Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Hygienic Reform in the French Colonial
Film Archive
Peter J. Bloom
A thousand and one nights but only one cure
There was a time when Mohamed ben Chegir was as strong as a lion,
as fast as a greyhound, as agile as a panther. He possessed more
stamina than the best camels and was as handsome as a summer’s
day. But something happened. A cold sore appeared on his lip.
This text serves as the opening narration to Conte de la mille et une
nuits (The Tale of a Thousand and One Nights) (1929, illustrated by
Albert Mourlan), a ten-minute animated educational film about
syphilis produced by Jean Bénoît-Lévy. This film was part of a vast
archive of short subject, French educational films that circulated in
France and North Africa during the interwar period. In this paper I
examine the interlocking nature of French educational cinema and
hygienic reform. I address how French interwar educational
documentary cinema presents hygienic reform as a vision based on
the reterritorialization of microbiological and geographic space in
France and the French colonies.
Conte de la mille et une nuits opposes Mohamed’s natural, healthful
state (emphasised with animated drawings of a lion, a greyhound,
and a panther) to a present state of physical decline. Some years
later, an automobile arrives bearing French doctors, nurses, and a
free movie. In the local cinema hall, the curtain unveils the film’s
opening title: Les Maladies vénériennes [Venereal Diseases]. The first
shot of this film-within-a-film reveals a photographic image of a
distorted Arab face with the intertitle, “Syphilis can lead to insanity,”
then another photograph of a blind Arab man gesturing for alms
with the intertitle, “Syphilis can lead to blindness.” A quick
succession of photographs appears: a medium shot of a child born
with syphilis, a close-up of syphilitic lesions on a man’s back, and an
extreme close-up of a cold sore. The last words of the film-within-afilm
are an appeal to those in Mohamed’s predicament: “If you
presently have, or ever have had these seemingly inconsequential
lesions, even if they did not hurt, see the doctor right away. The
doctor – and the doctor alone – is the only one who can cure you.”
The doctor who diagnoses and treats the patient is the irreproachable
symbol of French colonial humanism. Conte de la mille et une nuits
was widely circulated in France and North Africa during the interwar
period, and was eventually set to French and Arabic narration tracks
some years after it was first released. The Orientalist parable of A
thousand and one nights drew on the powerfully charged Contes arabes,
and Conte de la mille et une nuits demonstrates the hygienic revenge of
17 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001