Ethnicity in Film Articles

Ethnicity in Film: Luise Rainer, Nancy Kwan The issue of ethnicity and movie roles came up to me a few years ago, while I was working on a biography of Mexican-born actor Ramon Novarro (above), Beyond Paradise. I'd read much about white performers playing non-white roles, but basically nothing about non-white actors playing white roles. Yet, back in those days it wasn't that uncommon. Although [...]

Paul Muni, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth The ethnic controversy surrounding the casting of Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas in Safy Nebbou's The Other Dumas reminded me of Arthur Dong's 2007 documentary Hollywood Chinese, which discusses how Caucasian actors usually played major Chinese roles in American movies up to the not-too-distant past. Among those featured in Hollywood Chinese, whether in clips or as talking [...]

Gérard Depardieu, one of the greatest icons of French cinema, has dismissed claims that he has been miscast as mixed-race author Alexandre Dumas in Safy Nebbou's big-budget production L'Autre Dumas / The Other Dumas. In Depardieu's words at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday, those arguments are "ridiculous" and "unnecessary," while the issue itself is "not interesting" and "not a problem." A number of reviewers [...]

Turner Classic Movies' series "Race in Hollywood: Latino Images in Film" kicks off this evening. So what if "Latino" isn't a race? So what if it isn't even an ethnic or a cultural group, but merely a US-made sociopolitical construct? I'd say that what matters here are the films themselves — all Hollywood productions. And hopefully some of the introductions, provided by Robert Osborne and [...]