Amy Jolly ain’t so jocose, a suicidal passenger with a one-way ticket for Mogador, her past evaporated like tears in the dry desert heat. Director Josef von Sternberg and his DP Lee Garmes beautifully capture the exotic and dreamlike quality of this desert frontier, where transients exist like castaways on their own desert island. Shadows cross-hatched upon marching soldiers and Muslims bowing towards Mecca, the smoky ghost-like haze of the nightlife, and the perfectly lighted visage of Marlene Dietrich, help elevates this seemingly mundane plot towards its legendary status. Lee Garmes captures one long tracking shot of Dietrich who is urgently searching a marching company of Legionnaires for Tom Brown, hoping he survived the battle. These long scenes with scores of extras, camels and donkeys add verisimilitude to the fantasy elements of the plot. Von Sternberg eschews a score and allows long periods of silence to be drawn out an extra moment or two, as the actors can emote without rambling dialogue by using just their bodies or a pregnant pause in a conversation, leaving unsaid what is obvious or expected. Adolphe Menjou is exceptional as Jolly’s glum compatriot who loves her unconditionally, and even helps her towards her final (fatal?) decision. Dietrich as the cabaret singer and apple-pusher imbues her character with a fierce independence yet tempers that with forlornness, and her love for Tom Brown is never quite explained or directly depicted, but neither is it criticized especially by her wealthy beau. It’s quite refreshing to see a romantic melodrama subvert genre tropes and give us a tale, not of jealousy and abandonment, but of one woman’s intense determination to control her own fate.
Marlene Dietrich’s gender-bending cabaret performance is still awe-inspiring almost 100 years later, dressed in a man’s tuxedo and top hat, her swagger like slow ecstasy as she owns the stage and eventually the entire audience. The men who are quick to impart their patriarchal entitlement by a simple gesture or look, men who expect subordination are dispatched by her flirty callousness. When she approaches a woman and kisses her on the mouth, she has taken complete control of her sexuality! Yet she makes eyes with Legionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) and secretly trades her apple for his original sin (in the form of her key). A one-night stand that doesn’t lead to copulation but insubordination and Brown’s dangerous reassignment. The weak link to the film is Gary Cooper, a tall, handsome man with a monotone voice and expressionless inflection. Yet this imperfection is exploited by Von Sternberg allowing Dietrich to dominate their scenes with her strident femininity. And that final shot of Amy Jolly, her expensive high heels kicked to the sands as she joins the Rear-Guard, becomes poignant. Von Sternberg and DP Lee Garmes hold the shot forever, as Tom Brown and his company of soldiers march to the military cadence and vanish over the dunes, and the women who follow then stride to the tune of their own hearts, disappearing into the sands like desert ghosts.
Final Grade: (B+)