Global IssuesCULTURE-FRANCE: Alexandre Dumas Loses Colour in Film
A new film about Alexandre Dumas, the author of ‘The Three Musketeers’, has sparked a racial row here because a white actor is playing the role of one of France’s most-read writers who was of mixed race.
In ‘L’Autre Dumas’ (The Other Dumas), currently in cinemas, blue-eyed Gérard Depardieu sports a frizzy wig and has a slight powdered-on tan to portray Dumas, the grandson of a slave.
The portrayal has angered many black cinema goers, not only because of the historical inaccuracy, but also because black actors are almost non-existent in French cinema apart from a few low-budget comedies.
The Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN) said it was 'astonished' that the mixed-race aspect of Dumas’ life was mostly ignored in the film.
'L’Autre Dumas raises the question of the place of black or mixed-race actors in French cinema who can only play to type, while white actors, considered ‘universal’, can play characters of all appearances,' the organisation said in a statement.
'The fact that Gérard Depardieu portrays Alexandre Dumas would not pose any problem if black actors themselves could also portray whites in French cinema. But this is not the case,' the group added.
'Because of deeply held prejudices, French producers and directors don’t use great black French or French-speaking actors to interpret super-productions like that of L’Autre Dumas, even when the hero of the film is supposedly himself a black man.'
The controversy comes amid heightened racial and ethnic tensions following a government-initiated debate on national identity that critics have denounced as a ploy to get right-wing votes ahead of regional elections in March. Many black citizens feel they’re not truly accepted as French.
CRAN appealed to the filmmakers to use the promotion of the film to become involved in the 'fight against the discrimination suffered by actors of colour in French cinema'.
But Depardieu told journalists at the Berlin Film Festival last weekend that he thought the controversy was 'unnecessary', and the film’s producers have said only that they chose one of France’s best-known actors to play one of the country’s greatest writers.
The movie’s director Safy Nebbou has acknowledged that France is behind countries such as the United States and Britain in opportunities for non-white actors. But he and the producers do not believe that it was necessary for Dumas, who was 'one-quarter black', to be portrayed by a black or mix-raced actor.
This position hasn’t mollified critics who believe the film is offensive because it does not show the racism Dumas suffered during his lifetime.
Born in France in 1802, Dumas was the 'fruit of an astonishing mixture' of races, according to the placard that stands outside his tomb in the Paris Panthéon — an imposing neoclassical building where great French statesmen and writers are buried.
Dumas’ paternal grandmother had been a slave in Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, and his paternal grandfather had been a French nobleman. His father, a so-called Mulatto, became a general in Napoleon’s army but experienced many incidents of racism as his son the writer later would.
Dumas died in 1870, and his remains were exhumed 132 years later from their resting place in the town of his birth, Villers-Cotterêts, and placed in the Panthéon in a lavish ceremony in 2002. He shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, two other pillars of French literature.
Jacques Chirac, president at the time, said the action was to give Dumas his rightful position, and to correct 'an injustice which marked Dumas from childhood, just as it marked the skin of his slave ancestors'.
African-American businesswoman and scholar Ricki Stevenson, who runs a company in France called Black Paris Tours, told IPS that Depardieu’s playing Dumas was a 'travesty'.
'It hides what motivated Dumas because he did not feel that he got enough respect for his books and he constantly strived to do better,' she said. 'He’s now been whitened and this is the final insult.'
She said that when she takes groups of travelers to the various Dumas monuments in Paris, she is often approached by locals who are surprised that people of African descent see Dumas as one of their own.
'It’s bad enough that the French are always shocked when they find out that Dumas was of African ancestry, but this film is rewriting history and it’s ridiculous,' Stevenson said.
The movie is in fact more about Dumas’ work than his life. It focuses on a dispute between him and one of his assistants, Auguste Maquet, who met Dumas when the writer was already famous and who collaborated on some of the most popular books.
Maquet took Dumas to court in 1858, trying to gain official recognition and rights for his contribution to the author’s output, but he was awarded only financial compensation. Dumas retained authorship of the body of work that includes some 300 novels, plays and travel books, including ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’, and ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.
The true nature of the men’s collaboration and the extent of Maquet’s input has also sparked discussion in French literary circles, apart from the controversy of Dumas’ racial portrayal.
One of the works that Maquet probably did not have much to do with, however, is ‘Georges’, a book set in Mauritius which tells the story of a mixed-race boy 'who is driven from his island home by racist landowners' and eventually returns to lead a slave rebellion. It reflects the first successful slave revolt that had occurred in Haiti, the land of Dumas’ grandmother.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service