Cabaret

Jacques Demy's auspicious debut – "a musical without music" set in the port city of Nantes – stars Anouk Aimée as the title character, a cabaret singer awaiting the return of Michel (Jacques Hardin), her long-absent lover and the father of her child. Michel went to America seven years ago and promised to return when he became rich. In Michel's absence, Lola is being courted by her childhood friend Roland (Marc Michel) and American sailor Frankie (Allan Scott). At some point, it seems that Lola will settle down with one of them, but her heart still belongs to Michel. The film is dedicated to Max Ophüls and the film title obviously alludes to Ophüls' Lola Montes as well as to the heroine of Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel. Marc Michel makes a reference to his unrequited love towards Lola when he reappears in Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).

Like so many campaigners before him, GARY COOPER joins the Foreign Legion to "forget." At a smoky cabaret in Morocco, Cooper meets café entertainer Marlene Dietrich (making her American film debut). A woman with a very checkered past, Dietrich toys with the callow Cooper, but eventually falls hopelessly in love with him, even to the extent of throwing over wealthy Adolphe Menjou. The now-famous final image of Morocco finds la Dietrich, decked out in her cabaret finery and wearing high heels, heading after Cooper's regiment across the desert with the rest of the "camp followers"..

Cabaret singer Bijou (Marlene Dietrich) drifts from one Indonesian island to another due to her talent for inciting riots among the men at the cafés where she sings. Raging fisticuffs at the Blue Devil Café get her deported to Boni-Komba. The little island is a port for the U.S. Navy and a refuge for lowlifes, criminals, and ne'er-do-wells. Bijou lands on her feet with a job singing at the Seven Sinners Café. She also falls head over heels for a strapping navy lieutenant named Dan Brent (Wayne). There's trouble in low-rent paradise when Bijou's knife-throwing ex-flame Antro (Oskar Homolka) develops a jealous streak, and Lt. Brent's superiors find the idea of a naval officer falling for a rabble-rousing cabaret singer distasteful