Morocco (1930)

• Directed by Josef von Sternberg.

• Screenplay adapted by Jules Furthman, from the play “Amy Jolly” by Benno Vigny.

• This is a re-watch.

• So…we find ourselves in Morocco – where the lives of Tom Brown (a Légionnaire on temporary leave, played by Gary Cooper), Monsieur La Bessier (a richling hobbyist painter & frequent visitor to the area, played by Adolphe Menjou) & Amy Jolly (an entertainer hoping to gain steady employment at one of the local hotspots, played by Marlene Dietrich) converge.

(For terminology’s sake, Jolly is identified to La Bessier (by a ferry employee) as a “suicide passenger” – that is, a possessor of a one-way boat ticket & a very little amount of hope.)

• Immediately, the physical gorgeousness of both 29-year-old Cooper & 29-year-old Dietrich is striking; yes, it’s true that much can be said about their acting talents & eventual mastery of their crafts – but like…also, they are beautiful, beautiful people, and the combination of their screen presences here is rather staggering.

It’s easy, when watching this film, to completely lose track of the dialogue that’s being exchanged or the narrative pieces being unfurled while one of them is onscreen, because their very presences command attention; every glance, gesture, & expression – particularly when they’re together – is mesmerizing.

• ClubOwner Bro (thanks to IMDb, I have at long last discovered that this man’s name is “Lo Tinto”)(played by Paul Porcasi)’s earring is awkwardly large.

Hey, Mr. Morocco – why don’t you find a more balanced piece of jewelry in one of those excellent nearby marketplaces? Are you not concerned that in a few years, you will develop neck problems due to one side of your head being consistently heavier than the other? Will your head become permanently tilty??? Tiltman, have you ever considered wearing your monocle on the other eyeball, so as to offset your facial accessory weight???

• The shot of AJ/Dietrich calmly, interestedly looking through gentle puffs of smoke down at Tom/Cooper, who’s attempting to hush all of the booing rudelings in the audience – is beautiful.

Also, that Tom is literally the only club patron to greet the new performer with enthusiasm & applause is great.

• All of the above, well-deserved compliments aside – it’s never really made much sense to me how Ms. Jolly’s first (let’s just call it like it is: boring as hell) performance generates such an immediately ecstatic response from the (just-a-few-seconds-ago-unreceptive) audience. What the fuck other performances must they have witnessed here recently for Amy Jolly’s one, semi-decent song to make them that raucously happy?! Were the last performers at this club just outright goons?!

Anyway, in the end, it’s like – …BUT – it’s Marlene in a top hat. So I’ll allow it.

• The opposing images of Dietrich in said (ICONIC as FUCK) top hat & Cooper with the Jolly-gifted flower behind his ear are brilliantly pleasing in a way that’s difficult (impossible?) to articulate.

• I can’t stand Adolphe Menjou’s character in this film. He’s just such a goddamn tramp, basking in his richling-bachelor entitlement from minute one.

If in real life, I had that dude hand me his card – you can bet your ass I’d tear it to shreds equally as fast as Amy Jolly rips it up here. Ain’t no one got time for rich-ass scoundrels like that. No thank you, pass.

• Can we all agree on how impressive it is that Amy Jolly arrived in this town this afternoon…and already has all of these photographs unpacked, arranged, & hung on her walls? I mean – I get it – & it tells you a lot about her as a person, that she does this (i.e., that she’s done a shit-ton of moving, unpacking, & repacking, and that these pictures must be a source of great comfort to her, for her to so prioritize their display) – but it doesn’t make the feat any less impressive. (Can she, like…help me fold my laundry some time? Her focus & industriousness seems on point.)

• “‘Husband’? I never found a man good enough for that.” — Amy Jolly

Sister……PREACH.

• Amy: “I understand that men are never asked why they enter the Foreign Legion.”

Tom: “That’s right. They never asked me – and if they had, I wouldn’t have told. When I crashed the Legion, I ditched the past.”

Amy: “There’s a Foreign Legion of women, too. But we have no uniforms. No flags. And no medals, when we are brave.”

• When Tom leaves that first night, & Amy sits where he’s just been sitting & makes that (very first) farewell finger gesture? Crazy endearing.

• Another simple-yet-complex, character-revealing detail is Tom/Cooper’s fan toss as he’s walking out. He haphazardly, coolly flicks the fan away, onto the floor, as though he could not give less of a shit about any of this…and then stops – picks it up – and places it with neat intention on the nearby table. I find this SO fantastic.

• Marlene straight-up thefts Wifey Dear’s man while they’re all in the same goddamn doorway! Tom’s like, ‘Hello, pal, you seem appeali – – WHAT’S UP AMY JOLLY I LIKE YOU BETTER I’MA LEAVE THIS SHADOWLAND DOORWAY WITH YOU INSTEAD.’

Hahaha. All while Suspicious McHusband watches from around the corner.

(I love it.)

(Oh, and in case anyone finds this important: “Wifey Dear” = “Madame Caesar” (Eve Southern), “Suspicious McHusband” = “Adjutant Caesar” (Ullrich Haupt).)

(Honestly, by the end of this film…I always manage to forget that it’s not just a three-person show, you know? The reality is that there are other key people around, pretty much the whole damn time – but the ending is so powerfully commanding & focus-drawing – once it occurs, none of these other jokers seem to really matter anymore. When you/we get there…you’ll completely understand, trust me.)

• “Every time a man has helped me, there has been a price. What’s yours?” — AJ, to La Bessier.

• I love how Gary Cooper is consistently too tall to make it through literally any of these doorways without ducking.

• La Bessier, bro – take your shiny, rich-person bracelet & shove it up your possessive, favor-seeking ass.

