“Zouzou” (1934) is a French film starring Josephine Baker. She plays a washerwoman in Paris who becomes the star of the stage. She also falls in love with her white half-brother who is wanted for murder! The high point comes when she sings “Haiti” (pictured above).
The plot has nothing to do with Haiti. Zouzou, Baker’s character, is from Martinique. In the song she longs to return to Haiti, but Zouzou seems to have no desire to leave France, where she has lived since she was a little girl. The song is just something that makes her a star.
Our story: She and her half-brother Jean are brought up by Papa Mele, who runs a circus. It seems they had the same mother but a different father. Papa Mele tells her she is dark because the stork, the bird who brought them to their mother at birth, dropped her down the chimney by accident. Jean later goes off to sea. When he returns she is happy. We (and he) assume it is because she misses her brother, but later we see her become sad when he kisses other women! He never suspects a thing, but his girlfriend Claire does. Since she is friends with Zouzou, it puts her in a tough spot.
When a man forces Zouzou to dance with him, her brother beats him up. But then a day or so later the same man turns up dead! The police arrest her brother. To get money for a good lawyer, she persuades the manager of the theatre where her brother works to give her the starring role in his show. He agrees: his star talent has just run off to Rio with her boyfriend.
The plot is weak and kind of hard to believe, but if it was just a way to get her on stage and sing, it was worth it. Baker has more than enough charm, beauty, and talent to carry the film despite whatever shortcomings the plot may have.
It was worth watching not just for her but also because in the United States, even 83 years later, it is not often you see a white film that is not about race where the main character is a black woman who does not play to stereotype. Maybe I am drawing a blank, but the only Hollywood film I can think of like that off the top of my head is Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard” (1992), nearly 60 years later. Even Diana Ross at her height was only in black films.
Baker did not seem to play to stereotype as far as I could tell. No banana skirts in this one. Though possibly the stereotypes in France are somewhat different. Her race was remarked on but only in passing and not in a mean way. She did have a love story, even if it was a strange one. We were meant to put ourselves in her shoes. On the other hand, all the kissing was done strictly between white characters.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- YouTube: Zouzou – 84 minutes, in French with English subtitles
- My 1949 media diet
- Not in H.G. Wells:
- stork
- television
- Josephine Baker
- Haiti – the song
- How to tell if a character is a stereotype
531
Speaking about circus and races, I just cannot avoid putting here this bit of a Russian film – the Circus, 1936 – where a female character runs to ‘beutiful Stalin’s Russia’ from the USA.
She is later threteaned by a male character from the American South to expose her to public for a racial crime for having an affair with a Black man and giving birth to a Black son. Watch the public reaction 🙂
Whatever is the propaganda improbability the Russian movies from the Stalin’s time have, I think this picturing of attitude towards interracial relations is quite probable.
NB: the word ‘African’ here is rendered literally as pronounced by a white American Southerner, and whistling expresses an emotion contrary to what it is thought to be in the USA.
PPS I am not a Stalinist 😀
LikeLike
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQJ1iss14GU)
LikeLike
Is Europe more openminded or was Ms. Baker an outlier? If she were darker or had a wide nose would she still have this role? Are there other Black actresses that were mainstream during that time period?
LikeLike
UPD: the guy in that Soviet film was a German, not American Southerner, so the Europe was not quite that open-minded 🙂
LikeLike
@ $0.02
Both James Baldwin and Gordon Parks lived in Paris and said they felt freer there. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who visited, also felt a greater sense of freedom.
LikeLike
@ $0.02
However, what Baker, Baldwin, Coates, and Parks all have in common is that they are from the United States. In Frantz Fanon (from Martinique) the whites in France in the fifties seem to be pretty much the same as whites in the United States now.
LikeLike
“If she were darker or had a wide nose would she still have this role?”
How many actresses who fit that description had such roles in the films of Oscar Micheaux?
LikeLike
“A Russian Nagpo
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQJ1iss14GU)
”
So, Stalin had his Busby Berkley?
LikeLike
@gro jo
As it is usually the case with most au ISTJ-type autocrats – be it Barak Obama or Joseph Jugashvili – the movie remakes, idea franchising and copying is in a great favour among the people of arts.
However, I wouldn’t compare Grigori Alexandrov to Busby Berkley. The former survived periods of liberalisation and then the conservative stage prior to the collapse of the USSR, had been married thrice – his marriage to Lubov Orlova, the actrees seen in the beginning of the quoted movie piece was often stalked by Joseph – and was known as a relatively well-established director during his entire productive lifetime.
The latter was known primarly as a choreographer – especially since Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) and was married six times, with none of his marriages ever stalked by Joseph 😀
LikeLike
I bet this had folks clutching their pearls this was really pushing the envelope. But in Europe this subject matter probably was not a big deal. But the suggestion of a black woman who is in love with her white half brother. In America this would be taboo and pornographic give the history of racism in this country during that time.
LikeLike
” on Sun 13 Aug 2017 at 21:46:08
abagond
@ $0.02
Both James Baldwin and Gordon Parks lived in Paris and said they felt freer there. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who visited, also felt a greater sense of freedom.”
France had people of African descent who played important parts in its history and culture for centuries. During De Gaulle’s Presidency, Gaston Monnerville was elected President of the Senate (the second highest-ranking official in France after the President) in 1959, serving until 1968. De Gaulle’s Free French force was backed by Félix Éboué, the governor of Chad. People of African descent played a major role in modern arts in the person of the art collector and dealer Ambroise Vollard.
LikeLike
@gro jo
‘played important part in French history’ and ‘is respected by now’ doesn’t always mean the same. You would be surprised (or probably not) by the amount of insults for people of African origin (be they descendants of Arabs, Tuaregs or Sub-Saharian nations) that was introduced into common French language since 1970 and still prevails.
LikeLike