Nor did they fall out dramatically as Chocolat became vaguely politicised and wanted to play Othello rather than Hamlet as happens in the film: both also regularly worked solo during their partnership and drifted apart because Foottit wanted to pass on the act to his sons (for some reason the film strongly hints that Foottit was a repressed crying on the inside homosexual). By making Foottit fluent in French and concentrating purely on the physicality, it skips over the fact that much of his act was built around malapropisms because of the Englishman’s poor grasp of the language, a novelty in France but something that did him no favours in Britain. Chocolat was already a performer (and servant) with another clown at the Nouveau Cirque in Paris and far from his act with Foottit fundamentally revolving around a white man kicking a black man in the arse to make rich people laugh, as the short film we see the Lumiere Brothers (played by Denis and Bruno Podalydès) making and which is shown at the end of the film, part of the joke was that the black man gave as good as he got, which was still a genuinely daring notion. The film takes quite a bit of dramatic licence with those facts that are well documented, and it’s debatable whether they help or hinder the film. Yet Zem doesn’t assume a modern viewpoint and treat this as an outrage but for the most part celebrates the physicality of the two performers as their act becomes more ambitious: the notion that he’s becoming a stereotype of the ‘whipped and happy’ Negro isn’t overlooked, but the stereotyping and discontent comes more from outside the act than within it. Of course, to a modern audience what was revolutionary a hundred years ago now seems outdated, with much of their act dependent on politically incorrect jokes and a black man being kicked in the arse by a white man to make rich people laugh. Two years after stealing Charlie Chaplin’s corpse in ], Roschdy Zem moved behind the camera but kept things in the family by hiring Chaplin’s grandson James Thierrée (as well as some of the cast of The Price of Fame/La Rancon de la Gloire’s, including its director in a small role) to co-star in Chocolat, a fictionalised account of the first black superstar, the circus clown Chocolat (Omar Sy) who was for a few years the toast of la Belle Epoque Paris, and his troubled relationship with his white partner and the real brains behind their groundbreaking double act Foottit (Thierrée).Īs the film tells it, Foottit was down on his luck after his act had fallen out of fashion when he came across Chocolat, an escaped slave playing a savage to scare the crowds in a cheap provincial circus and saw the chance for a new kind of comedy team. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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