Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Exoticism in 1930s France: The Colonial and Beyond

PART ONE: Men Outside the Mainstream

Chapter 1: Jean Gabin, le cafard, and Western Solidarity
La Bandera (1935): Cultural Cohesion and Colonial Mercenaries
Pépé le Moko (1937) and the Multiethnic Exotic
Le Messager (1937): Failure to Adapt

Chapter 2: Assimilation Anxiety and Rogue Colons
Men Who Stayed Too Long
El Guelmouna, marchand de sable (1931): Rivalry (and Russians) in Rural Algeria
Amok (1934): Cultural Readmission at All Costs
L’Esclave blanc (1936): Segregationist Parable

PART TWO: Romancing the Exotic

Chapter 3: Tragedy and Triumph for Interracial Love
Caïn, aventure des mers exotiques (1930) and Baroud (1932): Lasting Love in the Colonies
Le Simoun (1933) and Yamilé sous les cèdres (1939): Triumph, Tragedy, Responsibility
Women’s Agency and Exoticist Romance

Chapter 4: Métissage and Cultural Repatriation
La Dame de Malacca (1937): European Frog, Exotic Prince
(Re)claiming French Identity in La Maison du Maltais (1938)
L’Esclave blanche (1939): A Westerner in the Harem
Redefining Exoticist Romance

PART THREE: France Imagines the Far East

Chapter 5: Shanghai Fantasies and the Geishas of Joinville
Mollenard (1938) and Le Drame de Shanghaï (1938): Exiled in (and from) the East
Yoshiwara (1936) and La Bataille (1934): Lovers and Fighters in the Land of the Rising Sun

Chapter 6: Sessue Hayakawa’s French Resurrection, 1936-1939
Forfaiture (1937): A Legend Revised, a Legacy Reborn
Patrouille blanche (1939/1942): Bringing the Other Back Home
Macao, l’enfer du jeu (1939/1942): The Exotic Father

Exoticism in Transition
L’Homme du Niger (1940): Patriotism and Paternalism in Africa
Malaria (1943): Imperial Stasis
Descendants of Interwar Exoticism from Decolonization to the New Century

Annotated Filmography
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Colleen Kennedy-Karpat received her PhD in French from Rutgers University and currently teaches film studies at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

Reviews

Scholars of classical French cinema will know that a great deal has been written about ‘colonial’ cinema, with attention often returning to a relatively few well-known films, typically set in North Africa, that come to stand in for the broader corpus. At the same time, it is often assumed that the same cinema is a prolongation of the broader colonial project and somehow delivers (or betrays) a propagandist message. Yet popular cinema is a more complex object than this, and ‘colonial’ film is a research object with an illusory coherence. Seeking to develop a more adequate approach, Colleen Kennedy-Karpat broadens the object of study to include exoticism more generally and moves well outside the familiar corpus of films to discuss neglected works and less studied performers. She convincingly demonstrates that, while a colonial setting may indeed place limits on what a film can say or show, ‘colonial’ cinema also shares features with the exotic and, to that extent, needs studying in terms of the pleasures it offers rather than its uneven propaganda value. . . .[T]he book is welcome for its willingness to open up new ground and challenge dubious critical orthodoxies.
*French Studies*

... original, beautifully written, and ground-breaking in its designation of an entirely new field of study... [this book] will become a standard against which future work in this field will be measured. ...
*Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Rutgers University, Organizer of the conference, Hidden Voices: Childhood, the Family, and Anti-Semitism in Occupation France*