Movie Reviewed: Princess Tam Tam, starring Josephine Baker

The story of Alwina

This movie is all about Josephine Baker and her life story. Cleverly crafted into screenplay after its successful showing of the French musical Zou. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, titled Zouzou (1934).

This is a French movie with English subtitles starring Josephine Baker as a Tunisian girl (Alwina) who is befriended by a French novelist named Max de Mirecourt. He casts her as a heroine of his future novel, and brings her into Paris and teaches her French manners and customs. His wife who is flirting with an Indian Maharaja is infuriated and seeks help from her friend to a plot a revenge against her husband and embarrass Alwina in front of the Parisian elite. But that plan backfires and at the end it all ends well. The author calls his new book “Civilization.” Ironically it demonstrates the racial bigotry of the early 20th century in European circles which was considered as a civilized behavior.

Baker became a renowned entertainer in Paris. She renounced her American citizenship to become a citizen of France who was fluent in both English and French. Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Baker was recruited by Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence, as an "honorable correspondent". She received the French military honor, the Croix de Guerre and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

The film closes with a scene of Alwina in Tunisia with her family in her farm. In the closing scene, a donkey eats the title page of "Civilization” off the floor. The movie reflects on part of her life in a racial divided society.