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Film Notes:
SUGAR
CANE ALLEY
Sugar Cane Alley (Martinique/France 1984,
dir. Euzhan Palcy, 103 min.)
Screenplay: Euzhan Palcy, based on the novel, La Rue Cases Negres,
by Joseph Zobel; cinematography: Dominique Chaouis; editing: Marie-Joseph
Yoyotte; music: Groupe Malavoi, Roland Louis, V. Vanderson, Brunoy
Tocnay, Max Cilla, Slap Cat; producer: Sumafa-Orca-N.E.F. Diffusion;
released by Orion Classics.
Cast: Garry Cadenat (Jose), Darling Legitimus (M'Man Tine), Douta
Seck (Medouze), Joby Bernabe (Monsieur St.-Louis), Francisco Charles
(Le Gereur), Marie-Jo Descas (Leopold's mother), Marie-Ange Farot
(Madame St.-Louis), Henri Melon (Monsieur Roc), Eugene Mona (Douze
Orteils), Joel Palcy (Carmen).
Synopsis:
Martinique. 1931. Summer. On a lush sugar plantation lie two rows
of tumble down shacks on a dirt track, called Sugar Cane Alley.
While their parents toil in the fields, the Alley belongs to the
children. For them, the summer is holiday, a time for mischief and
games.
But this will be their last carefree summer. Soon the children's
paths will separate according to the results of their school exams.
Some will follow their parents into the back-breaking cane fields.
Only the best of them will have a chance to go to the high school
in the capital, Fort-de-France.Through dance, song, and storytelling
far into the summer evenings, the people of Sugar Cane Alley express
their history and hardships.
Jose, an 11-year-old orphan, knows better than anyone what stakes
in the game there are. He is a gentle and appreciative witness of
the experience around him. He watches the world through the eyes
of five other characters: M'an Tine, his grandmother, who raises
him and sacrifices all she has to insure his education; Old Medouze,
his spiritual father who dies one night in the cane field; Mr. Roc,
his teacher, who teaches him that "Education is the second
key to freedom"; Leopold, his classmate, who is the illegitimate
mulatto son of a wealthy white landowner; and Carmen, a handsome
young boat pilot and house servant who dreams of being a Hollywood
star.
Jose wins his scholarship and he and M'an Tine move to a packing
crate on the outskirts of Fort-de-France. At his new school, Jose
is confronted with the sons of the Creole aristocracy. Carmen, the
naive libertine, shows him the way into this new world. Thanks to
one of his teachers, Jose gets a larger scholarship, which allows
M'an Tine, for the first time in her life, to stop working.
One evening, M'man Tine returns to Sugar Cane Alley to buy a suit
from the tailor 'who need our money more than the city tailors do.'
When she doesn't return, Jose rushes after her. He finds her very
sick, and also learns that his friend Leopold has been arrested
for breaking into the plantation offices, trying to prove that the
owners, including his father, have been cheating the workers.
Leopold is taken away between two gendarmes. M'an Tine dies, exhausted
by her life of constant manual labor. Jose returns to Fort-de-France
to the education that is his comfort and inspiration. M'an Tine,
like Old Medouze before her, has now gone back to 'Africa'. Jose
will tall their stories for them now, and for all of those from
Sugar Cane Alley.
Discussion questions:
1. Discuss Jose's journey/passage in the film--from the country
(the sugar cane fields) to the city (Fort-de-France), from plantation
worker to scholarship student--in terms of its historicla and psychological
implications. How is the coming-of-age story intertwined with the
colonial theme of dislocation?
2. How are familial and emotional bonds explored by the director
to serve her narrative? Discuss the roles of Medouze and Jose's
grandmother, M'Man Tine, play in Jose's development? What do their
respective deaths signify?
3. Does the film successfully achieve both a personal and socio-historical
dimension? In what ways?
4. Comment on Jose's last words: "I will take my black shack
alley with me," in relation to the theme of home and exile
and its significance for a dislocated black Caribbean identity.
5. In his landmark essay, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora,"
Stuart Hall provides two definitions of cultural identity in relation
to the emerging Caribbean cinema defined by the diaspora experience,
a sense of exile and displacement, and a search for roots. Discuss
these two definitions in relation to "Sugar Cane Alley"
and its effort to represent a cultural identity on film. How does
this representation coincide with or differ from Caryl Phillips's
vision in A State of Independence?
Additional resources:
For additional background information about Caribbean cinema, the
historical time period, the director, and more discussion questions,
check out the following course page: http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/caribbean/CaribCinema_SugarCane.html.
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