Morocco (1930)
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Mogador, Morocco. Late 1920s. A complex romance develops between a womanizing Legionnaire and a disillusioned Parisian cabaret singer.
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What critics compared Morocco to
Anna May Wong, the leading Asian American idol of the period, is the obvious model for Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), though Fay’s very public smooching of a woman is more of a nod to Marlene Dietrich, in “Morocco” (1930).
She owns the party, as Anna May Wong once did, but this time with Dietrich swagger as she recreates the famous same-sex kiss from Morocco (1930).
You could make a season of films like that, and it would have to include Griffith and Lillian Gish (Broken Blossoms); von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich (Morocco, The Devil is a Woman); Antonioni and Monica Vitti (L’Avventura); Hawks and Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not); Capra and Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman, The Bitter Tea of General Yen); Godard and Anna Karina (Vivre Sa Vie, Pierrot le Fou); Ingmar Bergman and nearly every actress he worked with (Persona, Cries and Whispers, Summer with Monika); Hitchcock and Grace Kelly (Rear Window), and Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie); and Truffaut and Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim) and Truffaut and Catherine Deneuve (Mississippi Mermaid).
Still, this romantic aspect of Allied is uninteresting, mostly because it lacks the sensual, existential suspense that made Josef von Sternberg’s Dishonored and Morocco transcend politics.