Exploring Morocco: Marlene Dietrich’s Cinema Allure

When Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco premiered in 1930, it didn’t just launch Marlene Dietrich into Hollywood stardom — it redefined how cinema could capture allure, longing, and sacrifice. With Gary Cooper’s smoldering restraint, Adolphe Menjou’s cultivated charm, and Dietrich’s tuxedo-clad defiance, the film offered audiences something intoxicatingly modern, even in its colonial-era trappings.

Set against the backdrop of the French Foreign Legion, Morocco is more than a romance — it’s a meditation on choice, freedom, and the impossible pull between desire and rationality. From Dietrich’s infamous tuxedo-and-kiss nightclub scene to the haunting finale where she walks barefoot into the desert after Cooper, the film lingers in the imagination nearly a century later.

In the latest episode of Filmtrospective: Beyond Oblivious, we unpack it all — from the film’s Pre-Code audacity to von Sternberg’s meticulous direction, and the themes of sacrifice, performance, and myth that still resonate today.

Listen here:

Selected Sources:

• American Film Institute. AFI Catalog of Feature Films. AFI. https://catalog.afi.com/
• Academia.edu. “The Body of Marlene Dietrich in the Films of Josef von Sternberg.” Accessed October 3, 2025. https://www.academia.edu/11955920/
• Baxter, John. The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1971.
• Baxter, John. Von Sternberg. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010.
• China Rhyming. “Josef von Sternberg Week #1 – Amy Jolly’s Chinese Doll.” https://chinarhyming.wordpress.com/
• Eisenstein, Sergei. Immoral Memories: An Autobiography. Translated by Herbert Marshall. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
• Film Museum Berlin. (2000). Morocco. Newsletter No. 19. News19.PDF
• Inside Out. “Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco.” Museum of Modern Art, July 13, 2010. https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/07/13/josef-von-sternbergs-morocco/
• Lemay, Kate. Marlene Dietrich: Dressed for the Image. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2018.
• Donna Ross. Morocco. Library of Congress. film essay for “Morocco”
• Peuker, Bridgette. Aesthetic Spaces: The Place of Art in Film. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019.
• Sarris, Andrew. The Films of Josef von Sternberg. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.
• Sternberg, Josef von. Fun in a Chinese Laundry. New York: Macmillan, 1988.
• Weinberg, Herman G. Josef von Sternberg. New York: Barnes, 1966.
• The Lenci Doll Collector. “Celebrity Favorites: Marlene’s Mascots.” http://lenci-doll-collector.blogspot.com/