Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 22-January-12
Spoiler Rating: Low

Outpost in Morocco (1949)

If you ever crave a double feature of B movies about the French Foreign Legion, pair Outpost in Morocco with Desert Sands, which is another entry in The Jujube's "Desert Dreams" Spotlight series.* Outpost in Morocco begins with the distasteful premise of a captain being tapped to lead a mission because he is a slut. The mission involves escorting an Arab woman back to the home of her father, a powerful emir, and seducing her just enough so she reveals her father's potentially rebellious plans. The man chosen for the job is played by George Raft, a physically plain actor who exhibits as much liveliness as a tree stump. It requires a lot of imagination to accept him as a Casanova. The leading lady, Marie Windsor, doesn't make a convincing Arab either, but at least the movie mentions that her character has lived in France, which might explain her heavily Western appearance.

The mission proceeds according to plan; however, the daughter cannot provide information because she does not know what her father is up to, and the captain unexpectedly falls in love with her. At this point the focus switches to the Legionnaire outpost near the emir's home and its eccentric second-in-command (Akim Tamiroff), who fulfills the dual roles of comic sidekick and supplemental hero. After the emir reveals his hostile intentions, various infiltrations and skirmishes leave the heroine caught in the middle. The finale entails a troop of Arabs thundering across the desert for what feels like 20 minutes. While I enjoyed seeing the horses, I kept wondering if it were sound military strategy to exhaust them before the battle began just to make an impressively cinematic entrance.

One other detail of the movie pleased me, in addition to the horses and authentic North African locations. The emir complains that the English word "barbarian" is associated with his people, i.e., "Berbers" or natives of the "Barbary Coast." Outpost in Morocco is dopey, but not so stupid that it doesn't embrace etymology.

*See the Index by date for a list of other films in this month's series.

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