Marlene Dietrich portrays the Femme Fatale Amy Jolly in the 1930 film Morocco. The first thing that stood out to me was the seductive way that Dietrich was portrayed in the classic “Femme Fatale” form and the use of shadows in the film that encouraged it. This movie caused me to think about portrayals and receptions. How Dietrich is portrayed by the media and how she is then received by us. Richard Dyer in his introduction to his book Heavenly Bodies talks about perception. “How we appear is no less real than how we have manufactured that appearance, or than the ‘we’ that is doing the manufacturing” (2). In this instance, the production company and publicists of Marlene Dietrich are doing the manufacturing.
In Morocco, Dietrich is often portrayed in shadow and with particularly alluring makeup. Her eye makeup is dark and highlights her lid space, making her seem like she has her eyes half open all the time, a seductive look. The features that are important to seduction (eyes, lips, etc) are accented with dark makeup. Her face is also often in shadow in important scenes. It may not be fully in shadow, but shadows work to conceal part of her and highlight other parts.
This gives her a mysterious air that is also alluring. She is a sexual object but not like Monroe where there is an innocent, dumb blonde sexuality to her. Instead, she embodies the idea of the Femme Fatale. As quoted in lecture, “The French phrase ‘femme fatale’ literally means ‘deadly woman’, which understates the human embodiment of lust and peril, that intoxicating allure of sex and death that makes these creatures so fascinating. The femme fatale is a sleek and sensuous creature, dangerous either physically or emotionally to her victims’ (Jame Ursini and Dominique Mainon, Femme fatale, 1). This is portrayed in Morocco quite blatantly. The main phrase that sticks in my mind in her visual portrayal is “Sleek and Sensuous”. I noticed that she is often portrayed in doorways or against columns when she is meant to be alluring. This elongates her body. In one particular scene (pictured here):
She is wearing a unitard and thus her long, hairless legs are exposed. She is literally sleek and visually sensuous. And, as stated before, the camera plays with shadows and angles to accentuate this image. All these come together to show the femme fatale nature of not only her character but also her star persona.
This shadowy vision of Dietrich is also seen in the photos of week 3’s lectures. Here is one of them:
Notice that her face is encapsulated in shadows. It adds that mysterious, dangerous air to her. This is the same way she is portrayed in Morocco. Her eye makeup is dark and heavy, accentuating that half-lidded seductiveness. She is wearing dark clothing. Her lipstick is dark, too. This stands out against her pale skin and accentuates those features. This works with Dyers point “…the whole media construction of stars encourages us to think in terms of ‘really’ – what is Crawford really like?” (2). She cannot escape from the way the media wants her to be seen by others. This convinces me that the femme fatale portrayal is not simply in one movie, but instead is the essence of her star persona’s sexual allure.
What also stood out to me was the interesting gender-bending in the beginning of the film, when Dietrich performs her stage piece in a man’s suit, sings an Italian song while smoking a cigarette, and kisses another woman at the end. For the 1930’s, this seems so progressive and I was surprised when I first viewed the film.
On the other hand, the gender bending in this scene seems to be more for comedic effect. Her voice is still high and light. She is still seductive in her appearance. She wears makeup that accentuates her eyes and makes them doe-eyes, fox like, and seductive by making the eyelids dark. She is aloof and mysterious and embodies that “femme fatale” image that Dietrich is known for. She even makes prolonged eye contact with men in this scene. At the end of her performance, when she kisses another woman, it is treated as a joke by the audience.
Her sexuality and gender performance is clearly not one to be taken seriously. The producers are sure to convey the idea that this is not what is expected of women and should only be a humorous performance, not a serious performance of sexuality and gender expression.
