Moon Over Morocco (1931) User Reviews

Before the full moon,the five of you will die.....

[dbdumonteil · 7/10 · 24 December 2005]

...first you,then you,then...and you the last!In Morocco where they spend their vacation,one of the five gentlemen of the title tries to take off a young Moroccan girl's veil:up comes the sorcerer;he's cross and he curses the unfortunate young lads:before the full moon.... And they begin to die indeed:one gets drowned,the second is killed in a plane wreck,the third is stabbed to death in Volubilis ruins.... And then there were two...

Might the curse be true?

French critics generally hate this movie.Personally I love it.Call it Duvivier's holiday homework.He made the best of the splendid Moroccan landscapes .It was generally filmed on location and often seems like a blueprint for works to come,the celebrated "Pepe le Moko"notably :the aerial photographs of the roofs ,the hero ,more and more scared ,in the alleys of Fez (and Duvivier 's directing is as inventive as ever),the final chase where all the inhabitants of the town are involved .

The script is so exciting they could redo!Even the final unexpected twist,a thing that is so trendy nowadays, is present .And even if there are plot holes,do not forget it was filmed in 1931!

Harry-Baur's part is completely pointless,that's the main drawback.But all that remains will appeal to people who enjoy mystery,adventures comic strip and exoticism.

Five Against The Curse

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 26 July 2009]

Julien Duvivier, Harry Baur, Robert Le Vigan; three names who, each in a different way, define French Cinema as succinctly as Fred Astaire defines Style and Cole Porter defines Sophistication. In terms of Sound this was early work from all three but Director Duvivier had already given us his first (Silent) version of Poil de carrotte and shown what he could do with Sound in Au Bonheur des dames so it's no surprise to see his fine directorial skills on display. Almost thirty years later the pseuds at Cahiers du Cinema became orgasmic because the semi-amateur Jean-Luc Godard had actually taken a camera out of the studio and onto the street; incroyable; Duvivier, who left more high quality celluloid in trims on the Cutting-Room floor than Godard ever put on the screen, was doing it in 1931, shooting the bulk of this entry on location in Morocco and whilst it's not in the same league as his Pepe Le Moko which utilized the same setting it's light years away from chopped liver. The basic premise isn't exactly new - five guys on vacation, one attempts to remove the veil from the lower face of a native woman and all five are cursed and sentenced to die before the next full moon - but as ever it's what the filmmaker does with hackneyed plots that matters and what Duvivier does is fine.

Visually impressive, flawed elsewhere

[gridoon2024 · 6/10 · 14 June 2021]

In visual terms "Les Cinq Gentlemen Maudits" aka "Moon Over Morocco" is way ahead of most American early talkies I have seen: the camera moves with the freedom usually associated with silent films (at times this plays like a silent film with sound, if that makes sense), and the Moroccan folklore is so rich that the film often resembles an ethnographic documentary. The character development does not match the visuals: by the time you've started to be able to tell the characters of the "five gentlemen" apart, three of them are already gone. And the mundane ending is both a surprise and a letdown. **1/2 out of 4.

Enjoyable Potboiler

[boblipton · 6/10 · 21 November 2022]

Five gentlemen are enjoying a cruise on René Lefèvre's recently inherited fortune. Along the way they meet Harry Baur and his niece, Rosine Deréan. Soon she and Lefèvre are an item. When the ship hits Morocco, they get off to look at the locals; Lefèvre accidentally removes a girl's veil, and a sorcerer curses them. By the full moon they will all be dead in a particular order. Sure enough, they start dying as indicated.

Julien Duvivier's potboiler has a lot of local color shot in Fez and Volubilis, and I couldn't help thinking about the setting of PEPE LE MOKO. However, despite the North African setting and the presence of a curse, there's no real sense of poetic realism, no femme fatale, and no fatality based on character. Things happen, yes, but there's a straight causal linkage without any sense of a higher power. There is Baur, who gives a wonderful, naturalistic performance, whether he's shouting at the housekeeper, mixing a weird cocktail, or saying they can just pay off the sorcerer for three francs..... maybe 3.75.