• Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Victoria & Abdul: Simulacra & Simulation

by Gajendra Singh
University of Exeter

Posted in partnership with the History Department at the University of Exeter and The Imperial and Global Forum.

One of the earliest films to be shot and then screened throughout India were scenes from the Delhi Durbar between December 29, 1902 and  January 10, 1903 The Imperial Durbar, created to celebrate the accession of Edward VII as Emperor of India following the death of Victoria, was the most expensive and elaborate act of British Imperial pageantry that had ever been attempted. Nathaniel Curzon, as Viceroy of India, oversaw the construction of a tent city housing 150,000 guests north of Delhi proper and what occurred in Delhi was to be replicated (on a smaller scale) in towns and cities across India.

The purpose of the Durbar was to contrast British modernity with Indian tradition. Europeans at the Durbar were instructed to dress in contemporary styles even when celebrating an older British Imperial past (as with veterans of the ‘Mutiny’). Indians, however, were to wear Oriental (perceptibly Oriental) costumes as motifs of their Otherness. This construction of an exaggerated sense of Imperial difference, and through it Imperial order and Imperial continuity, was significant. It was a statement of the permanence of Empire, of Britain’s Empire being at the vanguard of modernity even as the Empire itself was increasingly anxious about nascent nationalist movements and rocked by perpetual Imperial crises.

It’s unlikely that Stephen Frears watched these films from 1902 or 1903 upon finalising the screenplay and then shooting Victoria & Abdul. They have only recently been digitized and archived by the British Film Institute. But his recent movie, filmed when most visions of the past are obscured by the myopia of the present, is an unconscious reproduction of films produced and shown when Empire was an idée fixe in the British mind. Abdul Karim, one of several Indians at Victoria’s court during her long reign (the other two, that I know of, were Dalip Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab, and Victoria Gouramma, the daughter of the last Raja of Kodagu), is a cypher throughout the film. He shows no emotion or sentiment or stirring rhetoric except when genuflecting before his Empress – kissing her feet upon their first meeting, stoically holding her hand upon her death, sitting as a sentinel by her statue in Agra into his dotage.

Such a one-dimensional portrayal is partly a reflection of the populist histories used as source material for the film. Sushila Anand’s Indian Sahib: Queen Victoria’s Dear Abdul is a titillating account of the possible sexual encounter between the matronly white Empress and her much younger lowborn Indian servant and Shrabani Basu’s Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant is a more sober tale of the scandal that the relationship caused among Victoria’s staff. But even in these accounts Karim has voice and agency. Anand and Basu are, in part, relying upon Karim’s own accounts of what transpired when he and Victoria were alone.

Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, 1893 (via Wikimedia Commons)

That agency is consciously stripped by Frears. His instruction to Ali Fazal upon taking up the role was to play him as Peter Sellar’s Chance in Being There, a character who is a simple-minded, sheltered gardener suddenly catapulted into political power.[1] It is Judi Dench’s Victoria and, to a lesser extent, Eddie Izzard’s wonderfully corpulent Bertie/Edward VII who are the actual protagonists of the piece. The official synopsis makes this clear:

The film tells the extraordinary true story of an unexpected friendship in the later years of Queen Victoria’s remarkable rule. When Abdul Karim, a young clerk, travels from India to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, he is surprised to find favor [sic.] with the Queen herself. As the Queen questions the constrictions of her long-held position, the two forge an unlikely and devoted alliance with a loyalty to one another that her household and inner circle all attempt to destroy. As the friendship deepens, the Queen begins to see a changing world through new eyes and joyfully reclaims her humanity.

Her rule, her favour, her humanity. It is a story told to redeem Victoria. It is through her eyes that the narrative is conveyed and any change or evolution in a character occurs in her attitudes towards India and her subject people – learning some terribly mis-pronounced Hindustani/Urdu and that Indians too can act as competent servants (huzzah!). Victoria is cast as the flagbearer of Imperial progress against her “racialist” son who despises Karim and is representative of a “bad” form of Imperialism. “If only the latter had not won out,” we are expected to cry, “then India would not have been lost!” Only in the uncovering of the fact that Karim had gonorrhoea by Victoria’s outraged staff do we get a glimpse of the many lives lived by Karim. One can only assume that he had at least some fun in England.

The film is an Orientalist fable that is not meant to reveal any social life of the Indian portrayed. But that is not what makes it remarkable. Stephen Frears made his career with My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, a film which presented the transgressive relationship between Gordon Warnecke’s Omar, a British-Pakistani from Battersea, and Daniel Day Lewis’ Johnny, a neo-Nazi. It seems that the complex filmic relationships that were once Frears’ stock-in-trade are no longer filmable or seen as commercially viable. Instead in Abdul we have a character who is childlike in his stupor at British munificence, completely asexual despite the revelation that he has a sexually transmitted disease, and is always ready with a word of wisdom that only a true Oriental can provide (lines that are, of course, from Rumi – always Rumi). It is an unconscious reproduction of the first films ever produced of and in India. But at least in those films the desire to cast Indians into caricatures was born from Imperial anxiety; this is merely the product of an absence of thought.

Sources and Related Reading:

Antoinette Burton, The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism (2015).

Kim Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”: The “Mutiny”-Motif and Colonial Anxieties in British India’; Past and Present, 218: 1 (2013): 159-197.

Sushila Anand, Indian Sahib: Queen Victoria’s Dear Abdul, (1996).

Shrabani Basu, Victoria and Karim: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant, (2010).

Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs, (1997).

UK readers can find early films of India on BFI Player here, and a full list of films from this era (with commentary by the author) here.  US and international readers can see a similar film, Delhi Durbar (1912) on Youtube here.

[1] According to Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC Radio Five Live, 15th September 2017. Hello to Jason Isaacs.

You may also like:

Sundar Vadlamudi reviews Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India by Gauri Viswanathan
Indrani Chatterjee on monasteries and memory in Northeast India
Isabel Huacuja reviews The Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945 by Christopher Bayley and Tim Harper

Films on Migration, Exile, and Forced Displacement

Almost as soon as people became human they went on the move and forced others to move to serve their own ends. Possibly even earlier, people began to tell stories.

In the twentieth century, people all over the world told their stories about leaving home and going to live among strangers on film.

