A Portrait of the Artist in Black and White: Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres (1983) and François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) (Article)
Title: A Portrait of the Artist in Black and White: Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres (1983) and François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)
Author: David Pike
Abstract: What does it mean to live and to make art both within and outside of the colonial system, and what does Euzhan Palcy's film 'Rue Cases-Nègres' have to tell us about the legacy of colonialism and the paths of liberation available in, through, or against that legacy? How, if at all, can we disentangle critiques from what to others felt like a radical and timely film that, according to its director in 2010, remains “unwrinkled” by time despite its already historical “pastness” when released in 1983? There are many ways to approach this question; in this essay, I discuss a pivotal feature of Palcy’s adaptation of Zobel’s novel and one of the primary ways, I argue, that the film addresses its moment in the 1980s in contradistinction to the years around 1950 when the novel was published and to the 1930s in which it (and the film) are set: the multifaceted ways the film uses education as a theme, deploys it as a plot thread, and understands it as an unequal system of opportunity and oppression.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://brightlightsfilm.com/a-portrait-of-the-artist-in-black-and-white-euzhan-palcys-rue-cases-negres-1983-and-francois-truffauts-les-quatre-cents-coups-1959/
Primary URL Description: Online film journal
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Bright Lights Film Journal
Publisher: Bright Lights Film Journal

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