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Josef von Sternberg - Morocco (1930)

Posted By: amlo01

Date: 30 Jul 2011 03:48:27

Josef von Sternberg - Morocco (1930)
DVD-Rip | MKV x264 at 2 000 Kbps | 720 x 560 (1.402) at 25.000 fps | AC-3 at 192 Kbps (2 ch) 48.0 KHz
Language: English | Subtitles: English & French | Runtime: 1h 28mn | 1.35 GiB
Sourced from "De Marlene Dietrich Collectie" (Indies, 2009) | Genres: Drama, Romance

Cast: Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou

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 @ allrovi.com)

Review by Lucia Bozzola @ allrovi:
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.

Review by Felicia Feaster @ tcm:
Unfolding with a strange, dreamlike logic, Morocco (1930), director Josef von Sternberg's first American film, follows the beautiful Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) to the only possible destination for a love-burned, down-on-her-luck cabaret singer: the arid African city of the title.

Wealthy Mons. Le Bessiere (Adolphe Menjou) spies the gorgeous Amy alone on the ship's deck as it makes its way to that desert lair of thieves, Foreign Legionnaires and various luckless souls. Le Bessiere is immediately enthralled and offers to escort Amy around Morocco. But Amy is a woman of great resourcefulness and talent, who quickly adapts to Morocco's strange ways, as seen in her first musical performance in a disreputable local bar populated by sophisticates and riffraff alike.

Dressed in a man's tuxedo and dragging on a cigarette, Amy sings to the enraptured crowd who respond instantly to her smoldering, androgynous sensuality. As a saucy finale, Amy plants a kiss on a pretty female member of the audience, titillating a handsome Foreign Legionnaire in the audience, Tom Brown (Gary Cooper). The womanizing Brown has pledged himself to service in the Foreign Legion with no ties to any woman, but is soon fantasizing about desertion when he meets Amy. Equally taken with Brown, Amy is forced to make a difficult decision, between the wealth and stability of life with Le Bessiere who proposes marriage, and her smoldering passion for Brown.

Morocco was von Sternberg's and Marlene Dietrich's first American film after an unforgettable introduction to the international film community with their collaboration on The Blue Angel (1930). Lovingly photographed by her frequent collaborator von Sternberg, Dietrich is ravishing in Morocco, often at the expense of Cooper, who was angered at the attention the director lavished on his leading lady while virtually ignoring him. Originally the film had been titled Amy Jolly, The Woman of Marrakesh. But Cooper, again fearing that too much of the picture's focus was being placed on Dietrich, pressured the studio to change the title to Morocco.

Though von Sternberg and Cooper developed a strong dislike for one another during the making of Morocco, Cooper and Dietrich were reportedly more amicable and their onscreen romance soon became an off-screen one as well. The combination of Dietrich's smoky exoticism and Cooper's all-American machismo somehow worked despite the incongruity and the pair would go on to appear as lovers once again in Desire (1936), directed by Frank Borzage. Later in life, Dietrich was more candid about her co-star, remarking that "Cooper was neither intelligent nor cultured. Just like the other actors, he was chosen for his physique, which, after all, was more important than an active brain."

Von Sternberg, who made a total of seven films with Dietrich, controlled every aspect of his prized star's performance and appearance. He placed her on a strict diet, made sure her onscreen voice had the desired throaty, sexy timbre and even oversaw the plucking of her eyebrows to ensure the proper accent for her eyes. It was also the director who designed the ideal lighting for Dietrich. The actress recalled, "the light source created my mysterious-looking face with hollow cheeks, effected by putting the key light near the face and very high over it." Von Sternberg was equally famous for continually correcting Dietrich's heavily accented English.

Dietrich was von Sternberg's creation in many regards. Early on he saw something in this ordinary girl born Maria Magdalena von Losch that caused him to pluck her from the obscurity of small parts in German films. He transformed her into an improbably gorgeous, mysterious dream-woman whose sexual appeal was rarely matched in her films for other high profile directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Rene Clair, Raoul Walsh, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles.

Cinematographer Lee Garmes, von Sternberg, art director Hans Dreier and Dietrich were all nominated for Oscars for their work on Morocco. And the film proved a spectacular success at the box office as well, earning a phenomenal $2 million for Paramount Studios and ensuring a place in film history for an unknown German actress whose name soon became synonymous with movie glamour.

IMDB

MediaInfo

DVD-Rip MKV x264 | 720 x 544 | 0.2 bpp | AC-3 192 Kbps | English & French subs
Sourced from "De Marlene Dietrich Collectie" (2009) - Indies Home Entertainment (Netherlands)

General
File Name : Morocco (1930).mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 1.35 GiB
Duration : 1h 28mn
Overall bit rate : 2 196 Kbps

Video
Format : AVC High@L3.0
Resolution : 720 x 560 pixels
Bit rate : 2 000 Kbps
Aspect ratio : 1.402
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits per Pixel : 0.198 bit/pixel

Audio 0
Format : AC-3
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Language : English

Subtitle 0
Format : VobSub
Language : English

Subtitle 1
Format : VobSub
Language : French

My rip. Thank You BlackAnchor @ Demonoid

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