How can these stories help us understand the movement of people in the past and in the present? What historical and geographical forces shape the experience of migration and forced migration? Can movies help us understand migration as an essentially human instinct and experience? How do those experiences differ for men and women? What roles do culture and religion play in the powerful economic and political forces that usually propel migration? Can films create empathy? Can they influence policy? What do these particular stories tell us about the countries we live in and all the countries we may journey to?

For the coming academic year, 2017-18, the annual theme of Institute for Historical Studies at UT Austin is “Migration, Exile, and Displacement.” The IHS will have regular presentations given by our faculty, graduate students, and visiting researchers, that are open to the public.

We will be sponsoring a film series — ON THE MOVE: FILMS ABOUT MIGRATION, EXILE, AND DISPLACEMENT — with feature films from all over the world about Migration, Exile and Displacement every other Tuesday evening starting in September (stay tuned for details).

Here on Not Even Past, we are collecting titles of films from every period and from every region of the world to provide a resource for anyone curious about these films.

YOU CAN HELP!

ADD TITLES to our list. This list was compiled by a specialist in Russian film history and a specialist in Asian American migration history, with a little help from our friends. That means there are big holes in our compendium. We might have even made some mistakes. You can help us make this list as inclusive as possible. Use the CONTACT button below to send us a message with titles of feature (fictional) films about migration, exile, and displacement.

WRITE A REVIEW. We at NEP would like to post your reviews. If you are interested in reviewing films about migration and forced migration, use the CONTACT button to pitch an idea for a review.

THE LIST: WHAT’S INCLUDED?

Conceivably, almost any film could be about migrants, since the distribution of people in the world has changed continually since humans began walking. So we had to make some hard decisions about what to include.

Primarily, we include feature (fictional) films that focus on people leaving home and moving between, arriving, or living in a different place or country, whether forced or voluntary or something in between.

 We do not include every film about people living somewhere other than their or their families’ place of origin, because that would include far too many films.

We include films about coerced displacement, although many people consider the forcible movement of people from one place to another place where they will continue to be coerced or enslaved to be fundamentally different from the movement of people who are able to choose. We sympathize with this view but consider it worthwhile to encourage people to think about the differences and the similarities between the experiences of people captured and sold into slavery or prostitution and those who choose to move.

We do not include documentary films, TV series, TV episodes. We hope to make separate lists of these at a later time.

We do not include films that seem to be nothing more than vehicles for exhibiting violence as entertainment. There is often violence in films about migration and forced migration because there is violence in migrants’ lives, but we have excluded films that we see as reveling in violence for its own sake.

We tried to add brief descriptions to identify genre, settings, and people involved.

*Films available on Kanopy (accessible with UT EID and subscriptions at other libraries) are marked with an asterisk. More of the films on the list are available on Kanopy — please let us know if you find them there.

We are eager to hear from you: what films have we left out? Which films touched you or inspired or angered you?
And we are eager to see you in September at our film series, ON THE MOVE: FILMS OF MIGRATION, EXILE, AND DISPLACEMENT.

~ Madeline Hsu and Joan Neuberger

updated September 2, 2017

2010s

Morgen (2010, Marian Crisan) A security guard at a supermarket tries to help aTurk illegally in a Romanian bordertown

*Illegal (2010, Olivier Masset-Depasse), an undocumented Russian woman is arrested and separated from her son

A Better Life (2011, Chris Weitz) A gardener in East L.A. tries to keep gangs and immigration agents away from his son and give him a better life than he had.

*Le Havre (2011, Aki Kaurismäki), a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city.

Free Men (2011, Ismaël Ferroukhi), the largely untold story about the role that Algerian and other North African Muslims in Paris played in the French resistance and as rescuers of Jews during the German occupation in WWII

*Monsieur Lazhar (2012, Philippe Falardieu) Algerian teacher in Montreal

Home Again (2012, Sudz Sutherland) 3 men deported to Jamaica after living most of their lives in Canada, the US, and UK

*Shun Li and the Poet (2012, Andrea Segre) young woman from China befriends East European man working in a seaside village in Italy arousing local suspicion

When I Saw You (2012, Annemarie Jacir), Palestinian boy in Jordan he meets a group of charismatic freedom fighters

*The Pirogue (2012, Moussa Touré) A reluctant fisherman, a group of desperate people, a small boat crossing to Spain from Senegal.

*The Citizen (2012, Sam Kadi) Ibrahim Jarrah wins the U.S Green Card Lottery and lands in New York City the day before 9/11, which shapes the struggles he faces on his journey in the US.

The Immigrant (2013, James Gray) Polish women 1920s NY, one stuck at Ellis Island, the other tricked into stripping and prostitution.

Zinda Bhaag/Run for Your Life (2013, Meenu Gaur & Farjad Nabi) set in Pakistan, three young men trying to emigrate

The Golden Dream (2013, Diego Quemada-Díez) (original happier version: 1987) four teenagers on a harrowing journey through Mexico to the US.

Guten Tag, Ramon (2013, Jorge Ramírez Suárez) After multiple attemtps to enter the US, Ramon goes to Germany

Brooklyn (2015, John Crowley), Irish girl in NY torn between new life and old, set in early 1950s

Desierto (2015, Jonás Cuarón) a group of men try to make it across the Mexico-US border and run into a border patrolman.

Out of My Hand (2015, Takeishi Fukunaga) a Liberian rubber plantation worker leaves and becomes a cab driver in NYC.

The Citizen (2016, Roland Vranick) the bureaucratic hurdles an African immigrant has to overcome to achieve citizenship in Hungary; also interracial/cross-cultural romance

Jupiter’s Moon (2017, Kornél Mundruczó) a supernatural take on Europe’s current refugee crisis.

2000s

Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trer) Czech factory worker (Bjork) going blind in Washington

Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (2000, Chi Muoi Lo) comedy-drama about Vietnamese siblings adopted by African American parents

Last Resort, (2000, Paweł Pawlikowski) Russian mother and son asylum seekers in UK.

Sunday God Willing (2001, Yamina Benguigui) Algerians in France,

*The Other World (2001, Merzak Allouache) Young second-generation Allgerians in Paris go to Algeria

*Borders (2002, Mostefa Djadjam), 7 people en route from Senegal to Morocco hoping to get to Spain

In America (2002 Jim Sheridan), grieving Irish family moves to NY, father aspiring actor and children befriend African immigrant w HIV

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002, Philip Noyce) three Australian aboriginal girls, who had been taken from their families in 1931 to be trained as domestic servants, make a daring escape and embark on an epic 1,500 mile journey to get back home.

