Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

during his extended sojourn in the islands, where Murnau lingered
as long as possible, before returning to California and his death.
A recent book by anthropologist Johannes Fabian, “Out of Our
Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa”,
deals with the ethical, moral, and prejudicial baggage European
explorers brought with them to what they typically called “the dark
continent.” Unlike the aforementioned Sir Richard Burton, who
ultimately converted to his own personally mystical brand of Islam,
and T. E. Lawrence, who began to believe that he could be more
Arab than the Arabs, most of the Europeans maintained a rigidity,
presuming European values to be superior, by definition, to those
they found among the indigenous people.
Part of Fabian’s book deals with an encounter
between an 1881 German expedition and a
tribe known as “the children of hemp.” These
people had created an entire religion around
hemp-smoking which made hemp, in Fabian’s
words, “a cultural and political symbol capable
of creating a sense of identity.” As a result of
this cult, “the children of hemp” became
essentially vegetarian, non-violent, and
unashamed of their nakedness. Fabian posits
that the Germans’ encounter with the hempsmokers
may have enabled them to
temporarily throw off the shackles of
European convention and treat the Africans as
people of intrinsic worth, in spite of their
cultural differences. “By relaxing normal
tensions and perceptions, hemp might have
helped to create a unique zone where the two
could mingle, if distantly.” If this seems
improbable, perhaps we should remember that
the leading visual chronicler of the most
rigidly racist and totalitarian regime in
European history, Leni Riefenstahl, has
devoted much of her career to the idealization
of the African male nude.
It is not for me to argue that Josef von
Sternberg’s depiction of Morocco, his exotic tapestry of costumes,
customs, and architecture, is accurate or moves beyond stereotype
and caricature. A man whom Sternberg refers to as the Pasha of
Marrakech did question the director on why he hadn’t paid him a
visit while making the film in his country, or so Sternberg reports in
his autobiography. I cannot vouch for whether Moroccan women
actually followed legionnaires barefoot into the desert, pulling their
goats behind them. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to argue that any
of the Moroccan people depicted in Sternberg’s film are more than
decorous objects contributing to the atmosphere. Their only entrance
53 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001
Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in
Morocco, Joseph von Sternberg (1930).
Courtesy of the Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne