Cargaison blanche is a French comedy thriller film first released in 1937, directed by Robert Siodmak.  The film is based on a novel by Jean Masson and stars Käthe von Nagy, Jules Berry, Suzy Prim, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Charles Granval.  It has also been released under the title: Woman Racket.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


In Spain, Blanco is the boss of a notorious white slavery ring which lures attractive young women with the promise of a dancing career and ships them off to Brazil to be sold as prostitutes.   When Blanco’s right-hand man Moreno learns that his mistress committed suicide after being sent to Rio de Janeiro, he swears vengeance.   Killing Blanco is too easy.   Instead, Moreno seduces his daughter Béatrice and contrives to have her sent to Rio where she will be forced into working in a brothel.  Meanwhile, two rival journalists, Henri Voisin and Marion Baker, are investigating Blanco’s shading business operation.  When Marion decides to use herself as bait to expose the white slavers, Henri, who is madly in love with her, has no option but to act as her personal bodyguard.  They soon find they are in deeper water than they had expected...

Between his early career in Germany and a highly productive period in Hollywood, director Robert Siodmak made around half a dozen films in France, some of which bear the distinctive film noir imprint that would feature so heavily in his later work.  Cargaison blanche is one such film, an entertaining concoction of gangster film and comedy thriller which somehow manages to combine farce with an uncompromising depiction of one of the seedier criminal exploits of the time, white slavery.   The film is also known as Le Chemin de Rio, after the novel on which it is based.

Whilst it may lack the cohesion, bleakness and stylistic brilliance of some of Siodmak’s subsequent film noir dramas, Cargaison blanche is a slick production, well-scripted by Henri Jeanson (whose talents were very much in demand at this time) and buoyed  up by some juicy performances from a very distinguished cast.  Jules Berry is in his element as the deliciously villainous white slaver tout, exuding charm and venality from just about every pore, but with so much class that you can’t help rooting for him as he wallows in his diabolical machinations.  As Berry’s woman beating henchman, Marcel Dalio gives a good impression of a psychotic Neanderthal with an anger management problem, a far cry from his cultured châtelain portrayal in Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939).  In the end, though, the film is stolen hook, line and sinker by Jean-Pierre Aumont and Käthe von Nagy, who provide the lively comic digressions which pretty well divert the film away from film noir thriller territory into the more amusing pastures of romantic comedy.  After watching his exuberant turn in this film, you’d almost swear that baby-faced Aumont was one of the Marx Brothers - he could certainly have given Zeppo a run for his money.

© James Travers 2010

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