Lilya 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson, 2002), Mom leaves daughter to go US from Soviet Union, daughter is tricked into emigrating ot Sweden where she is raped and sex-trafficked.

Baran (2002, Majid Majidi) lyrical love story among Afghani refugees working in Iran

Dirty, Pretty Things (2003 Stephen Frears) Undocumented migrants in London vulnerable to all kinds of unscrupulous people

Nowhere in Africa (2003, Caroline Link) German family flees Nazis to Kenya

In This World (Michael Winterbottom, 2002) perilous journey to W Europe from refugee camp in Pakistan

Head On (2004, Fatih Akin) Turkish migrants in Germany.

Yasmin (2004, Kenneth Gleenan) a young “westernized” Pakistani woman in England in tense arranged marriage whose life changes after 9/11 when her husband is arrested and she is abused at work.

Ae Fond Kiss (2004, Ken Loach) complications arise when Scottish Pakistani Muslim and Catholic immigrant from Ireland fall in love.

Maria, Full of Grace (2004, Joshua Marston) a desperate young woman accepts a job as a drug mule.

Take Out (2004, Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou), one day in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant trying to pay off debt he owes for getting smuggled into the country

Live and Become (2005, Radu Mihaileanu) A Christian boy escapes to Israel from famine-stricken Ethiopia by pretending to be Jewish

Man Push Cart (2005, Ramin Bahrani), a Pakistani food-truck operator trying to make things better

Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón), Set in 2027, a police state awash with refugees from even worse places, global infertility, one disillusioned bureaucrat, and one pregnant woman.

Ghosts (2006, Nick Broomfield), an unemployed Chinese woman enters Europe illegally with help of gang entraps and exploits her

Colossal Youth (2006, Pedro Costas) an elderly immigrant from Cape Verde living in a low-cost housing complex in Lisbon (to which he has been relocated when the Portugese government demolished his slum).

The Namesake (2006, Mira Nair), a family from Calcutta moves to New York and tries to balance old and new, preservation and adaptation.

Chop Shop (2007, Ramin Bahrani), 12-year-old Latino street orphan in Queens (NY) hustling to make things better

Persepolis (2007, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud) animated biographical film about resilent, young Iranian girl’s constricted life at home in Iran and differently constricted life in exile in Europe

The Visitor (2007 Tom McCarthy with) Syrian drummer, & Sengalese girlfriend found squatting in long empty apartment of a tired old white man who finds them and is rejuvenatedIt’s a Free World (2007, Ken Loach) friends get fired, find jobs for immigrants,

The Secret of the Grain (2007, Abdellatif Kechiche), French-Tunisian family, condescending French bureaucrats, opening a restaurant, lots of food

Padre Nuestro (2007, Christopher Zalla), a boy goes to NY to find his wealthy father but along the way another man steals his identity and convinces father that he is the son.

Under the Same Moon (2007, Patricia Riggen) a boy makes a long journey from Mexico to his mother in LA

Import/Export (2007, Ulrich Seidl)

Brick Lane (2007, Sarah Gavron) young Bangladeshi woman arrives in 1980s London, leaving her beloved sister behind (novel by Monica Ali)

Good-bye Solo (2008 Ramin Bahrani,) Senegalese cab driver, working to make things better in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Lorna’s Silence, (2008, Jean-Pierrre & Luc Dardenne), Albanians in Belgium,

Frozen River (2008, Courtney Huntis) two working-class women smuggle illegal immigrants from Canada to the US in order to make ends meet.

For a Moment, Freedom (2008, Arash T. Riahi) Weary Middle Eastern refugees whohave made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.

Gran Torino (2008, Clint Eastwood) grumpy old white man redeemed by meeting Hmong neighbors

Sleep Dealer (2008, Alex Rivera) set in a dystopian militarized world with closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

Edge of Heaven (2008, Fatih Akin)

Eden is West (Costa-Gravas, 2009) on a boat en route to Paris

Welcome (Philippe Loiret, 2009 on Kanopy) 17 yo Kurd in Europe, France

Sin Nombre (2009, Cary Fukunaga), rough journey from Honduras to Mexico to the US, a girl and a gangster,

Amreeka (2009, Cherien Dabis), a Palestinian Christian immigrant single mother and her teenage son in small town Indiana

Crossing Over (2009, Wayne Kramer) (with Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta) Multi-character story about immigration in LA.

Between Us/Entre Nos (2009, Paola Mendoza, Gloria La Morte) A Colombian emigrant and her two children struggle to survive after her husband abandons them in New York.

Desert Flower (2009, Sherry Hormann) based on the life of a Somalian supermodel who was circumcised at age 3, sold into marriage at 13, escapes to London and later becomes a UN spokesperson at female genital mutilation.

1990s

Avalon (1990, Barry Levinson) A Jewish family feuds and supports each other and adapts to live in Baltimore in 1940s-50s.

Journey of Hope (1990, Xavier Koller), Difficult journey of Turks trying to emigrate to Switzerland

Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash) In 1902, the Gullah people living on an island off the coast of S. Carolina debate the wisdom of moving to the mainland

Mississippi Masala (1991, Mira Nair) Romance between African American and Indian American in Mississippi

A Thousand Pieces of Gold (1991, Nancy Kelly), drama about a Chinese woman fending for herself as she is sold and resold in the US West, set in 1880s.

The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991, Theo Angelopoulos) a poetic treatment of the border as a state of mind and condition for living; set on the Greek-Albanian border

Far and Away (1992, Ron Howard), Action-drama about Irish immigrants in the 1890s US

The Joy Luck Club (1993, Wayne Wang) Four older Chinese women in San Francisco reveal their pasts and the cultural clashes that shaped their lives

Sankofa (1993, Haile Gerima), while visiting Ghana for work, a modern-day fashion model is transported to the past to experience the traumas of American chattel slavery.

Window to Paris (1993, Yuri Mamin) Russians dreaming about escape discover portal to Paris

Cone-heads (1993, Steve Barron), extraterrestrials try to assimilate in New Jersey

Lamerica (Gianni Amelio, 1994) Albanians and Italians dreaming of escape from Albania

*Names Live Nowhere (1994, Dominique Loreau), Senegalese storyteller en route to Belgium tells stories about African immigrants in Belgium

Picture Bride (1995, Kayo Hatta) Set in 1918, the hard life of a urban Japanese woman sold to an older Japanese field worker in Hawaii.

La Promesse (Dardenne brothers, 1996) Unscrupulous Belgian trafficking refugees makes his 15 year old son figure out how to do the right thing.

Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996, Peter Ho-Sun Chan with Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai) 1980s migration from China to Hong Kong, adaptation, then remigration to the US

Amistad (1997, Stephen Spielberg) The 1839 revolt of Mende captives on Spanish owned ship causes controversy in US when the ship is captured. A freed slave recruits lawyer and the courts decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free.

Happy Together (1997, Wong Kar-Wai) Two men in an intense but volatile relationship leave Hong Kong for Argentina where things don’t get better.

Eternity and a Day (1998, Theo Angeloupolis) Dying famous writer helps Albanian boy find his way home.

Beautiful People (1999, Jasmin Dizdar) satirical comedy set in London about refugees from war in former Yugoslavia.

1980s

The Border (1982, Tony Richardson), corrupt border agent cleans up his act when an impoverished woman’s baby is put up for sale on the black market.

El Norte (1983 Gregory Nava), Guatemalans make their way through harrowing journey to the US),

Moscow on the Hudson (Paul Mazursky, 1984). Robin Williams as circus performer & asylum seeker in NY

Stranger Than Paradise, (1985 Jim Jarmusch), Hungarians across generations in US

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985, Wayne Wang) An aging Chinese immigrant widow faces the New Year thinking of all of the things she wants to do before she dies, including seeing her daughter married and visiting China one last time to pay her respects

An American Tail (1986, Don Bluth) animated film about mice who emigrate from Russia to the US, one gets lost, and has adventures with other immigrant mice

Dragon Food (1987, Jan Shütte) Disparate migrants live together in a seedy hotel in Hamburg, hatching plans and trying ot help each other.

China Girl (1987, Abel Ferrara) ill-fated love between an Italian boy and a Chinese girl in NY, 1980s, think Romeo and Julie or West Side Story

Living on Tokyo Time (1987, Stephen Okazaki) Romantic comedy revolving around Japanese American rock musician Ken and his marriage of convenience to Kyoko, a young immigré from Japan who speaks limited English.

Time of the Gypsies (1988, Emir Kusturica),

Pelle the Conqueror (1988, Bille August) Swedish immigrants in 1850s Denmark

Blood Red (1989, Peter Masterson) Sicilian winemakers feud with RR robber baron in 1890s California

Haitian Corner (1988, Raoul Peck) an exile from the Duvalier regime in NY who thinks he recognizes one of his torturers in a Haitian bookstore.

Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989, Wayne Wang) generational change among NY Chinese, after WWII

Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1989, Dominique Deruddere) Italian workers family drama in 1920s Colorado

1970s

The Emigrants (1971, Jan Troell with Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann) Swedes suffer and triumph in Midwest US

Touki bouki (1973, Djibril Diop Mambéty) Mory, an African cowherd and Anta, a student, dream of going to Paris but when they board the boat in the Port of Dakar, Mory is unable to leave.

*Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) an unlikely relationship between an elderly woman and a Moroccan migrant worker in post-war Germany.

Sandakan 8 (1974, Kei Kumai) the life story of a young Japanese girl sold into indentured servitude and prostitution in Malaysia in the 1920

Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1974) Italian guest workers in Switzerland

Garm Hava (1974, M.S. Sathyu) A Muslim businessman and his family struggle in post-Partition India

Hester Street (1975, Joan Micklin Silver), Jewish immigrants in NY’s Lower East Side 1890s

Alambrista! (1977, Robert. M. Young), After the birth of his first child, Roberto, a young Mexican man slips across the border into the United States. Seeking work to support his family back home, he finds that working hard is not enough.

El Super (1979, Leon Ichaso, Orlando Jiménez Leal), exiles from Cuba in NY, don’t understand 17 yo daughter who smokes pot and likes disco.

1950s-60s

A Lady Without a Passport (1950, a beautiful concentration-camp refugee living in Cuba is entrapped by an undercover immigration agent while waiting for permission to enter the US

Moi, Un Noir (1958, Jean Rouch) controversial, ethno-fictional film about Nigerian men seeking work in Ivory Coast.

Flower Drum Song (1961, Harry Koster) Marriage and arranged marriage among Chinese immigrants in NY, based on Rogers and Hammerstein musical.

A View from the Bridge (1962, Sidney Lumet) based on the play by Arthur Miller about Italians Americans and illegal Italian immigrants in NY in the 1950s

America America (1963, Elia Kazan) his ancestors’ harrowing journey from Anatolia

Barren Lives (1963, Nelson Pereira dos Santos) a poor family move from place to place in northeast Brazil searching for food and work, without much success.

Sallah Shabati (1964, Ephraim Kishon), a comedy about an Iraqi Jew who migrates to Israel and tries various schemes to make a life for himself there.

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966,) influential portrait of Senagalese girl working as domestic in France

Oh, Sun (Soleil Ô) (1967, Med Hondo), Mauritanian man seeks work in Paris

 

 

1930s-1940s

I Cover the Waterfront (1933, James Cruze) romance between a reporter and the daughter of a smuggler bringing Chinese migrants to the US

A Night at the Opera (1935, Sam Wood) Marx Bros classic revolves around fate of illegal immigrants

The Wedding Night (1935, King Vidor) struggling novelist gets involved with Polish woman and her family in Connecticut

Pepe Le Moko (1937, Julien Duvivier) A wanted French gangster (Jean Gabin) stuck in the Casbah in Algiers

Where is My Child (1937, Henry Lynn) destitute Russian-Jewish mother gives up son and is committed to insane asylum by his adoptive parents when she tries to get him back, they’re reunited 20 years later.

Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford), based on Steinbeck novel, Oklahoma family of migrant farmers travels to California in search of work

So Ends Our Night (1941, John Cromwell), Jewish and other refugees in Europe trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazis just as the war is starting.

Arch of Triumph (1948, Lewis Milestone), Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman fall in and out of love, trying to keep Nazis at bay among other refugees in occupied Paris

My Girl Tisa (1948, Elliot Nugent) An immigrant (Lilli Palmer) works in a sweatshop, loves a budding lawyer (Sam Wanamaker) and tries to bring her father to New York.

