Colonialism Watch: Outpost in Morocco (1949)

Watched:  08/30/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR from Marie Windsor day

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Florey

Outpost in Morocco (1949) was part of Marie Windsor day on TCM's Summer Under the Stars.  She's not the lead, that's George Raft, but she plays a Moroccan princess for all intents and purposes.  

Look, I'm utterly ignorant when it comes to Morocco aside from being able to find it on a map (I double-checked, and I was right!  Thanks, Casablanca for leaving that tidbit in my head!).  I don't know its history, and I don't know the culture.   

I am aware of the French Foreign Legion, its kind of wild history and reputation for taking in folks at the end of their rope.  In this story, Raft plays a Captain who is supposedly awesome at his job when he isn't out romancing the ladies.  He's sent to an outpost to deliver Windsor to her father, who is a regional leader.  Windsor goes to France every year for six months and has been summoned home early.  

En route, because movies don't always make sense, Windsor falls for George Raft (more understandable, he feels the same).  But then Windsor's dad decides to kill as many Frenchmen as he can to try to reclaim Morocco from France.  And things get brutal pretty fast.

This movie doesn't really blink at what happens when a fort is overrun, and there's a whole lotta bodies as Raft arrives with reinforcements.  It then has scenes that will foretell both Zulu and a few shots from Lawrence of Arabia - but smaller, worse shot and in black & white.  

A lot of the movie was shot as a mix of on location in Morocco and on soundstages, which is neat.  Locals were used, so you get large battle scenes and it all feels very believable and occasionally overwhelming.  

Two things:

George Raft's stardom is something I firmly don't get.  He's got about two different line reads I've ever seen, he's not exactly dangerously handsome, and I've seen three-week-old bananas with more charisma.  In this movie he's supposedly to be a ladies man, and, no.  I don't buy it.  Marie Windsor is supposed to fall for him, and I don't buy it.  It's suggested he's a young man, and he's clearly pushing 50 here.  He's maybe one of my least favorite leading actors, and I audibly groaned when the movie started and his name came up as the star.

The ending is a dud and undercuts the narrative.  I thought they were going to pull a Pocahontas and have Marie Windsor talk her dad down from the nutsy plan to go to war with the French all on his own.  Instead, it's played as tragedy as she rides right into a minefield set by the FFL.  So our poor princess, who has been a pawn the whole movie, dies doing the one thing that showed her taking some initiative.  It's not even a particularly convincing anti-war message as the idea at the end of the movie is "well, we showed them.  France is back on top.  Everyone is happy".  

I didn't hate the movie entirely, I just think I understand why the ratings on it are not exactly ecstatic.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  The best thing going for it, aside from Marie Windsor in some groovy outfits, is Akim Tamiroff as Raft's lieutenant.  He has range and outshines Raft non-stop through the movie.