At initial release, depiction of interracial romance caused the film to be banned in the United States and in the French colonies.
Due to its popularity with black viewers, the film played over a year in Washington, DC.
Original literary work: "Tamango", short story by Prosper Mérimée, published on 4-10-1829 in "La revue de Paris, Paris, France.
To avoid censorship, the French ship in Mérimée's novella, commanded by the cruel slave trader Ledoux, becomes a Portuguese frigate, and the captain takes Dutch nationality. Moreover just before the opening credits, it is mentioned that France "abolished slavery in 1794", forgetting that Bonaparte had reintroduced and legalized it. In 1820, France was in fact the world's third-largest trading power in the slave trade. Slavery was definitively abolished only in 1848.
Cinema's first interracial kiss.
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