Word: riffian
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...Matisse's pictorial motives differed from those of all European artists who had visited "the Orient" before. French painters from the 1830s on, starting with Eugene Delacroix, had gone there in search of the picturesque, the exotic, the ready-made subject: mosques and Riffian horsemen, camels and harem slaves. By 1880 Orientalism had become a large fashion among salon painters and their clients. French artists brought their minutely realist style and their mildly prurient interests to Fez and Marrakech, and went back to Paris with both intact. To be influenced as a painter by Islamic art -- architecture, rugs, tiles, cloth...
World War I: Enlisted as a cavalry private, he was wounded, later sent to Saint-Cyr, France's West Point. Returned to the trenches with a Moroccan regiment, won his first Croix de Guerre (he now has three, embellished with 17 palms). Fought against the Riffian tribes of Abd el Krim in Morocco in the 1920s, stayed on as a native-affairs officer. Speaks Arabic and the Berber dialects fluently...
Renegades (Fox). Another Foreign Legion charade, this one is built around a fascinating spy (Myrna Loy) and four comrades of the Legion, one of whom has been delegated to provide comic relief. Amid camels, shouting, Riffian war, death, seduction, the honor of the Legion is upheld by heroes who bear a startling resemblance to the jobless men who can be found most afternoons in the reading rooms of actors' clubs. Warner Baxter, who has been successful in adventure cinemas because he is what is called a type, continues to be a type. Miss Loy's competence is wasted...
...outfitting of the show, and that just about guarantees that somehow of other the producers will see to it that it is a success, if they have to subsidize the metropolitan press for a twelvemonth. The curtain rises on a romantic, and dimly lighted scene, the camp of the Riffian chieftain, the baffling Red Shadow. The Song of the Volga Boatmen contributes its mite as the tribesmen open the play with the Riding song of the Riffs, a rare gem in basso profundo, with excellent time and almost no tune, which will defy college men all over the country...
...Spain and France had poured out hundreds of millions in gold, and tens of thousands in lives to place the sardonic Moroccan with his brother, their wives and suite upon the Amiral Pierre. Not six months ago Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim and his brother Muhammed were holding the Riffian fastnesses of Morocco against that master strategist Marshal Petain and the best of Spain's (TIME, June 7), after two years of junta-ridden generals. Though they surrendered at last to the French valorous resistance, both Mohammed ben Abd-el-Krim and his brother may still boast that they...