page_title: Josef von Sternberg
section_title: Morocco (1930) and Dishonored (1931)
hierarchical_section_title: Josef von Sternberg / Paramount: 1927–1935 / The Sternberg-Dietrich Hollywood Collaborations: 1930–1935 / Morocco (1930) and Dishonored (1931)
caption_attribution_description: English: Dishonored (1931), on set, black and white photo, left to right: Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich. Paramount Pictures
context_page_description: Josef von Sternberg born Jonas Sternberg, 29 May 1894 – 22 December 1969 was an Austrian-American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the silent to the sound era, during which he worked with most of the major Hollywood studios. He is best known for his film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s, including the highly regarded Paramount/UFA production, The Blue Angel.
  Sternberg's finest works are noteworthy for their striking pictorial compositions, dense décor, chiaroscuro illumination and relentless camera motion, endowing the scenes with emotional intensity. He is also credited with initiating the gangster film genre with his silent era movie Underworld. Sternberg's themes typically offer the spectacle of an individual's desperate struggle to maintain their personal integrity as they sacrifice themselves for lust or love.
  He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Morocco and Shanghai Express.
context_section_description: Seeking to capitalize on the immense European success of The Blue Angel, though not yet released to American audiences, Paramount launched the Hollywood production of Morocco, an intrigue-romance starring Gary Cooper, Dietrich and Adolphe Menjou. The all-out promotional campaign declared Dietrich "the woman all women want to see", providing a fascinated public with salacious hints about her private life and adding to the star's glamor and notoriety. The fan press inserted an erotic component into her collaboration with Sternberg, encouraging Trilby-Svengali analogies. The publicity tended to distract critics from the genuine merits of the five movies that would follow and overshadowing the significance of Sternberg's lifetime cinematic output.
  Morocco serves as Sternberg's exploration of Dietrich's aptitude for conveying onscreen his own obsession with "feminine mystique", a mystique that allowed for a sexual interplay blurring the distinction between male and female gender stereotypes. Sternberg demonstrates his fluency in the visual vocabulary of love: Dietrich dresses in drag and kisses a pretty female; Cooper flourishes a ladies' fan and places a rose behind his ear. In terms of romantic complexity, Morocco "is Sternberg's Hollywood movie par excellence".
  The box-office success of Morocco was such that both Sternberg and Dietrich were awarded with contracts for three more films and generous increases in salary. The film earned Academy Award nominations in four categories.
  Dishonored, Sternberg's second Hollywood film, featuring Dietrich opposite Victor McLaglen, was completed before Morocco was released. A film of considerable levity but plot-wise one of his slightest works, this espionage-thriller is a sustained romp through the vicissitudes of spy-versus-spy deception and desire. The feature closes with the melodramatic military execution of Dietrich's Agent X-27 (based on Dutch spy Mata Hari), the love-struck femme fatale, a scene that balances "gallantry and ghoulishness."
caption: Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich as Agent X-27 on the set of Dishonored.
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