Archive Talks: Dark Waters

Archive Talks pairs leading historians and scholars with screenings of the moving image media that is the focus of their writing and research. Each program will begin with a special talk by the invited scholar that will introduce audiences to new insights, interpretations and contexts for the films and media being screened.

In-person: Q&A with Mayukh Sen, author of Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star, moderated by film programmer Miriam Bale.

After her ship is sunk in the Pacific, a young woman fleeing war wakes in the hospital from a fever dream, distraught, despairing, alone in the world. Undoubtedly, star Merle Oberon could identify with the sense of alienation and anxiety that explodes from her character in the opening moments of director André de Toth’s Southern gothic thriller. Oberon forged a unique Hollywood career that included an early Oscar nomination for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935) and masterful turns in such classics as William Wyler’s These Three (1936) and Wuthering Heights (1939), all while concealing her identity as an Anglo Indian woman born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Identity is at the center of Dark Waters with Oberon’s desperate refugee finding safe harbor in the arms of distant relatives living on a Louisiana plantation where nothing and no one are what they seem. Moody and swirling with menace, de Toth’s swampy noir, with a suspenseful script by Marian Cockrell and Joan Harrison, is a deep cut in Oberon’s starry filmography but one that finds her working at the peak of her powers. The Archive is pleased to present Dark Waters with Mayukh Sen, author of the new biography Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star, who will give a brief talk before the film and after, will join film programmer and critic Miriam Bale in conversation.

35mm, b&w, 90 min. Director: André de Toth. Screenwriters: Marian Cockrell, Joan Harrison. With: Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Thomas Mitchell.