Dainah the Mixed

After three long, hot weeks crossing the Pacific, an ocean liner reaches its destination in Ecuador. That evening the arrival is marked with a masked ball and a magic show. Dainah is the wife of the magician who works aboard; on the night of the ball a mechanic turns his attention to her, and that attention ends badly. The next day she disappears, and suspicion falls first on the mechanic and then on her husband. The title comes from the language of its period and the account carries that period’s racial gaze, yet the director gives the husband not as a stereotype but as a composed and determined man. Jean Gremillon’s film was cut by close to forty minutes by the producers before it was released. The fifty one minute French production was completed in 1932.