Abstracts
Abstract
Paul Robeson made his last fiction film appearance in Tales of Manhattan (directed by Julien Duvivier, 1942), which the black star ended up denouncing for its demeaning racial stereotypes. Robeson scholars have echoed this negative assessment while French critics have likewise dismissed the film as a minor effort in Duvivier’s oeuvre. This article reassesses and resituates the film historically, arguing that the black-cast sequence, when viewed intertextually, was much richer and more progressive than generally appreciated. In production before World War II and released almost ten months after Pearl Harbor, Tales of Manhattan was historically out of sync.
Résumé
Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier, 1942) est le dernier film de fiction dans lequel Paul Robeson ait joué, un film que la star afro-américaine finira d’ailleurs par dénoncer pour ses stéréotypes raciaux dégradants. Les spécialistes de Robeson se sont fait l’écho de ces remarques négatives, tout comme les critiques français qui considèrent ce film comme une oeuvre mineure de Duvivier. Cet article se propose de réexaminer le film en le resituant dans son contexte historique et avance que la partie centrée autour de la communauté noire, dès lors qu’on l’appréhende de manière intertextuelle, s’avère beaucoup plus riche et plus progressiste qu’on le prétend généralement. Conçu avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et projeté pour la première fois dix mois après Pearl Harbor, Tales of Manhattan apparaît comme un film historiquement « déphasé ».
Appendices
Bibliographical References
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