Rogues, Romance, and Exoticism in French Cinema of the 1930s

Many popular French films of the 1930s captured the world and brought it intoneighborhood cinemas for filmgoers who craved adventure. These films often served asvisual postcards from the French empire, which enjoyed an unprecedented visibility indomestic popular culture between the world wars. But the public appetite for the exoticalso transcended imperial borders. Exoticist films displayed landscapes and differentthat lay beyond the metropole, many of which were not subject to European rule. Thisbroad conception of the exotic meant that French narrative cinema represented bothcolonial and non-colonial settings and populations, developing a coherent set of tropesthat were shaped, yet not entirely defined, by the politics of imperial rule.Empire alone cannot address the full range of the French exoticist imaginary thatwas projected onto movie screens in the 30s. Only by venturing beyond imperialboundaries can we fully understand how the French saw non-Westerners and, byextension, how they saw themselves during this tumultuous decade. Rogues, Romance, and Exoticism in French Cinema of the 1930s proposes a critical framework for exoticist cinema that includes and exceeds the limits of empire. From rogue colons to the métisse in love, from the deserts of North Africa to the streets of Shanghai, this book identifies and analyzes recurring figures, common settings, major stars, plot devices, and narrative outcomes that dominated exoticist cinema at its popular peak.