Morocco is a place that has long captivated the Western imagination, both for good and for bad. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine classical Hollywood cinema without thinking of Casablanca, Michael Curtiz’s 1942 wartime screen gem starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. While none of the film was actually shot on location in the country (in fact, the entire city of Casablanca depicted in the film was created at the Warner Brothers studio), it continues to introduce audiences to the city of the same name on the Moroccan coast. And just over a decade later, Alfred Hitchcock actually shot The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) on location in Marrakech, bringing that city’s old medina to American viewers with the help of Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day.
But there’s a lot more to twentieth-century Morocco and its hold on our imaginations. We’d like to take a look at some of the literary works that have reshaped the ways we think about Casablanca, Marrakech, and other cities in the North African country.
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