1896-1920s

The Italian (1915, Reginald Barker), Italian gondolier comes to the US to make his fortune, works as shoeshiner, lives in Lower East Side, suffers tragedy.

The Immigrant (1917, Charlie Chaplin, 24 mins ) Chaplin as The Tramp falls in love and is acccused of theft on the boat to the US.

Hungry Hearts (1922, E. Mason Hopper), Jewish immigrants in NY fall in love, defend each other from injustice, and move to the suburbs.

 

MIGRATION

This summer we will be collecting, posting, and reviewing films about migration. Because people have moved or been forcibly moved from all parts of the world to all other parts of the world, we are casting out net as wide as possible.

We will be collecting names of feature and documentary films on any topic connected with the movement of people.

Stay tuned: much more to come.

Joan Neuberger, Editor.

Chan is Missing (1982)

This is the first historical film review we posted on Not Even Past. As the author says, Chan is Missing is: “an early classic of Asian American cinema, it holds up well to multiple viewings.”

by Madeline Hsu

In this affectionate insider’s portrait of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the late 1970s, director Wayne Wang riffs on the well-known adventures of Charlie Chan, the stereotyped Chinese-American 1930s film detective, by following the meandering investigation of two cab drivers.image  Joe and his nephew Steve are searching for another Chan, their friend Chan Hung, who seems to have disappeared with $4,000 of their cash.  Along the way, they encounter a gallery of Chinatown personalities and settings, revealing aspects of the district that are rarely visible to visiting tourists.  They venture past the bustling restaurants and the pagoda roofs and dragon-embellished streetlights of Grant Avenue into the tight quarters of greasy commercial kitchens; the packed fish markets and grocery stores of Stockton Street; narrow, laundry-festooned residential alleyways; a local senior citizens center; and the Neighborhood Language Center offering English classes for new arrivals.

Along the way, the search for the elusive Chan uncovers a rich pastiche of the possibilities of being Chinese in America. Chan could be a victim of police misunderstandings; a possible murderer and political extremist; an aeronautical engineer who developed the first Chinese word processor; a genius who could find no other job than working in a restaurant kitchen; a sentimental music lover; a disappointing husband who refused to adapt and get US citizenship but was a good father.  Joe and Steve find themselves increasingly befuddled as the movie unfolds.

image

The 1970s witnessed a reinvigorated Chinatown, with the civil rights movement and new waves of American-born advocates and new immigrants adding to the agitation of community rights groups. Through a cacophony of dialects, accents, and background noises, Wang skillfully shows that the earlier film hero Charlie Chan does not represent Chinese America in the 1970s.  Wang obscures his subjects by shooting at angles and through windows even as he offers glimpses into a richly textured community framed by competing divides of generations and genders: American-born and immigrants; leftists and rightists; business successes, community activists, and the striving working-classes. Joe and Steve’s banter captures not just their strategizing about how and where to find Chan, but also whether and how Chinese can claim a place in America.  If a man of Chan’s abilities and character seems to have fled the United States, what of those with less promise?

“Chan is Missing” was Wayne Wang’s first feature film and still his most enduring.  Along with “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” (1985) it is the most intimate of his movies before he launched into commercially successful hits such as “The Joy Luck Club” (1993) and “Maid in Manhattan” (2002) as well as collaborating on independent films with writers like Paul Auster and Yiyun Li.  An early classic of Asian American cinema, it holds up well to multiple viewings.

photos by Nancy Wong

Film Review – A Separation (2011)

by Golsheed Bagheri

A Separation is an Iranian drama directed by Asghar Farhadi.image As is indicated by the title, the film focuses on the separation of Nader and Simin, an affluent couple residing in Tehran. Simin wishes to escape Iran’s repressive society and move to Canada, which she believes is a more suitable environment to raise their daughter, Termeh. Nader refuses to leave under the pretext that he must stay in Iran to take care of his elderly father who is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease.  Their situation is further complicated by Razieh, a devout Muslim woman from the lower economic class, who is hired to help care for Nader’s father. Numerous financial and personal conflicts pit the well-off Nader and Simin against Razieh and her unemployed, debt-ridden husband, Hojat.

The Family Protection Law of 1967 mandated that all marriage contracts must include certain rights to divorce for women.  While the FPL increased the number of female-initiated divorces in the urban community as a result, the overall rate of divorce dropped substantially.  Women became more assertive in the home and in public as a result of this law, and embraced their roles in society with much greater confidence.  With the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the institution of the Islamic Civil code in 1979, however, the FPL was repealed.  Under the new system, women were expected to endure most forms of sexual, physical and mental abuse in marriage.  Female initiated-divorce was permitted only in the case of male impotence, severe drug addiction, or intolerable violence.  Women who did achieve divorce sacrificed their right to their children, as divorced women had severely limited custody rights.  Of course conditions are not quite as austere in the present day and children can sometimes choose which parent they want to live with.

Through these family frays and a vivid depiction of the limitations of the Islamic court system, Farhadi composes a brilliantly accurate rendition of the current issues in Iranian society today.  The “bi-culture” phenomenon, which is often cited as a contributing factor to the culmination of the 1979 Revolution, is effectively demonstrated by the two conflicting families in the film.  Nader and Simin represent the urban, upper-middle class, educated and with secular leanings, who grapple with such issues as to whether or not they should emigrate to a more open society for the sake of their child.  Razieh and Hojat embody the lower economic echelon, which is composed of the more traditional and religious elements of Iranian society.  The struggles endured by this class typically arise from poverty, as is exemplified by Hojat’s unemployment and debts, which in turn forces Razieh to take a job that gives her religious qualms.

image

 

image

Through his expert direction, Farhadi masterfully elicits a sense of empathy for each one of the characters, despite the nature of their involved conflict.  Indeed there are no antagonists in this film; all of the characters are inherently good people and are simply striving to survive against life’s challenges.  What distinguishes A Separation from other Oscar-nominated dramas is the fact that it is a portrayal of the experience of an entire nation, contained in an engaging story, based on the realities of present-day Iranian society.

You may also like:

Jonathan Hunt’s blog post on the history of US policy towards Iran’s nuclear program and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Lior Sternfield’s review of Haggai Ram’s book “Iranophobia” and Asef Bayat’s book “Making Islam Democratic.”

