I think it was in Way Down East that the audience always applauded the same scene. The snow storm? No. A tragic episode? An athletic feat? Nope. It was for the landscape. On the banks of a calm, smooth river, willows gently tremble and the high grass of the uncut fields bends under the summer breeze. […]
That is certainly what I will do for Itto, in which Morocco, […] is a bright star. Above a pink city – Marrakesh – beyond the palm trees, the Atlantic forms a silver wall, snowy teeth biting a pale sky, bleached by excessive light. […]
Just like every time cinema breaks its own chains and escapes from artificial staging and ‘interiors’, the actors in Itto seem to succumb to nature’s great rhythms and reacquire a kind of modesty and loyalty that dignifies them. The vast sky, the rugged boulders and the valleys where almond trees suddenly flowering replace the melting snow are the setting of the touching and true story of Itto, daughter of Hamon, who tenaciously opposed our entrance in Morocco. Colorful troops and indigenous tribes reunited by qaids re-create before our eyes the battle and defeat of Kemra, the exodus of the civilian population, their slow imperturbable procession, the river of escapees with their children, women and herds in tow…
The peaceful aspects of Arab life, easier to enact, are no less surprising for their authenticity. There I saw again the ambiguous Shilha dancers with their pale, delicate cheeks; the charmed snakes of Djemma-el-Fna, the healers, the local markets and their cloud of pink dust, all images that add the variety and photographic splendor of an incomparable documentary to a sober and powerful drama.
Colette, Le Maroc, radieuse vedette d’Itto (Morocco, the Bright Star of Itto), “L’Intransigeant”, 16 March 1935