Ugh. These actions, when he knows – surely & clearly – that AJ wants someone else.

What a fucking smarm.

• The incredible thing about this movie is…from a vocal dialogue standpoint, Marlene Dietrich’s & Gary Cooper’s performances aren’t really that great. Their line deliveries are both often off, in terms of rhythm & emphasis, & Cooper’s expressions don’t always reflect the tone they’re meant to. And yet – and yet – these performances are wildly successful; they subsist & are driven by an inordinate amount of charisma, on both actors’ accounts…which is just head-shakingly wonderful to think about.

(Here, it’s crucial to note that hi – this is 1930, so the ‘sound films’ medium (& both actors’ careers in it) is brand new; it’s been pretty firmly reported that Dietrich – not yet comfortable with the English language – memorized her lines for this film entirely phonetically, while Cooper – having skipped right past any sort of formal theater training, straight into silent films – was navigating a whole new acting skillset. All of this is to say – there are reasons their dialogue delivery is less-than-perfect, here…and they more than make up for it with the visual, emotion-conveying aspects of their performances.)

• For the record: Tom’s heartbreaker mirror message to AJ reads:

“I changed my mind. Good luck.”

• Three cheers for Revengey McHusband being dead, amiright?!

• The set design of La Bessier’s Fancy-Man House is flat-out delicious. All of the embellishment & designery? Magnificent.

• “You don’t have to worry about him,” AJ says to Le Fiancé, roughly five minutes before she fucking abandons their engagement dinner to go chase after the man in question.

Nice try, Amy Jolly. Sincerely great effort.

Baha!

• AJ frantically eyeball-questing the marching crowd of returned Legionnaires reminds me of the train station scene in REDS (1981)…just without the corresponding payoff.

• Both Marlene Dietrich & Gary Cooper smash the hell out of the back-room-of-the-bar sequence of scenes. The intention behind each one of their glances – both at & away from each other – is utterly, weep-worthily fantastic. If you’re re-watching this film – or you’re seeing it for the first time – please take a pause to watch this sequence, paying exclusive attention to Dietrich & Cooper’s eyes, and the tremendous amount they’re able to communicate with/through them. It’s pretty amazing.

The other method of communication magnificently utilized in this set of scenes is gestural movement; similar to the way both actors’ glances are used, every gesture – no matter how slight – matters. In this vein, I have 5 favorites (yes, I know – the sequence is only about 3 minutes long. Still, I have 5):

1. AJ reaching over to lift the intentionally-lowered bill of Tom’s cap, so that she can look him in the eyes, following her charmingly brutal “I don’t change my mind” line.

2. Tom nearly placing his hand on AJ’s shoulder in farewell, but reaching past it to grab his drink from the table, instead.

3. The way that, through the above-described occurrence of motion, & Tom leaving the room, AJ just keeps spinning her fan on the table, at a consistent pace, staring at it and/or the table…until Tom walks back in.

4. The wordless, consciously gentle motion with which Tom takes his knife from AJ’s hands, following his unannounced & unacknowledged doorway re-entry.

5. The flawlessly genuine way in which Dietrich shift-shuffles the playing cards to reveal the ‘Amy Jolly’ heart carved beneath them, after Tom has made his second exit.

—

Last thing, regarding this section of film – I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on the magically selected & potently placed piano melody that intermittently backs it. As simple of a detail as it seems to be – that little tune directs the tone & pacing of the sequence’s tension…and the scene(s) wouldn’t play nearly as effectively, were it removed.

• (Also…Tom Brown really likes his furniture messages, huh?!)

• The entire final sequence makes me forget to breathe – from the moment AJ honks that car horn & Tom turns around, grinning – to the moment ‘The End’ pops up on the screen. The backing of the narrative action by the trumpet blows & drumbeats of the Legion’s marching accompaniment – that immensely powerful image of the kicked-off-in-the-sand high heels – and that final, low camera angle…static as we watch AJ & the medal-less unit of Brave Women recede into the sandy distance, paired with the perfectly designed sound of the fading band, mixed with the whistling desert wind…?

My God.

• What a motherfucking exquisite movie this is. It is so unique, so artfully constructed from a narrative standpoint (this is the prime, masterclass example of the ‘less is more’ MovieWorld concept that I’m always raving about) – and so ridiculously well-cast, it’s unbelievable.

• A fucking desert full of gold stars – tossed recklessly on the floor…and then yes – meticulously & attentively stacked with great care on a LOVE-CARVED-TO-SHREDS wooden table.

That, my friends, is the way I feel about MOROCCO.

• One last thing I’d like to explicitly acknowledge: regardless of which print you’re watching – the sound quality of this film is going to be rough. It’s the nature of it being made in 1930 – it just is what it is…but also – it doesn’t matter. And the reason it doesn’t matter is because this was crafted by a team of expert filmmakers straight out of the Silent Era – who were accustomed to telling a story visually, with minimal, un-hearable dialogue. Von Sternberg & cinematographer Lee Garmes (who, two years later, would win an Oscar for his work on another von Sternberg/Dietrich project, SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932)) really knew what the fuck they were doing. So, like…forget the crappy-sounding audio. Power through. You’ll still perfectly understand what you need to without it.

• Ultimately, when it comes to MOROCCO, I’m left thinking about this on-the-money exchange from OUT OF SIGHT (1998):

“It’s like…seeing someone for the first time – you could be passing on the street, and you look at each other – and for a few seconds, there’s a kind of recognition, like you know something. The next moment, the person’s gone – and it’s too late to do anything about it. And you always remember it, because it was there…and you let it go. And you think to yourself, ‘What if I had stopped? What if I had said something?’ What if. What if. It may only happen a few times in your life – – “

“Or once.”