 

Camila (1984)

imageby Julia Ogden

Romeo and Juliet may be the most well known tale of star-crossed lovers, but ask any Argentine and they will know the story of Camila O’Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez just as well. The ill-fated love affair between the strong-willed daughter of an elite landowner and a Catholic priest, depicted in the 1984 film Camila, is a multi-layered story that ties together romance, the political history of the nineteenth-century Latin America, and echoes of government corruption across centuries.

The story of Camila and Ladislao unfolded during Juan Manuel de Rosas’s twenty-year rule of Argentina from 1829 to 1852. The conservative caudillo directed the newly independent country with an iron hand. He upheld the colonial social hierarchy, allied with and supported the Catholic Church, closed the country to external trade and censored the flow of information in and out of its borders. In this claustrophobic setting, the fiercely independent Camila read contraband books and dreamt of marrying for love rather than familial duty. When a new priest arrived in Buenos Aires from the province of Tucumán and spoke out from the pulpit against the violence of the Rosas regime, Camila fell desperately in love. It did not take long for Ladislao, forced into the priesthood as the filial duty of a second-born son, to reciprocate her feelings. Knowing their love was forbidden, they fled in the night to the neighboring province of Corrientes, where they began life anew as a poor schoolteacher and his wife. Soon, however, a priest from Buenos Aires recognized Camila and reported her whereabouts to her father. The two were quickly arrested and sentenced to death – despite the fact that Camila was eight-months pregnant.

image

The execution of Camila and Ladislao in 1848 was a severe overreaction. At any other time, the pair would likely not have suffered the same fate. Historian Ann Twinam has shown that in the colonial era, the celibacy of priests functioned far more in breach than in observance, and that, while upholding their public reputations of virginal innocence, elite women often had pre-marital sexual relations in private. If sexual digressions were generally accepted social practice, why did Rosas kill the lovers? Historians postulate that his reaction was tied to the political climate of early nineteenth-century Argentina in which conservative caudillos like Rosas battled fiercely with their liberal opponents. Argentine liberals vehemently attacked Rosas from exile in Uruguay and Chile. They first used the news of Camila and Ladislao’s affair to highlight the lack of morality and law in Rosas’s Argentina. Once he captured them, Rosas decided to make an example of the unfortunate duo in order to silence his opponents. Unfortunately, his overreaction only provided more fuel to their onslaught by providing proof of the caudillo’s barbarism.

Argentine director, María Luisa Bemberg’s Oscar-winning movie Camila, adds yet another layer to this tragic story. Released only a year after the end of the right-wing dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), Bemberg’s cinematic depiction of the stifling oppression of Rosa’s regime in the 1840s struck a chord with Argentine audiences. The two conservative governments share noticeable similarities. In the same way the rise of Rosas to power in the 1820s forced his liberal opponents into exile, the repressive regime in the 1970s caused a mass exodus from Argentina. Both governments then carried out tactics of terror to subdue and control their populations – Rosas left the heads of subversives killed during night on stakes, while the bodies of those “disappeared” by the military dictatorship washed up on the shores of the Río de la Plata. Finally, the death of Camila’s unborn child not only conjured images of innocent citizens murdered by their government, but it also evoked memories of the dozens of babies taken from executed leftist women to be raised by members of the conservative regime. From love story to political intrigue to visions of cross-century government violence and oppression, Camila is a must watch for those interested in cinematic genius as well as Latin American history.

J. Edgar (2011)

by Dolph Briscoe IV

Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood presents a biopic of one of the most powerful and controversial figures of twentieth-century America in the film J. Edgar.  Acclaimed actor Leonardo DiCaprio brilliantly portrays John Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Eastwood and DiCaprio depict Hoover as a complicated individual, dedicated to modernizing crime investigation in the United States yet consumed with a desire for power, respect, and adoration.  Hoover’s insecurities lead him to legal and ethical abuses of his authority, which cause great problems in both his personal life and professional legacy.

J. Edgar begins in the early 1960s, as an aging Hoover reflects upon his life to young agents writing a history of the FBI.  Hoover grew up in Washington, D.C., the favored son of a domineering mother who continuously predicts that he will bring greatness to the family name.  Such familial pressures cause Hoover to perpetually seek his mother’s approval throughout his life.  While working in the Department of Justice following World War I, he catches the attention of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and plays a key role in the notorious Red Scare, hunting down and deporting individuals suspected of Bolshevist sympathies.  Hoover’s experience with the Palmer Raids converts him into a strident anticommunist.

Following his successes during the Red Scare, Hoover becomes director of the Bureau of Investigation (which would become the FBI in the 1930s).  Hoover immediately sets out to professionalize his agency.  He only hires individuals of excellent physical stature who commit to complete loyalty to the Bureau above any other persons or goals in their lives.  His organization practices the most advanced crime-fighting techniques, as Hoover rigorously studies the new sciences of fingerprinting and forensics.  During these years, two critical people enter Hoover’s life, Helen Gandy and Clyde Tolson.  Miss Gandy, as Hoover calls her, chooses to forego romantic relationships in order to dedicate herself totally to her work.  Impressed by such conviction, Hoover hires her as his personal secretary.  He also feels an instant connection with Clyde Tolson, a young law school graduate, whom he names as his right-hand man.

Hoover perceives leading the FBI as the vehicle to achieve glory for both himself and his family name.  He also truly believes his agency serves as the watchdog for his beloved country’s safety.  The film recalls many famous historical events.  Hoover’s FBI investigates the kidnapping and murder of renowned aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby, contentiously finding only one suspect in the crime.  Agents battle organized crime, and bank robbers, like John Dillinger.  Hoover himself markets the organization, supporting efforts to lionize his “G-Men” in both comic books and movies, often exaggerating his own personal role in suspenseful accounts of arrests.

