by R.J. Laforce, Austin Film Society Programming Apprentice
Euzhan Palcy began her love of film early on. Born in 1958 and raised on the Caribbean island of Martinique she would often attend the local theater in her early teens to witness the past and current masters of their craft. Directing giants like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Orson Welles became her tutors. These white male filmmakers and their films affected her so much that by the age of 14 she made her first film using a shadow-play device. It was inconceivable at the time to think that this young black women would later make her own cinematic history.
Three years later her talent stretched further. It was then that Palcy wrote and directed The Messenger for television in her native city. Making such an early impression the determined and inspired Palcy then left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Her degrees included a Master's in Literature as well as a film degree from a school named after another great white male filmmaker, the Louis Lumière School of Cinema. After completing a short film there she received guidance from another French auteur of the cinema, François Truffaut. It was Truffaut that encouraged her to summon the funds to make her feature debut SUGAR CANE ALLEY (Rue cases nègres). With a very personal story revolving around the lives of a poor black family working on a sugar cane plantation in Martinique Palcy began to encounter international recognition and success as the film won the Silver Lion (Best Lead Actress) at the Venice Film Festival and Palcy won the Cesar Award for the Best First Feature Film.
It seemed that Palcy was taking her “inherited handicap” of being neither the right ethnicity or the right sex in the film world and throwing it out the window. The determination she showed was more than apparent, and the guidance she had already received from some of the most influential and talented directors was unlike anything that had been considered possible for a young black filmmaker who also happened to be female.
While Palcy’s feature debut put her on the fimmaking map it was not her major accomplishment. Six years later she would become the first female of African descent to direct a feature for a major Hollywood studio. That film was A DRY WHITE SEASON (Lupack 382). The catalyst for this milestone was another white male director. Robert Redford saw SUGAR CANE ALLEY and decided that Palcy had the gifts of a filmmaker ready to produce within the American film community. Palcy accepted the challenge, adapting the novel of the same name by South African writer Andrè Brink. The story focuses on apartheid in South Africa, more specifically the Soweto uprising of 1976. Palcy was so close to the material and desperately wanted to accurately portray the events that she went undercover to South Africa to research, posing as a recording artist. Many in the film world wanted to be a part of the film, including then retired actor Marlon Brando. He was so determined to act in it that he worked for no money. The artistic payoff was worth it, as Brando went on to capture his first Academy Award nomination in almost two decades.
SUGAR CANE ALLEY
When Palcy was 14 she ran across Martiniquan writer Joseph Zobel’s novel La Rue Cases-Nègres. Three years later Palcy wrote her adaptation while working for the Radio Tèlèvision Française office in Fort-de-France. “Palcy is quoted as saying, ‘In my mind, it was urgent to make a movie of this story...It was the first time I read a book written by a black man of our country about the fruits of our country’” (Warner 268). And from this revelation Palcy’s determination to adapt Zobel’s novel was strong and inspired.
For a production that cost under $1 million (and that was still a small budget in 1983) Palcy’s authenticity of the location and its people remains, even upon viewings over 20 years later, astonishing. SUGAR CANE ALLEY begins its story in 1930’s Martinique centering on a sugar plantation known as “Black Shack Alley” (the film and novel’s literal translation).
The film tells its story through the eyes of José, a young boy growing up with his stern, hardworking grandmother Madame Tine. José gets into mischief with the local group of kids, most of which is harmless, except in the eyes of Madame Tine. His closest friendship, however, is with Mèdouze, an old field worker whose bad back and old age have caused him to need some rum to get through the day. Palcy’s very delicate with Mèdouze and used “her sympathetic portrayal of [him to] attempt to reach out to present-day Africans” (Warner 268). Palcy saw Africans in Paris and was shocked to see a loss of heritage and culture. Palcy observed “after slavery was abolished in the West Indies, the government broke all relations with Africa as if they wanted to forget they were African slaves” (Warner 268).
Still it seems that José remains the most important character in both Zobel’s novel and Palcy’s film. Her main goal with José, especially in the film’s third act, was to “capture the importance of education in the lives of these plantation youngsters. It is their only way out of a seemingly hopeless situation” (Warner 269). Much like the plight of poverty-stricken youth anywhere in this world, education remains one of the most likely of meal tickets. José finally gains access with his skills (he even teaches a young man working in Fort-de-France how to write properly in his spare time). José and his grandmother know this is the only way out of the plantation for the young boy and it feels like the only good thing that has happened to them since the death of José’s mother.
When José finally arrives in the classroom Palcy’s film takes a slight tonal shift. In the early classroom scenes one can sense at least a partial homage to Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS and its lead Antoine Doinel in the way the stationary camera stays on the students in the classroom and Palcy uses editing to move from student to student. It must have been very nice to send a cinematic wink to the man who became Palcy’s “French Godfather.” And when José finally gets a scholarship to attend a private school in Fort-de-France he, like Antoine, is accused of cheating.
As the story reaches its pivotal end, where the apparent hold the white minority in Martinique directly and indirectly causes the deaths of so many of its black workers, José finds himself alone. Though through all the trials and struggle he finds himself in a better situation than the generation before him. And this small victory for José mirrors that of Palcy’s. The opportunities she gained from recieving a scholarship from the Sorbonne has helped her reach new artistic heights. Some may even call her the most influential, and important, black female director ever. We’ll never know for sure what accomplishments are in store for José, but at least he has a chance. And that’s better than anything he could have imagined.
Sources
Lupack, Barbara Tepa. Literary Adaptations in Black American Cinema: From Micheaux to Morrison. The University of Rochester Press. Rochester, 2002.
Warner, Keith Q. "On Adapting a West Indian Classic to the Cinema," Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and Oppositionality. Ed. Michael T. Martin. pp. 266-273. Wayne State University Press. Detroit, 1995.
Euzhan Palcy website
