Theo Unkrich (he/him) is a member of Internet Archive’s Patron Services team. His love of media preservation persists outside of Internet Archive in his writing and game design projects, which play with queerness, networks of community, and the Old Web.
This year’s cohort of films entering the public domain is one of the last of the pre-Code era: enjoy those depictions of excess liquor and “lustful embraces” while you can! From 1934 until 1968, the rigid guidelines known formally as the Motion Picture Production Code and more commonly as the Hays Code limited not only what could be depicted on screen, but also how, lest depictions of such immorality have the wrong effect on audiences.
To my delight, Morocco (1930) is one of the many pre-Code films that entered the public domain on January 1st of this year. Directed by Josef von Sternberg, Morocco tells the story of French Foreign Legion soldier Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) and performer Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich), who meet, flirt, and eventually fall in love (despite the best efforts of wealthy suitor La Bessière, a jilted lover, and the ongoing war).
Watch Morocco:
The film is also famously queer, thanks largely to Dietrich’s performance as Amy Jolly in a scene in which she dons a top hat and full men’s evening wear to serenade the cabaret’s attendees. Most famous of all is the shot where Amy, with all the confidence and swagger in the world, bends to kiss a female audience member on the lips in one of the earliest same-gender kisses on screen. Marlene Dietrich herself was about as openly bisexual as one could be in the 20th century, and her work in this film carries the confidence of someone comfortable both with flouting and playing up gendered expectations of desirability.
Morocco does its best to ensure that neither Dietrich’s drag performance nor her kiss are mocked. The catcalls at the beginning of her performance are explicitly not a reaction to her gender presentation – per La Bessière, “If I remember correctly, this audience shows its usual discriminating kindness by receiving its newcomers rather unpleasantly” – and the audience’s boos quiet immediately once she begins to sing. Dietrich’s kiss is genuine and passionate, and the female audience member’s embarrassment reads as flustered, not outraged.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also talk about Private Tom Brown’s role in this performance. While the majority of his time on screen, Tom is the model of 1930s masculinity (not much of a reach for Gary Cooper), in this scene, he takes on a much softer role. He appears enamored with her performance not in spite of her masculine presentation, but because of it: Tom is the only member of the audience to leap to his feet in applause after her kiss, and he receives the flower she tosses to him with a near-religious reverence.
I find the sequence incredibly moving: two people, who, for the majority of this film, are confined to the expectations of femininity and masculinity, are allowed to enjoy a world much vaster and more accommodating than the one the Hays Code prescribes. They become so real to me. I see myself in the woman’s bashful response to her first queer kiss, in Tom Brown’s standing ovation for butch performance, in Amy Jolly’s swaggering ease with which she dons her coat and tails.
Why should we care about access to pre-Code cinema? After all, it’s 2026; we’re far past that bygone era of media regulation when we were encouraged to self-censor depictions of justified revenge, villainous ministers of religious institutions, and “sex perversion.”
…Aren’t we?
Even with physical preservation efforts, without the public domain, there’s no guarantee that films like Morocco will always be accessible to audiences. Historically, when progress has been made towards marginalized representation in media, the hammer of the censor is swift and heavy: the late 1920s and early 1930s saw increasing depictions of queerness in film, only for Hays to call for a ban of gay characters from the screen in response.
When something belongs to everyone, it’s hard to make it vanish without someone noticing. The public domain takes stories like Morocco out of the control of copyright holders and places them in the hands of the people. It grants me the ability to watch, relate to, and share this scene with others who, like me, get to see their lives and the people they loved reflected in art almost 100 years old.
To celebrate the public domain this year, go watch Morocco and many more incredible works of art on the Internet Archive, and think about what else we can preserve for the future.