Yet Hoover’s obsession with empowering his beloved FBI causes him serious problems and raises ethical questions.  His fear of losing the directorship and anxiety about domestic subversives leads him, with the help of Miss Gandy, to create a secret file with salacious information about some of the most powerful people in America.  In a reoccurring scene, the FBI leader meets with new presidents entering the White House and asserts his authority though barely veiled blackmail.  In a flashback, a young Hoover visits President Franklin D. Roosevelt, inquiring about how to handle information he has obtained detailing First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s intimacy with another woman.  Understanding Hoover’s purpose, FDR gives the Bureau even more autonomy.

image

Thirty years later, Robert F. Kennedy and Hoover engage in a tense meeting, where the new attorney general attempts to reassert the Department of Justice’s authority over the FBI.  Hoover makes clear that he possesses files detailing President John F. Kennedy’s extramarital affairs, and is not afraid to make this information public.  A disgusted Robert Kennedy acquiesces to Hoover’s demands, fearful of a scandal that could embarrass his brother.  In another infamous episode, the FBI director bugs Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s hotel room, collects evidence of the civil rights leader’s marital infidelities, and unsuccessfully attempts to blackmail him to prevent King from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hoover’s weaknesses also cause conflict in his own personal life.  Though doted upon by his mother, he seems incapable of ever fulfilling her high expectations.  When the body of the abducted Lindbergh infant is found, Hoover’s mother chastises him for failing to save the child and condemns him as possessing blood on his hands.  The FBI director struggles with romantic relationships.  The film presents him as awkward around women, but illustrates the deep bond he develops with Clyde Tolson, long rumored to be Hoover’s lover.  However, even with Tolson, Hoover often demonstrates cruelty and chooses solitude.  Because of his mother’s harsh warning to avoid homosexual relationships, Hoover withholds affection from the ever loyal Tolson, whom he clearly loves.  Likewise, when Tolson and Miss Gandy express concern regarding Hoover’s obsession with destroying Dr. King, the FBI director ruthlessly berates them for questioning his judgment.

At the film’s conclusion, Hoover remains concerned with the future of the FBI and his own legacy.  Following a meeting with Richard Nixon, the FBI leader expresses alarm to Miss Gandy and Tolson about the new president’s lust for power.  Eastwood presents Nixon as even more sinister and paranoid than Hoover.  At his request, Miss Gandy promises Hoover that she will always protect his secret files, and thus the integrity of both the FBI and himself.  Sure enough, when Hoover passes away a few years later, President Nixon, while publicly praising Hoover, vulgarly orders his aides to confiscate the secret FBI files.  When Nixon’s men search through Hoover’s office, however, they only find empty file cabinets.  The film then ends showing Miss Gandy privately shredding a mountain of documents.  The credits note that only a few misfiled papers from Hoover’s collection were ever found.  Even in death, J. Edgar Hoover once again asserts his power over a sitting American president.

J. Edgar omits several critical historical episodes.  Eastwood does not address Hoover and the FBI’s role during World War II.  Surprisingly, the film barely mentions the Second Red Scare and McCarthyism, surely a seminal period in the time of Hoover’s FBI directorship.  Also, we see scant attention to the larger civil rights movement beyond Dr. King.  What about the FBI’s surveillance of organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers?  Furthermore, how about FBI monitoring of antiwar groups during the Vietnam era?  Certainly, a director can only cover so many stories in a movie, but these are important events, too.

image

Despite this minor criticism, Eastwood tells us much about the past that certainly is applicable today.  The film’s central theme is power, and how its abuse can be very dangerous.  Hoover’s lust for power causes him to breach legal and ethical boundaries, raising issues that continue to remain divisive among Americans.  We live in a time when leaders, often in the name of national security, much like Hoover, utilize their powers with questionable methods.  Much controversy surrounds the Patriot Act and electronic surveillance, supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations.  Civil liberties in the age of terrorism, as in the Cold War era, again seem at risk.  Hoover’s paranoia about subversives appears eerily similar to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s obsession with capturing suspected Islamic militants. What does it mean if, in our dedication to protect the United States, we violate the moral codes our country holds most dear?

J. Edgar is an excellent presentation of an individual and an organization which had profound, and controversial, influences upon American life in the twentieth century.  Recalling many historical episodes with dazzling acting and fascinating storylines, viewers will find J. Edgar both intellectually stimulating and movingly entertaining. 

Photo Credits
Uncredited photographer for Los Angeles Daily News, J. Edgar Hoover and his assistant Clyde Tolson, c 1939.
Abbie Rowe, John F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert F. Kennedy, Oval Office, 1961
Yoichi. R. Okamoto, J. Edgar Hoover in the Oval Office, 1967

 

Two documentaries on Guatemala’s violent civil war

by Virginia Garrard-Burnett

Discovering Dominga (2003), directed by Patricia Flynn

Denese Joy Becker, a cosmotologist living in Iowa, was adopted as a child from Guatemala. Although she remembers nearly nothing about her past, a cousin from her American family realizes that Denese’s age corresponds with the period of la violencia in imageGuatemala. Denese and her adopted family travel to Guatemala, where she discovers she is Dominga Sic Ruiz, a survivor from a 1982 Guatemalan massacre in which both her parents were murdered by the Guatemalan military. The documentary recounts how Denese rediscovers her own identity as Dominga—an Achí Maya woman, and the horrendous political context that led to her being put up for adoption in the United States.

When the Mountains Tremble (1983), directed by Pamela Yates

This is a documentary about the armed conflict between the Guatemalan military and one of that nation’s most important armed guerrilla groups, the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), who in the context of this film are primarily indigenous people, the Maya. This documentary was made during the nadir of Guatemala’s 36-year long civil war, and includes remarkable footage from both sides of the conflict. It also includes narration by a very young Rigoberta Menchú Tum, the Ki’che’ Mayan activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett recommends related books here in READ.

Sarah’s Key (2011)

imageby Julia M. Gossard

Just before dawn on July 16, 1942 the French Police began Opération Vent Printanier, or “Operation Spring Breeze.”   That morning over 13,000 Jews were forcibly removed from their homes and trudged through the streets of Paris to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the Winter Bicycle Racetrack, on the rue Nélaton in the city’s fifteenth arrondisement.  Situated next to the Bir-Hakeim métro, not far from the Eiffel Tower, the Vel’ d’Hiv’ (as it was commonly called) was the first indoor track in France that hosted numerous sport and cultural shows.  But in July 1942 the Vel’ d’Hiv’ hosted a much different spectacle: the inhumane detainment of Jews before their deportation to concentration camps in Parisian suburbs, such as Drancy and Beaune-la-Rolande, that sent Jews directly to Auschwitz.  Inside of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ the French Police denied Jews water, food, medical attention, and even lavatories, treating the prisoners worse than livestock.  Despite the atrocities that took place at the Vel’ d’Hiv’ and later in the concentration camps where families were separated and eventually convoyed to Auschwitz for extermination, the French rarely acknowledged or spoke about the Vel’ d’Hiv’.  It was not until 1995 that the French Government, under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, addressed Vichy French compliance in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup and the Nazis’ ultimate answer to the “Jewish Question.”

Philippe Pétain meeting Hitler in October 1940. (via Wikipedia)

Though a work of fiction, Tatiana de Rosnay’s poignant novel, Sarah’s Key, helps inform the reader about the lesser-known atrocities committed against French Jews under Nazi occupation and the Vichy government.  Simultaneously set in July 1942 and sixty years later in July 2002, the novel alternates narratives between the lives of Sarah Starzynski, a ten-year old Jewish girl imprisoned with her parents in the Vel’ d’Hiv’, and Julia Jarmond, an ex-patriot American journalist writing a piece on the sixtieth anniversary of the Roundup.  In researching her article, Julia begins to discover tragic secrets about Sarah’s life that have a devastating impact on Julia’s own life sixty years later.

Weaving together mystery, history, and intense emotion, de Rosnay provides an engrossing story.  Though at times the plot can seem somewhat predictable this does not significantly undermine the book’s success.  What is most significant and moving about the book is de Rosnay’s piercing criticism of France’s seeming ambivalence and long denial of involvement in the atrocities of the Holocaust including the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup.  As one character poignantly remarks, “Nobody remembers the Vel’ d’Hiv’ children, you know… Why should they? Those were the darkest days of our country.”  Despite the dedication of several sites in Paris to the memory of those deported during the war, such as the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, there still remains a certain amount of unfamiliarity with Vichy France’s role in the Holocaust in France today.  Sarah’s Key reminds readers that Vichy France’s compliance in the “Jewish Question” is not something to be forgotten or swept underneath the rug.  It is a topic that deserves reexamination and further explanation.

Wikipedia on the round-up of French Jews
Mémorial de la Shoah website
A walking tour of the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation with informative pictures

Trailer for the new film version of Sarah’s Key

Photo credits:
Jewish women in Paris, just before the roundup
Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) via Wikimedia Commons

Death and Decadence: Vatel (2000)

imageby Julia M. Gossard

According to the infamous seventeenth-century gossip, Madame de Sévigné, on April 24, 1671 François Vatel, distraught over the late arrival of fish for a banquet in honor of Louis XIV, committed suicide by impaling himself through the heart with a sword.  Sévigné and other nobles speculated that Vatel, a well-known perfectionist, succumbed to the overwhelming pressures of planning an extravagant three-day banquet in honor of the king’s royal visit and decided to kill himself instead of having to face public humiliation for his failure.

Roland Joffé’s 2000 film, Vatel, is a reinterpretation of Vatel’s (Gérard Depardieu) death, portraying him as a victim of the rigid social politics that ruled seventeenth-century French noble society.  In 1671 the Marquis de Lauzun (Tim Roth) delivers a message from Louis XIV to the Prince de Condé (Julien Glover) that the king wishes to spend three days at Condé’s chateau, Chantilly.  Hoping to use this opportunity to raise his social standing, the Prince de Condé orders his “Master of Festivities and Pleasures,” François Vatel, to organize a lavish affair to impress the king and secure Condé a position as general in the upcoming military campaign against the Dutch Republic.

FileChateau_de_Chantilly_garden

The film chronicles Vatel’s intense drive to create innovative and delicious meals, sumptuously decorated quarters, and beautiful performances including a water and fireworks show that will be used as the event’s grand finale for the king and the 2,000 other guests expected at the banquet.  Despite Vatel’s meticulous plans, when the first day actually arrives mishaps abound.  To complicate matters further, Vatel becomes enamored with Anne de Montausier (Uma Thurman), a beautiful women presumed to be Louis XIV’s new lover.  Disaster after disaster occurs throughout the three-day festivities, with Vatel becoming increasingly disillusioned with the prodigal nobility, leading to his suicide.

Vatel illuminates the complexity of the early modern patronage system. A hierarchy existed, in which patrons were often clients themselves. In this case the Prince de Condé’s was both Vatel’s patron and the King’s client.  The patronage system was so deeply embedded in the minds of early modern people that, as Vatel demonstrates, one misstep resulting in the loss of a patron’s favor could mean social (and even actual) death.  Clients worked solely to serve their patrons, knowing that their livelihood depended on their patron’s benevolence.  In Vatel, that service involved a luxurious, spectacle of sensory pleasures, the very decadence of which highlighted the costs of failure. 

If you are a gourmand this movie will have you salivating within ten minutes.  Not only do you learn the origins of whipped cream, aptly called “chantilly” in French, but the many palatable dishes created by Vatel play a prominent role in the film.   Additionally, the film is a visual feast for the eyes.  Shot primarily on location at the Château de Chantilly in France, the setting is authentic and beautifully presented.  While some of the vividly colored costumes and synthetic hairpieces are not necessarily unique to the seventeenth-century, overall the costumes, jewelry, coiffures, and other accessories work together to portray the luxurious ambiance that surrounded the king and his nobility.  For anyone interested in the lavish, extravagant, and decadent French nobility of the seventeenth century, this is a must see movie.

 

For more on the history of French cuisine, you can read Susan Pinkard’s, A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650-1789 (2008)

A wonderful children’s book, called A Medieval Feast, by Aliki, details the extraordinary lengths the nobility were expected to go to entertain the French king when he decided to come for a visit. Delightful illustrations depict social and cultural events with considerable historical accuracy (though for a somewhat earlier period).

The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV by W.H. Lewis (1997) discusses social life under Louis XIV.

In The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1994), Peter Burke explores the ways Louis XIV was represented in painting and other images to show how the Sun King consciously managed his public image and invented a new image of the king.

See also our READ section for Julia Gossard’s recommendation of a book about this period that treats some of the same issues as this film, A Tale of Two Murders.

 

 

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Recent Posts

  • IHS Book Roundtable: Enlightenment and Geopolitics of Knowledge
  • IHS Workshop: “‘Honest, Clean, Industrious’: Working Class Respectability,” by Stefanie Shackleton, University of Texas at Austin
  • IHS Workshop: “Contested Customs: Reinventing Indigenous Authority in Ubaque, New Kingdom of Granada,” by Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez, University of Texas at Austin
  • River Depths, Bordered Lands, and Circuitous Routes: On Returning to South Texas
  • NEP Author Spotlight – John Gleb
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

  • Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About