Rogues, Romance, and Exoticism in French Cinema of the 1930s

Many popular French films of the 1930s captured the world and brought it into neighborhood cinemas for filmgoers who craved adventure. These films often served as visual postcards from the French empire, which enjoyed an unprecedented visibility in domestic popular culture between the world wars. But the public appetite for the exotic also transcended imperial borders. Exoticist films displayed landscapes and different that lay beyond the metropole, many of which were not subject to Europea...