Film historian and archivist Maya Cade’s exploration of tenderness in film noir was inspired by one look.
The 1961 film “Paris Blues” tells the story of two expatriate black jazz musicians living in Paris, reluctant to return to the United States, where they are forced to weather racism. The couple meet and fall in love with two visiting black American tourists, leading them to reconsider their strong position. In one scene, saxophonist Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) gives flowers to his love interest Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll). Carroll responds with a giddy look, a gesture that touched Cade. “There has to be more warm hugs,” he said.
Cade, founder of the Black Film Archiveincludes this tender moment from “Paris Blues” and others from 22 films in his curated program, “Try a Little Tenderness,” for the Academy of Motion Picture Museum in Los Angeles.
In an industry with a troubled history of racism and stereotypical narratives of blackness, Tenderness offers a window into the nuances of film noir’s past and the ways in which early film noir pioneers incorporated joy in the midst of adversity.
“We can’t change the past,” Cade said, “but when we have the information to navigate the past, we can have a better relationship with it.”
“Taste Some Tenderness” It is on display at the Accademia Museum until February 25.
This interview has been edited and abridged for clarity.
NBCBLK: What does cuteness mean to you? What is the intention behind the choice of the word tenderness as opposed to love or affection?
MAYAN CADE: I have come to say that tenderness is passed in moments of affection, be it family, romantic or between confidants. Tenderness can manifest as a warm hug, a nod of understanding, whether it’s a nod or a look she gets from her family when she’s across the room and they just understand. I think it can be a tender moment. Tenderness is warmth, understanding. Of course, love is a part of it, but it is not all.
NBCBLK: Do you think tenderness works in direct opposition to black pain and trauma on screen or can they exist together?
CADE: Film noir, as it’s largely being discussed right now, comes from a place of trauma. How can we look through the film noir past, through the archives, and highlight moments of joy and affection? “Why cuteness?” This is an offer to understand the history of film noir from a different perspective. It really is an invitation to connect with our desires, our joys, our hopes through time. When we only see film noir as trauma, we are limiting what it can be.
NBCBLK: Many older movies caricature Blackness with characters acting like violent, hypersexual, dense individuals, and more. And I imagine that some of the movies in the archive, while they do have some cute moments, aren’t completely immune to the stereotyping that has happened?
CADE: Of course.
NBCBLK: How does that complicate viewing if the biggest movie has, perhaps, less progressive depictions of blackness?
CADE: Yeah. Something I think about all the time is about the agency of the actors who perform these acts, right? When I saw “Gone with the Wind,” I saw Hattie McDaniel. I love the gestures that she puts towards Blackness. The things that she broadcasts on the screen, that only blacks understand. The act of reclaiming our own cinematic image is a tender act. Before we could have those conversations about what the weight of representation demands, there had to be people who believed in his ability, in his craft. That is really powerful. The goal of the Black Film Archive is to recontextualize these moments. We can’t change the past, but when we have the information to navigate the past, we can have a better relationship with it.
NBCBLK: You have a residency at the Library of Congress, studying how tenderness appears in film noir history. What questions led you to the file? And conversely, what answers have you found or are you currently in the process of discovering?
CADE: The first time I was in the library archive, because I go quarterly in person to the Library of Congress, I was a little overwhelmed with the weight of the cute images, with everything that exists. When we review the past, we assume that we have all the answers or that everything has already been explored. This ad has really told me that there are more questions than answers and that is a positive thing.
I also think of “The Broken Earth” (1939), which has a sharecropper who is taking care of his sick son and there is a moment when he presses his cloth over his son’s head that I just can’t get out of my mind. The movie is full of black spirituals and this man is begging God to save his child, and it’s a very stereotypical way black people are shown on screen at that time. But even in that space, there are moments of warm affection and a warm embrace that I think we can take with us.
NBCBLK: Based on my assumptions, I thought maybe there would be a shortage of tenderness in film noir history because I feel like it’s not talked about that often. So, was it a surprising revelation for you? Did you think it would be difficult to discover?
CADE: Yes. The library gave me these basic movie descriptions. I thought, “Okay, let me go through this and see what happens. What’s there going to be? Am I only going to have 100 movies in this project, sort of a short list that leans past the ’50s?” And the answer is no.
How I’m cataloging this, just so you know, is that these are moments of tenderness: some pivotal plot point hinges on a tender act. I will also say that the camera can be cute. When I think of Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological films, anthropological cinema is often an outsider entering a community and observing it to bring it to other outsiders. But Zora Neale Hurston’s cinema is an insider coming into a community and having such tender expressions from them because it’s almost like the camera doesn’t exist.
There’s a lot of how black directors tried to show the realities of life. And realities are not always a happy thing. I hope no one takes that away from my work. Tenderness is not to say that there will be no trauma. It is not to say that there will not be bad moments, none of that. But what I’m saying is that tenderness is often in black lives, how can we carry on and survive those moments. The understanding that we have at home, we have to take with us to the world. My work hopes to catalog those visions of home. All of this so that we can see those legs of hope, even though there is destruction in our way.
NBCBLK: You reference “Something Good – Black Kiss” (1898), an image capturing a kiss between an African-American couple, in the film’s program description. One of the black actors, Gertie Brown, was also a minstrel. How do you make sense of these existing tensions with this tender moment and also a tense backdrop of the conditions in which black people performed?
CADE: For me, I think, isn’t it natural for an actor to bring all his experience to the stage, to the screen? And such complications exist in life. Why wouldn’t they be reflected in our way of seeing art? Actors: Their ability to act no matter what it was, there was a beauty to them in having a showcase for skilled trades because this movie is from 1898, one of the first noir movies. So yes, those complications will exist. Especially the ways that, you know, noir movies come to be. A lot of the black movies we talked about from the 1920s have white producers. I think what I came to take away from the work is that it has something important to say about the black experience. Film noir resists all convention. It resists any categorization. There are complications, you’re right. My role is just to conceptualize it so that people understand what they’re seeing. It is a proud role that I assume.
