 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 the two become acquainted. Amy 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. She asks him to leave.
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; they go back to her house. Madame Caesar hires two ruffians to attack Tom, but he seriously wounds both.
The next day, Tom is brought before Caesar, Tom's commanding officer, for injuring the two natives. Amy testifies 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 Amalfa Pass. Suspecting that Caesar intends to rid himself of his romantic rival, Tom decides to desert and run away with Amy.
Tom goes to Amy's nightclub dressing room. He overhears La Bessière offer to marry her and her polite rejection, 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 gave 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, after a drunken, miserable night, 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. He responds, "I don't know. You see, they love their men."
On the way to Amalfa 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 learns that Tom's detachment has returned. 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. Amy goes to a bar where Tom is, briefly talks with him, and when he leaves, finds he carved into the table the name "Amy Jolly" and a heart.
The next morning, Amy and La Bessière watch Tom's new unit preparing to march away. Tom and Amy briefly speak, then wave goodbye. When Amy sees a handful of women following the legionnaires, she impulsively leaves La Bessière, kicks off her high-heeled shoes, and joins them, following Tom into the desert.
Cast
thumb|right|L–R: La Bessière (Adolphe Menjou) and Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich)
- Gary Cooper as Légionnaire Tom Brown
- Marlene Dietrich as Mademoiselle Amy Jolly
- Adolphe Menjou as Monsieur La Bessière
- Ullrich Haupt as Adjutant Caesar
- Eve Southern as Madame Caesar
- Francis McDonald as Sergeant Tatoche
- Paul Porcasi as Lo Tinto
Uncredited (in order of appearance)
- Albert Conti as Colonel Quinnovieres
- Thomas A. Curran as a nightclub patron
- Émile Chautard as French General
- Michael Visaroff as Colonel Alexandre Barratière
- Juliette Compton as Anna Dolores, a woman who clings to Tom
- Theresa Harris as a camp follower
Background
Even before Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel was released to global acclaim in 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.
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. 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.
Production
The character of Amy was toned down considerably from the novel. As in the book, in the film the name aimee jolie (French for "beloved and pretty") is meant ironically as Amy is portrayed as a fallen star past her prime, a desperately lonely woman lost in despair who has gone to Morocco to die. However, in the book, the character of Amy was a prostitute and a drug addict, both of which were unacceptable even under the looser censorship in 1930 Hollywood, and these aspects of Amy's character were removed from the film during the script-writing. Likewise, the ending was changed from the book to the film. In the book, Amy abandons Tom and at the conclusion of the novel, boards a ship to Buenos Aires. Sternberg disliked the ending in the book, and gave the film the more romantic ending where Amy chooses to be with Brown by going with him into the Sahara.
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." This was Lux Radio's debut broadcast from Hollywood, following its move from New York City.
Reception
Premiering in New York City on December 6, 1930, Moroccos success at the box office was "immediate and impressive".
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]."
In a contemporary review, the French critic Michel Vauclaire wrote: "Every year in the US, half a dozen novels are published about the Legion, in general very severe and quite fantastic. It's obviously on this sort of fiction that Sternberg has based his research. Perhaps the film reflects the American public's idea of the Legionaries. In France, despite its dramatic pretensions, it will raise a laugh".
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.
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.
Box Office
Director von Sternberg reported in his 1965 autobiography that producer Adolph Zukor informed him that Paramount “had been saved from bankruptcy” by the box office success of Morocco.
Retrospective appraisal
Charles Silver, curator at the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film, offers this assessment of Morocco: