Princesse Tam-Tam

I see that the 11 previous reviews of this movie here vary considerably, from positive to negative. That reflects this movie, frankly, which has good things and bad.

Baker plays a young African woman living in (white) North Africa. She is "civilized" by a French novelist, somewhat the way Henry Higgens trains Eliza Doolittle, but here in order to get back at his wife in France, whom he suspects of cheating on him, in other words for strictly selfish reasons. In the end, when he wins back his wife - in a completely unconvincing scene - he forgets all about Baker.

The viewer can't forget Baker, though, because she is really the center of the movie. She plays a naive but not stupid young woman who is perfectly happy living day to day in the simple fashion of those with few material goods. She accepts what is given her, but she prefers to dance barefoot in her own rather wild - but not particularly erotic - manner, rather than to worry about the steps of the latest French dance style.

So the movie is really about the clash of two civilizations. It ends with Baker, back in Africa, happily wedded to a (white) Arab, living a simple life again. Nothing in the movie makes that look foolish or ignorant. Neither does the movie try to make that lifestyle look superior to the sophisticated lives of well-to-do Parisians of the 1930s. They are just two very different, and basically incompatible, cultures. And there the movie leaves it.

Baker gets to sing a few pleasant but not really memorable songs. Her dancing is more frenetic than graceful. Some French folk are depicted as admiring it, others as ridiculing it. The movie really doesn't take sides. Since we don't have much movie footage of Baker performing from the 1920s and 30s, it's hard to say how representative, if at all, this is of the sort of thing she was doing in Paris theaters at the time.

Not a bad movie, and not really a racist one - though it certainly has racist characters in it.

A French novelist, disgusted by his wife's society friends, goes to North Africa for a respite. There he encounters a vivacious & talented Bedouin girl, living in poverty. To spite his wife, who is romancing a Maharajah, he decides to train & educate the girl, and present her to Parisian society as the PRINCESSE TAM TAM...

The marvelous Josephine Baker is perfectly cast in the title role in this very enjoyable French film. With her enormous eyes & infectious smile, she makes contact with the viewer's heartstrings immediately. Her over-sized personality & obvious joy of performing make her a pure pleasure to watch. Baker makes us care about what's happening to poor Alwina during her transformation & introduction to European mores.

Albert Préjean does very well as the Pygmalion to Baker's Galatea; also effective are Georges Peclet as a half-caste servant, and Jean Galland as the mysterious Maharajah.

The film is very handsome & well made, looking a little reminiscent of Busby Berkeley movies being produced at the same time in America - although unlike American films of this period, PRINCESSE TAM TAM hasn't any racism. It should be pointed out that there was no Hays Office or Production Code in France. Some of the dialogue & action is rather provocative, but it must be admitted that Baker singing & dancing to 'Under The African Sky,' as well as her culminating performance in the Parisian nightclub, are two of the cinema's more memorable moments.

Actual location filming in Tunisia greatly enhances the film.

Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis in 1906, into a very poor family. Her talent & driving ambition, however, soon pushed her into moving East and she was briefly a cast member of the Ziegfeld Follies. Realizing that America in the mid-1920's held great limitations for a gifted Black woman, she managed to get herself to Paris, where she eventually joined the Foliés-Bergeres & Le Negre Revue. The French adored her and she became a huge celebrity. A short return to America in 1935 showed Baker that things had not changed for African-Americans. She returned to France, became a French citizen & worked for the Resistance during the early days of the War. Baker relocated to Morocco for the duration and entertained Allied troops stationed there.

After the War, Baker's fortunes began to slide and she faced many financial & personal difficulties. For a while, she was even banned from returning to the United States. Finally, Baker accepted an offer from Princess Grace of Monaco to reside in the Principality. Josephine Baker was on the verge of a comeback when she died of a stroke in 1975, at the age of 68.

Having appeared in only two decent films - ZOUZOU & PRINCESSE TAM TAM - Baker is in danger of becoming obscure. But she deserves her place alongside Chevalier, Dietrich & Robeson, as one of her generation's truly legendary performers.

Until now the most weaker picture of Josephine Baker, apart this was made on mid thirties where they usually didn't make a lavish production, as show on it, something about a fairy tale, the plot is rubbish, serving as Baker's vehicle to explore an African dancing or criticize a usual shallow of the European society, decaying to my point of view, a bit humor all around. largely used it's time, wasn't a movie to remember too often, a dry production, lack of deepness of being thinking is quite absurd, poor attempt to make something unusual, perhaps to Josephine Baker's fans only!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 6.25

Josephine Baker is such a joy to watch. She exudes grace, joy, and energy, and it was a treat to see her sing and dance a couple of times here. Hey, I could watch her skip among the Roman ruins in Dougge, Tunisia with the little kids for hours, and wish the action had remained there longer. What's weird and damn unfortunate is that despite her character being so poised and speaking French fluently, she's still referred to as a "savage" and a "wild animal" many times by the visiting Frenchmen, who are there to help an author get over his writer's block. They hatch an idea to fake an interracial love affair to help with the novel and also to make the author's wife back at home jealous. Meanwhile, she's flirting up a storm with a visiting Maharaja, who is unfortunately played by a white actor in blackface, with similar intentions.

While the film broaches at least the idea of miscegenation, so much so that Joseph Breen refused to pass the film in America (which is laughable in a painful way, and yet so predictable), it really has the two minority characters being used as pawns, and little more. Meanwhile, it has a painful dose of cultural condescension and outright racism in the script, something I haven't seen in other French vehicles for Baker. In an effort to display her inferiority and need of "civilization," they show her needing to learn basic arithmetic and shoveling food into her mouth coarsely, using her hands. Not surprisingly, it all leads to the old "East is East and West is West" crap, and a conclusion that Baker is better off left "uncivilized" in Africa. Argh.

You might wonder about my rating given the attitude the film takes, but the reason for it is simple: Josephine Baker. She's elegant in her singing, radiant in her evening gown, and owns the dance floor, jumping into a musical performance at the end which, while a bit Busby Berkeley-lite, had its moments even before she got out there. The film puts her down as a "savage" but her presence continually contradicts that, and there simply is no comparison to the menial roles given to black performers in America during this period. See it for Baker, and try to ignore the rest.

Josephine Baker was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century. Talented and beautiful, she moved away from the racially segregated US to find her fortune in Paris, where she became the highest paid entertainer in Europe for many years. She mostly worked in the nightclub scene, singing and dancing, but she did make a few films. If all those films were as uninspired as Princess Tam Tam (1935), it's easy to see why she got bored with cinema so quickly.

Baker is the only entertaining aspect of the film. She's charming and funny, and steals every frame she appears in. Her co-stars leave little impression, partly due to having to share the screen with Baker and partly due to their characters being dull, or worse, that deadly combination of unlikable and annoying. The story is a pale retread of Pygmalion and even though the movie doesn't even last an hour and a half, it seems to go on forever. There's even a Busby Berkely style dance number at the end which may be the most obvious use of narrative padding I've ever seen.

A poor script combined with choppy camera-work makes this mostly uninspired viewing. However, Baker's performance makes it worth a single watch, and it makes you wish the producers and writers had given her better material to work with.