Pépé le Moko or the impossibility of being French in the 1930s

French Cultural Studies

Volumn 7, Issue 21, 1996, Pages 247-258

  O'Shaughnessy, Martin ^a  

^a NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149449607     PISSN: 09571558     EISSN: 17402352     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/095715589600702102     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. The film will hereafter be referred to as PLM. Quotations from it will be accompanied in the text by a page reference for the Avant-Scène du cinéma version of the script (No. 269, June 1981).
2. Porter, D. 'Orientalism and its problems,' in Barker, F. et al., The Politics of Theory: Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature (University of Essex, 1983), 179-93, p. 181.
3. Parry, B., 'Problems in current theories of colonial discourse', in Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 9, Nos 1-2 (1987), 27-58, p. 53.
4. Dawson, G. Soldier Heroes, British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994), 50.
5. Herman Lebovics refers to the 'often herculean labors of imperialist campaigners to get the metropolitan population to go along with ... accepting their destinies as an imperial people'. In True France, the Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1992), 54.
6. Laborie, P., L'Opinion française sous Vichy (Paris: Seuil, 1990), 59.
7. Girardet, R., L'Idée coloniale en France, 1871-1962 (Paris: Table Ronde (Collection 'Pluriel'), 1972), 195.
8. Laborie, P., L'Opinion française, 157.
9. See Lebovics, True France, Chapter 5.
10. See Schor, R. L'Opinion française et les étrangers en France, 1919-1939 (Paris: Sorbonne, 1985), 724.
11. Burrin, P., La France à l'heure allemande, 1940-1944 (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 45.
12. Albert Sarraut, minister for the colonies, cit. Ageron, C.-R., 'L'Empire et ses mythes', in Bancel, N., et al., Images et Colonies (1880-1962), BDIC - ACHAC, 98-110, p. 99.
13. For an account of France's move from potential continental hegemony after the First World War to a position of beleaguered paralysis, see Adamthwaite, A., Grandeur and Misery; France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940 (Sevenoaks: Arnold, 1995).
14. Berstein, S., La France des années trente (Paris: Colin, 1988), 81.
15. Burrin, P., La France à l'heure allemande, 42.
16. Raoul Girardet encapsulates thus this role-reversal: 'Le fait colonial apparaît ainsi pour le vieil Occident fatigué, plein "d'empires morts et de républiques malades" comme la promesse d'une rénovation.' L'Idée coloniale en France, 269.
17. K. Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies; Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 4. Ross identifies further related tensions arising from, 'a whole set of economic contradictions - those of an exploiter / exploited, dominator / dominated country, exploiting colonial populations and dominated by American capital' (p. 149).
18. Ginette Vincendeau's article, 'Community, nostalgia and the spectacle of masculinity,' (pp. 18-38 in Screen, Nov.-Dec. 1985) helped me identify these three areas (as its title shows), although my analysis has a different starting point and leads in different directions.
19. Roberts, M. L., Civilisation without Sexes; Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 104.
20. Parry, B., 'Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse', 55.
21. For extensive discussion of Gabin's 1930s persona, see Gauteur, C. and Vincendeau, G., Jean Gabin: anatomie d'un mythe (Paris: Nathan, 1993).
22. The film's politics would clearly repay further analysis, but in this paper I will limit myself to noting the reasons why national community cannot be established rather than seeking to situate the vision of community more precisely on the political map.
23. The capital was, according to Alain Corbin, 'le seul théâtre du sacre de la modernité'. He adds, 'faire le voyage de Paris, c'est aller à la rencontre de la terre entière.' ('Paris - Province', in Nora, P., ed., Les Lieux de mémoire III: les France; I, Conflits et partages (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 776-823, p. 802).
24. Schor, R. L'Opinion française et les étrangers en France, 99.
25. Giraudoux, J. cit., Liauzu, C., in Race et civilisation (Syros, 1992), 358.
26. Vincendeau, G., 'Community, nostalgia and the spectacle of masculinity', 24.
27. Georges Sadoul writes, 'Scarface essayant joyeusement ses mitraillettes, était une force conquérante et sauvage. Pépé est à l'avance un vaincu. Non par la police qui le traque ... mais par lui-même' (Sadoul, cit. Boulanger, P. in Le Cinéma colonial, (Paris: Seghers, 1975), 130).