Lobotomy Room Goes to The Movies Presents 'Morocco'. TONIGHT

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s FREE weekly film club? How better to break the monotony on a bleak wintry Wednesday night than watch a FREE film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice! Considering Valentine’s Day falls this month, February’s selection (on 24 February) is a love story. But bear in mind this is, after all, Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies – so the love story is a twisted, high camp tale of “amour fou”. In Morocco (1930) – directed by visionary maestro of kinky exotica Josef Von Sternberg – dissolute nightclub chanteuse and woman of mystery Amy Jolly (German screen diva Marlene Dietrich in her sensational Hollywood debut) finds herself adrift in North Africa and caught in a love triangle, torn between a handsome amoral Foreign Légionnaire (lanky young Gary Cooper at the height of his beauty) and a wealthy playboy (Adolphe Menjou. Perversely, Menjou is meant to represent Von Sternberg himself – who in his complex off-screen relationship with the bisexual Dietrich stoically stood by and watched her seduce legions of men and women both). Depending on your sensibility, Morocco culminates in an ending which you’ll either find irresistibly romantic or totally absurd. Either way, the film is a blast! Morocco represents the first glimpse American audiences got of Marlene Dietrich (she and Von Sternberg had already triumphed with the German film The Blue Angel (1930) but it wasn’t released in the US until afterwards. They ultimately made seven movies together – each one a wild, decadent masterpiece!). It’s a chance to see the origins of the Dietrich myth. Morocco is the film in which she first famously donned a man’s top hat and tails, a daringly butch look which would become her signature. Morocco is also historically significant in terms of cinema’s LGBT representation for the notorious musical number in which Dietrich – in male drag – nonchalantly kisses a female audience member on the lips. All these decades later, the scene *still* feels taboo and transgressive! Note! The management of Fontaine’s says: drag up as Marlene Dietrich on the night, get a free drink! Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! Show up circa 8 pm to order drinks, food and grab the best seating! I'll be blasting Marlene Dietrich tunes LOUD as you arrive.