“Dictator of South Africa”

Abstract

In her thought-provoking work on British and French literatures, Lisa Lowe invites us to examine the “junctures at which narratives of gendered, racial, national, and class differences complicate and interrupt the narrative of orientalism”.1 If we wish to adapt her theory to the visual field, the 1930s seem an ideal testing ground, offering one of these underexplored junctures where national differences and imperialism intersect. The decade saw not only the heyday of British empire cinema, but also an unprecedented flow of German and Austrian filmmakers to the UK. Most critics have analysed the contribution of exiled film artists in terms of technical know-how and, to a lesser extent, anti-fascist themes. Jan-Christopher Horak thus notes in his pioneering study,