Instant replay classics: ‘Morocco’ (1930)

Morocco is very far away, another world entirely – that’s what the camera tells you as it sweeps across the map and stops on the town of Mogador on the edge of nowhere. It is hot, dusty, reeking of danger.

Of course this is not really Morocco but Josef von Sternberg’s idea of Morocco, executed on a studio backlot by some harried production designer. This is cinema, not fact, and I, for one, prefer cinema.

A man in flowing robes pulls a recalcitrant donkey. The time seems to be early 20th century, but it could be no time in particular: past, present, and future simultaneous on a screen. The Foreign Legion comes to town, and that means trouble. The gruff sergeant warns his men that the world is not a barrel of schnapps with women swimming on top, and that’s when you lay eyes on Private Tom Brown. He is tall, lean, and handsome to the point of absurdity. He is, of course, the young Gary Cooper, always seemingly lost in thought. When he looks at you, you are the center of the universe; then he looks away and you do not exist.

Meanwhile, on a boat, we meet the entertainer Amy Jolly. One look from Marlene Dietrich tells you that Amy is world-weary yet hopeful.

Marlene is also an idea of von Sternberg’s – a heavy, masculine fraulein transformed by tricks of light and wardrobe into an icon of desire.

She drops her suitcase and her things scatter on the deck. A nice gentleman helps her collect them. She thanks him in her low, smoky voice. He is Adolphe Menjou, one of the richest men in Paris. Clearly she has made an impression; he asks the ship’s captain about her.

Suicide passenger, the captain informs him, on a one-way ticket. Like countless people before her, she will disappear into the desert and never be seen again.

Then we are in the nightclub and the buffoonish manager is briefing Marlene (Let’s not call her Amy, she is the eternal Marlene) about life in Morocco. Pick a protector, he says. Adolph Menjou is in the audience, with the adjutant Cesar and his wife; Mr. Menjou is so rich he can associate with whomever he pleases. Marlene walks onstage in a black tie and tails, all effrontery, with more than a slight tinge of the perverse. The crowd boos and jeers – everyone but Coop, who claps his hands. He urges the other legionnaires to applaud, and if they don’t he smacks them. Marlene considers Coop, cigarette smoke issuing from her elegant nostrils. She starts singing a song in French and wins over the tough crowd. She walks up to a table, accepts a drink, stares at an attractive woman. May I have that flower? Marlene asks.

Of course, the woman giggles. Marlene takes it, eyes the woman, shyly leans over and kisses her on the lips. Then she looks at the audience in the pit, the rabble, and tosses the flower at Coop. He puts the flower behind his ear. The woman he was with leaves in a huff. He has, in fact, been with many of the women in this place, including Cesar’s wife (Get it?), who tries in vain to catch his eye.

For her next number Marlene emerges in what appears to be a bathing suit, with a basket of apples. What am I bid for my apples, she sings, and she walks through the audience, selling them. Adolphe Menjou pays too much for an apple, then asks if he might see her after the show.

She replies that she’s made other plans. She goes down into the pit with the apples and offers one to Coop. He borrows 20 francs from a friend and notes that two weeks’ pay seems too much for one apple.

She says he can have it for free, and he retorts that he always pays his own way. The soldiers cheer. Marlene hands Coop his change. It’s the key to her room.

On his way there he’s accosted by Mrs. Cesar, badly disguised. He turns her down and goes to Marlene’s room. He’s been there before, with the previous occupant. Marlene and Coop make casual banter, but there’s nothing casual about what’s happening here. It’s momentous, spectacular, and demented, the way passion is in black-and-white movies and in the imagination of lunatics. She declines to kiss him.

They are both tired of life. Anybody who has faith in me is a sucker, he declares. Better go now, she says, I’m beginning to like you.

I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before, Coop begins in his yup-nope-aw-shucks manner. Will he tell her? Is it possible? They just met! But this is Morocco the movie; reality doesn’t figure into it, and I don’t know about you, but that’s one thing I love about the movies…