Dark Temporalities: Technologies of Race and Lighting in Ernst Lubitsch's The Loves of Pharaoh (1922)

ABSTRACT:Racial depictions on the early Weimar screen spoke to the loss of Germany's colonies and addressed the tensions surrounding the so-called black horror of France sending black colonial troops to occupy the Rhineland in the aftermath of the Great War. Analysis of The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) in this context reveals how state-of-the-art lighting and makeup not only constructed race onscreen but showcased the entanglement of race and technology. Science and culture combined to stage the incompatibility of dark men and light women as both an immediate threat and historical tradition.